DESPITE the fact that our world seems to be collapsing all around us we will spend more than the vast majority of Europeans – the people standing between us and bankruptcy – this Christmas.

There are aspects of Fine Gael’s 85-page policy document on public sector reform that will be welcomed, but when it comes to the specifics some of the proposals seem particularly woolly and the title of the overall programme – Reinventing Government – smacks of a sound bite that is hauntingly reminiscent of Fine Gael’s controversial Celtic Snail in November 2000.

In the midst of current economic difficulties it is probably inevitable that there would be increased pressure on families.

EVEN though too many of life’s great charms are overshadowed, for the moment at least, by an unrelentingly dismal economic situation it is cheering that the European Commission believes we will overcome our difficulties and eventually return to being something more like a functioning society and economy.

RECENT history has shown the destructive power of floods, especially unexpected flash floods.

IT IS impossible to see how this besieged country’s interests are served by this Government deferring the inevitable.

THE theory surrounding our catastrophe is one thing, it is cold and often impenetrably academic, but yesterday the Society of St Vincent de Paul put flesh on the consequences of our excesses in a chastening way.

THERE is a tendency among tottering regimes to cling to power at any cost – a brand of political arrogance usually associated with less than constitutional ‘banana republics’.

WHATEVER public support students had for their campaign of opposition to increases in registration fees, it has been jeopardised by a small minority who went out of their way to clash with gardaí in the course of yesterday’s march through Dublin.

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney did not need to be a fortune teller to anticipate a huge interest in the Health Service Executive redundancy package. Comparatively speaking the terms are so generous that anything else would have been unimaginable.