IN a world often too glum, in a world where scepticism is increasingly a plausible reaction to nearly any suggestion, we use escapism as a refuge. We use it as a safety valve so we might not, as Col Brandon threatened in Sense and Sensibility, run mad. 

CARDINAL Desmond Connell, who died earlier this week aged 90, was buried yesterday. 

THE hotel sector has very favourable Vat arrangements and has for generations been a low-pay industry. That suggests the sector expects to advance while having comparatively low tax bills as well as low staff costs.

THIS week’s story, that it is necessary to put cameras on waste collection trucks to identify those who abuse the free waste recycling scheme by smuggling black-bin rubbish into green bins, says a lot about Ireland and not too much of it is admirable. It does though touch on a common theme.

ANYONE old enough to remember rickets, black and white TV and Jimmy O’Dea may also remember that an air ticket to London cost multiples of an average weekly wage and a transatlantic air ticket was on a par with the price of a new Ford Popular. Air travel was not a practical option for the great majority of people.

RESURGENT nationalism expressed through rejuvenated militarism is a growing concern. 

“All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

When, in his inauguration speech in 1933, Franklin D Roosvelt told the American people that they had “nothing to fear but fear itself”, he was exercising what Barack Obama later called the “audacity of hope.”

An investigation is under way after 160 containers of recyclable waste were returned to Ireland in recent months because of contamination.

THE empire strikes back — as it always does.