EVERY year at this time I go to very considerable lengths to tell you what you can expect in the coming year.

IT’S been that time of year when I’ve been donning my red suit, seeking to deputise for the big man. I wear a short beard all year round, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been adding a big white fluffy one. My visiting beard, I call it.

How can we take to the streets to fight for water charges but not to support Áras Attracta residents, asks Fergus Finlay.

SO, Taoiseach. You have the worst opinion-poll ratings in your history. Thousands of people will march tomorrow against the water tax. And there’s a row among your most senior ministers about the repayment of the Anglo debt.

I WORE a white ribbon on my coat last week. I was asked to do it by the Men’s Development Network, a small, mostly voluntary organisation dedicated to building confidence and self-esteem in men.

I’M TOTALLY flummoxed. I keep meeting people who are utterly fed up with the government, and determined never to vote for them again.

A REPUBLIC is no longer a republic if democracy does not matter. Democracy stops mattering if the right to dissent, and to protest, is not protected, if the rights of minorities are ignored, if government does not listen to the people. A republic stops being a republic the day fear is used to manipulate public discourse.

Will the Government last? That’s the issue on everyone’s mind right now.

DEAR TAOISEACH, Do you know the old joke about the cruise ship magician whose act was always being ruined by the clever parrot?

I THINK there might be more merit in supporting Maíria Cahill than in attacking Gerry Adams. I’ve two reasons for saying that, and I realise that people who read that sentence might see it as the beginning of an apologia for Adams or Sinn Féin. I don’t mean it that way, and hope to make that clear.