IS it just me, or has the political world gone mad? I’ve never seen so much invective heaped on a political leader, from outside and inside his own party. 

ISN’T Culture Night fantastic? I don’t know what it was like down your way, but throughout Dublin there was just an amazing buzz last Friday night. Queues everywhere to get into places like St Patrick’s Cathedral and the Dublinia exhibition, and throngs of people in the streets. There was an incredible downpour around half seven, but it didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits.

IF there’s anything that makes us universally smug, it’s the wonderful unbeatable quality of our education system. The best little education system in the world, isn’t it? Only the other night I saw young people on the 9 o’clock News, clutching their Junior Cert results, their faces awash with relief and happiness at their results. They were on track to get the points they needed for college.

WHEN my wife was a child, she was taken to mass every Sunday. Every Sunday, she noticed a small group of children, in what seemed to be reserved seats to the side of the church. They were always cold, pinched and blue. Dressed in khaki, they would troop in quietly at the start and troop out again, through a side door, at the end.

WATCHED the first episode of The West Wing, for the first time in years, the other night. I’d forgotten how good it was: a dense, fast-paced political drama, packed with dialogue and incident. You knew you were watching something good.

I was going to write 1,200 words about Richard Dawkins, a man whose behaviour incensed me beyond words last week. The more I thought about it, the more I thought he wasn’t worth it. Instead, I want to write about Joe Kavanagh.

I HAVE fallen in love with my children and my grandchildren all over again in the last fortnight. Of course, they’ve always meant the world to me, but, suddenly — I’m talking about the grandchildren — they’re personalities in their own right.

Is he naïve? Stupid? Unthinking? Callous? Some combination of all of those qualities?

THE Department of Education is an extraordinary place. In the various bits of bumph it publishes from time to time — annual reports, statements of strategy, and the like — it sets out its mission as "enabling learners to achieve their full potential and contribute to Ireland’s economic, social, and cultural development".

Aras Attracta is home to nearly a hundred people. It’s in Swinford in County Mayo. It has a website, part of the much larger HSE website.