DEAR Minister Shatter,

I CAN remember when transparency was a political cliché.

MICHEÁL Martin sent me looking for Edmund Burke, and I’m not grateful. I’ve spent several hours searching Burke’s writings (or as much as I could find online) for one phrase. As great a mind and a philosopher as he was (Burke not Martin), he is no easy read.

WHAT on earth is a decent hard-working witch to do? There I was, ready, as always at this time of the year, to predict the future for all of you, and to ensure that you’d have no surprises throughout 2014.

OF course this is the busiest time of the year, up here at the North Pole. There are reindeer to be fed and watered, their harnesses polished so they gleam.

THIS weekend, justice was done. Sam Bailey won X Factor, Munster had a thrilling, last-gasp victory over Perpignan to keep Heineken Cup hopes alive, and we exited the bail-out, heads held high. All in all, highly satisfying.

YOU might want to avert your ears. At the very least, it might be advisable to ask your maiden aunts to leave the room. I’m going to say one of those things you’re not allowed to say.

THERE’S no word for it but ‘scandalous.’ Secret payments to well-paid people, out of either public funds or charitable donations, are a scandal. It has to be highlighted, and it has to be ended.

WHAT do Gordon Jeyes and Joe Schmidt have in common? You may not have heard of Gordon Jeyes, although you will. Neither Jeyes nor Schmidt is Irish, but both are doing jobs that matter. It’s important to all of us that they both win.

IS IT just me, or do you have a sense that we’re turning a corner? That, as a nation, we’re beginning to have reasons to be proud? That maybe, just maybe, we can make it after all?