IN Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, the Emperor of Japan managed to produce the most streamlined government in the world.

I HAVE never met Padraig Harrington. Well, that’s not entirely true. He once, last year, held a door open for me, and when I passed him without realising who it was, he said, “you’d think a better class of doorman would be worth acknowledging”.

I MET a man recently who has spent most of his career working on major capital projects. He’s been involved in building bridges, motorways, third-level colleges and housing estates. And he’s involved on the financial side of things, so he knows a fair bit about money and how it should be spent.

IF YOU want to see where the HSE gets its money from, it’s all there in the book of estimates. You can find it easily enough on the web — just click on www.finance.gov.ie, and look under ‘Financial and Economic Information’.

So why is it that so many other ESRI reports in recent times go largely ignored?

I HOPE you remember that you read it here first. Last March, I told you the cutbacks were beginning. I warned you it would start with stealth cutbacks in the hope you wouldn’t really notice. But as the slowdown in the economy begins to bite, the appetite for cuts within the system will grow.

WE’RE lucky. As of last November, there were slightly more than 490 million people living in the EU.

I MET a Health Service Executive (HSE) manager at a conference the other day. It wouldn’t be in his interests for me to tell you who he was or where he came from, but he was frustrated. Very frustrated, in fact.

I WANT to tell you about drive-by poverty. It’s a new solution to the problem of poverty, a way of hiding it away so it doesn’t become visible. That way, you see, we don’t have to worry about it.

MY WIFE made one of her occasional forays to IKEA in Belfast last week. Great value to be had up there, especially with the current rate of exchange, and the quality they produce for the price is quite remarkable.