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.

Here are some of the words that don’t appear at all in the treaty: euthanasia, family planning, abortion, contraception or divorce.

DEAR Taoiseach-in-waiting, not long to go now. At 2.30pm tomorrow, the house will be called to order and nominations will be put in place for the office of taoiseach. There may be some wrangling about the procedures, which would be normal enough.

HERE’S an arresting sentence (possibly in more ways than one): “Our fundamental aim, in all that we do, is to make it easy for people who want to do business with us and to make it difficult for those who don’t.”

I GOT one of those emails during the week. You know the kind — the round-robin, forwarded by a friend to everyone on her email list, that’s supposed to make you smile. And it did, until I read the sting in the tail.

IS it just me or is anyone else getting a bit tired of the endless round of celebrations of the only true peacemakers?