THERE was a palpable air of disappointment among the media commentators I spoke and listened to over the weekend. Labour wasn’t going to beat itself up over a leadership election.

We tend to think that any move in the direction of greater unity on the island of Ireland will involve pain and surrender by unionists.

WHEN the bill that enabled the privatisation of Aer Lingus was introduced to the Dáil, it was debated over four days.

A CIVILISED society should have a good health service, able to make its sick people better and to treat them with respect and dignity.

And you can’t defend something that, when you boil it all down, really makes no contribution at all. As a body, despite costing tens of millions a year, it adds nothing to public discourse or debate, and hasn’t done so for years. It has no role whatever in terms of providing checks and balances.

DO you have any idea how much a Harley-Davidson motorcycle costs? I wanted to find out, because there was a time when you simply wouldn’t see one on Ireland’s roads.

I JUST lost an entire week out of my life, and all I have to say is thank God for Padraig Harrington. And, I suppose, thank God for the BBC and its wire-to-wire coverage of the British Open.

THE Garda Vetting Unit in Thurles is a small, discreet office.

Every party into which cocaine is introduced helps to fuel a market that depends utterly on addiction and ruined lives.

We live in a world where suicide is as big a threat to young people as a road accident, where underage drinking is out of control, where the range of mental health problems is growing as our response to them shrinks. And that’s only a tiny part of the story.