LAST week I wrote a column about a Government proposal to introduce a network of detention centres for asylum seekers.

I SPENT last weekend meeting and talking to primary school principals.

I REMEMBER an old and wise politician telling me once that you could sum up the difference between the three largest political parties in Ireland this way.

I DON’T know whether you heard former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds on Marian Finucane’s radio programme last Sunday.

I THINK it was US politician Adlai Stevenson who once said that a statesman approaches every issue with an open mind and a politician approaches every issue with an open mouth.

ACCORDING to my encyclopaedia, people have been producing almanacs since the beginnings of astronomy. As far back as ancient Rome, people were routinely warned in advance about days that were dangerous — beware the Ides of March! — as well as told about days that would be good to do business.

I WORK with a remarkable woman. I won’t tell you her name because it might help to reveal the identity of the boy she told us about at a function the other night.

HAVE you noticed, on your travels around Ireland these days, that virtually every town in the country has at least three things in common with every other town? No matter where you go — on the Cork to Dublin road, through the towns in the midlands or the west or the northeast, down south of Limerick and into Kerry, or through Carlow, Kilkenny and into the southeast — they’re all the same.

DEAR Minister Cowen, we’re just approaching the start of December, and I know you have to deal with as many demands as Santa Claus.

HERE’S a decent sum of money to play with: €54,321,000,000. It looks enormous, in fact, when you write it down that way. Fifty-four billion sounds like a lot, but we seem to have got so used to talking in billions that the sound of the word has lost a lot of its impact.