LAST week I returned to the classroom as a pupil for the first time in 30 years. I am seeking to obtain a diploma as a chartered director at the IMI. The first module was strategic business direction. The lecturer was Prof Patrick McNamee who is a top MBA teacher at the University of Ulster and an international consultant.

DESPITE attempts to sanitise and whitewash the full horrors of Anglo Irish Bank in the annual report, the truth is being exposed. This is the worst financial scandal in the history of our State. It is now time to compare and contrast this sorry saga with the worst financial scandal in the USA — Enron Corporation.

BRACE yourself. The annual report of Anglo Irish Bank will be published tomorrow. The full extent of the toxicity of this former plc and its nefarious practices from October ’07 to the end of September’08 will be exposed.

IN the early stages of this recession, politicians assured us we were not returning to the 1980s. Now we are facing something much, much worse. How bad will it get? How long will it last?

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese is donating a number of ball gowns to a charity auction. This alerted me to the prospect of life after her presidency when it ends in 2011.

Brian Cowen’s government is predicated on the primacy of partnership. We have delayed taking the sharp correctional measures required because the pillars of partnership were in denial about economic reality. What a costly delay. Our national debt is set to pole-vault from €30bn to €70bn in the space of two years.

THREE weeks into the new year, we are faced with a deluge of disastrous news. Dell, Waterford Wedgwood, Chartbusters and Kostal have all rationalised.

BECAUSE I am not a Catholic, I was reluctant to wade into the Bishop Magee controversy. The Ferns diocese in Co Wexford went through a decade of turmoil, which Cloyne is now experiencing. We discovered more than 100 individual allegations of clerical sexual abuse between 1962 and 2002. These involved 21 priests.

THE festive Christmas break prevented proper analysis of one of the most shocking and infamous scandals ever to arise in corporate Ireland.

BEING asked by the editor to set out what I would do if I was taoiseach in 2009 is like a fantasy football competition.