I can’t believe over a million households have signed up for the dreaded water tax.

A reader’s letter published in yesterday’s Irish Examiner stated “Between Christmas and the New Year our President Michael D. Higgins, on behalf of the Government, signed into law the Water Bill 2014”.

Set the price high and we can always come down, is an old way of haggling and it looks like it too forms Jack O’Connor of SIPTU’s industrial relations tactics.

We are once again heading into bewildering territory during this month variously known on radio and TV - both Irish and overseas - as the word Febbry, Febberry, Feb You Are Eee, or very occasionally, February.

Well done to Suzanne Harrington for drawing our attention to the funding of animal circuses by the Arts Council. 

The news that we can expect to see a doubling in the incidence of cancers by 2040 — just 25 years away — is hardly cheering, but that is no reason not to try to prepare for such an eventuality.

The 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death has, predictably, generated many articles including one by a journalist who tried to equal Churchill’s daily intake of booze, cigars, etc only to stagger to unsteady defeat.

In his condemnation of exterminations at Nazi concentration camps [Irish Examiner, February 2] Geoffrey Roberts misses the fact that Stalin exterminated millions of his own citizens.

Comedian Brendan O’Carroll, who was recently named ‘philanthropist of the year,’ said that “schooling should be free”. 

I am appalled that lawful assembly has been usurped and used by extremism to intimidate one of the most intellectual Presidents the country has had. If only people could see past bitterness and hate and realise the limitations of his office.