THE comments by the UCC president did nothing to enhance the institution’s five-star status.

WE are showing serious signs of ambivalence and ambiguity towards the EU, which may cause us to do a U-turn on our continued accession.

WHILE I applaud the academics who spoke out and condemned the comments made by Prof Michael Murphy, I fear they may have missed the more serious aspect of this: That our social mores are now such that the professor felt comfortable articulating those views.

THERE have recently been cuts to the funding given to fee-paying schools, supposedly on the basis that the parents of students can deal with higher payments for a lower education fund.

YOUR “time for an honest discussion” editorial on educational reform (Dec 23) rightly welcomes the current widespread airing of re-assessment, re-evaluation and recalibration of the stagnating education system.

DEPUTY Richard Boyd Barrett was quoted in your newspaper (Dec 23) — “It is entirely justified to disobey an unjust law. That is what Gandhi did, and what Martin Luther King did.”

I HAVE been critical of the gardaí in the past, especially in matters relating to the human rights abuses associated with US and CIA misuse of Shannon airport.

IF Leaving Certificate students are no longer permitted to answer predictable questions they can’t avoid, then politicians should stop giving predictable answers they can avoid.

AS 2011 draws to a close, householders could be asking themselves whether they should be with The Big Switch; Ireland’s Got A New Energy; or Energy Made Better?

A REAL lesson needs to be learnt from the recent financial crisis. Things didn’t just change, they changed utterly.