BY NOW you may or may not have heard about a 41-year-old woman called Samantha Brick who became something of an internet sensation this week.

THE stories are mainly to be found in the business pages these days, but the lengths to which some of the formerly rich are going to hang onto their assets while not repaying the money borrowed to purchase those trophies, are extraordinary.

THE Government must be tempted to celebrate any possible deal with the European Central Bank over the payment of those damn promissory notes for Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, for over €30bn, by announcing the abandonment of the attempt to raise a mere €160m from the Irish people by way of the household charges.

IF a government levies a tax that is patently unfair or excessive then people may go to extraordinary lengths to try not to pay it, even running the risk of major fines or, worse, jail if caught and found guilty of wrong-doing.

It wouldn’t happen here, would it? Iceland’s former Prime Minister Geir Haarde was put on trial this week, facing charges relating to his failure to prevent the island nation’s 2008 financial crash, one that has been rivalled only by ours and Greece’s.

THE announcement of the EU referendum and the subsequent hari-kari within Fianna Fáil may have drawn attention away from Aengus Ó Snodaigh’s remarkable campaign of state-funded printing, but Sinn Féin’s seemingly relentless electoral rise could be checked by any more similar revelations.

THE invoice for my eldest daughter’s summer trip to the Gaeltacht arrived the other day. It is for a sizeable amount, sufficiently large to make me to gulp and wonder if this is a good investment of money, for that and a number of other reasons.

THE cause of Whitney Houston’s death remains undisclosed but the widespread assumption is that it was caused by drugs.

MICHAEL Noonan is reconsidering an idea that he and other ministers rejected last October: people with money built up in a pension fund, but which they can’t access until they reach retirement age, should be allowed to take some of the money prematurely if it can be used to pay down debts that they cannot repay otherwise.

The length of time being taken on the Anglo Irish Bank investigation is deeply worrying. It is to be hoped that everything is being prepared properly to ensure that any prosecutions are warranted and, given the cost involved in the three-year investigation, then successful.