IT WAS with a certain sardonic smile that I scanned the headline in one of the Sunday papers last weekend: “Bush to tell IRA it must renounce violence.”

PREPARING for a war in Iraq that most of the world does not want should be more than enough to occupy Tony Blair’s mind, without having to put up with David Trimble’s petulance.

THE TAOISEACH last night categorically denied rumours circulating in aviation circles that the Government intended to take on Ryanair’s almost total monopoly of the low-fares market.

WHATEVER else you may say about the present Fianna Fáil–PD conglomeration, their innate sense of political preservation is very sharp.

WHEN he announced this week in the Dáil that he was contemplating a referendum to cap the price of housing land, it seemed that our revered Taoiseach had finally qualified for a grant to retire to a home for the bewildered.

I’M NOT sure what the second-hand value of a US Navy C-40A military aircraft is, but there’s one down at Shannon airport at the moment which the Government might be interested in acquiring.

THE assurance from US Secretary of State Colin Powell must come as a major relief to the people of Iraq.

THE NEW plan which Health Minister Micheál Martin has apparently presented to his cabinet colleagues will, reportedly, have as revolutionary an effect on our health service as the invention of the trolley did.

THE gardaí weren’t the only ones to have upset people