IF, as Shakespeare once almost remarked, you have any SSIAs to shed, prepare to spend them now.

THE threat of nuclear power is looming over this country once again and it is coming, not from an unfriendly country, but from one of our own State agencies.

DOESN'T time fly? Not so long ago, the A&E issue was hardly a little crisis in Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney's eye. A year and a half later, it has grown up to become a fully-blown national emergency.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell must be the first politician ever in the history of the State to have issued an apology with a shelf life shorter than the lifespan of a mayfly, and that’s usually a single day.

WHEN Ryanair makes a threat, it carries it out. Earlier this week it promised to axe some of its nine routes out of Cork Airport if charges went up, and within hours the low-budget airline delivered on its threat.

THE price of a pint, or who did what in Dublin last weekend is the last thing to bother tipplers throughout the country at the moment.

RECORD profits of €1.7 billion last year were not enough for AIB. They want more. Unlike Oliver, they are not on the breadline, being the country’s biggest bank with a 23% increase in profits for the past 12 months.

THE ranks of Fianna Fáil are upset, apparently because Taoiseach Bertie Ahern favoured Mary Wallace over Seán Haughey in the little reshuffle that caused a lot of feathers to be ruffled this week.

IN THE aftermath of the blacklash against the Danish cartoons, most western governments are still tip-toeing around any mention of the issue for fear of drawing the wrath of the Islamic world on them.