IT SEEMS like the Celtic Tiger has fled and we are floundering in tiger crap. Things are obviously going to get much worse in coming months, especially as the Government appears to have completely lost the plot in so many matters.

IN preparing a timeline for the publication of 1978 State papers, I looked at the front page of the daily newspaper for every day of the year.

NINE years ago, on December 22, 1999, I said here that the “economy is booming and this country will be enjoying unprecedented prosperity at the start of the new century.

CONOR Cruise O’Brien would probably have been proud to think that his passing this week would mark the end of an era.

NEXT week marks 90 years since the election of the first Irish woman to parliament — Countess Constance Markievicz.

ROY KEANE has quit Sunderland and there was a torrent of abuse that he had walked out again, as he had walked out on Mick McCarthy.

While Mary Harney’s hairdo is attracting the spotlight, the more serious question about the gift of the glass barometer to Mary Hanafin is being largely ignored...

THERE was a time when it was trendy for parents to wish for a son to be a priest. But now it seems ambitious parents want their son to become a doctor, which is seen as both a prestigious and a lucrative position.

THE momentous events in the United States and the outrage in Limerick have been major distractions from our economic plight, but we are going to have to face it, and the sooner the better. A number of political commentators have called for a new Tallaght Strategy.

LAST Tuesday I just happened to put on a recording of Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome,” and suddenly I thought of the poignancy of the day.