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.

PUBLIC opinion polls in the United States seem to suggest it is all over bar the shouting. If Barack Obama does not win on Tuesday, it will be the biggest surprise since Harry Truman retained the Presidency exactly 60 years tomorrow.

DURING the week Bertie Ahern fell down a stairs and broke his leg. But the media was so preoccupied it hardly warranted a mention. The country has been reeling since the budget. Is that what happened to Bertie?

It was Samuel Johnson who famously proclaimed in 1775 that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.

Is it naive to think that there were only problems in Donegal?