AN Irish Press reporter was watching a police water cannon vehicle moving into position. He had never seen one in action before.

SHOULD anyone care if people were stupid enough to pay inflated prices for property in recent years? Sure, this provided employment in the construction industry and that provided extra tax revenue.

THE Progressive Democrats were suggesting this week that they are going to fold up their tent and fade away.

Charlie McCreevy had the courage to move a ‘no confidence’ motion in Charlie Haughey’s leadership in October 1982, but the great majority in the parliamentary party did not have the vision, the guts or the integrity to support his motion, so Haughey survived.

SOME have predicted that Barack Obama could turn out to be another George McGovern.

WITH the growing international tension over Georgia some have been bemoaning the lack of strong statesmen. George W Bush professes to be an ardent admirer of Winston Churchill who was man of the century for a great many people.

FROM some of the early reports from Beijing it was beginning to look like we were going to have to be content that nobody drowned in the pool or got lost on the running track, but then the boxers came to the rescue. Sure we’re famous the world over for fighting.

The gracious way in which Harrington won has further added to his international stature.

IT is probably inevitable that we will be told that the Chinese are exploiting the Olympic Games for their own political purposes, as if the Americans, the Germans, the Russians, the British, or all the others had not done so already.

THE Olympic Games have lost much of their glamour over the drug cheats.