A CONCISE version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was about to be finalised when somebody noticed a howler. The encyclopaedia wrongly suggested that our civil war of 1922-23 was fought between the Catholics of the south and the Protestants of the North.

THE global warming crisis is now being rebranded as a climate change crisis because it seems that instead of getting warmer, we may actually be getting colder.

WITH Northern Ireland now being jolted by a couple of sex scandals, maybe we should ask why our politics have remained strangely free of such scandals? The whole thing undoubtedly has a lot to do with hypocrisy.

LATELY the media has been the object of considerable criticism, founded and unfounded, whether in relation to Brian Lenihan’s illness, Noel Dempsey’s holiday or the Government’s appalling lack of leadership.

THERE was an amazing interview during the week on RTÉ in relation to the final decommissioning of weapons by the UDA. It seemed strange to hear Frankie Gallagher of the Ulster Political Research Group speak in such complimentary terms about the help received in Dublin.

THE visit of Pope John Paul II was undoubtedly the most popular event that ever took place in this country. It was witnessed in person by more people than the visit of President John F Kennedy in 1963 or President Bill Clinton in 1995. Yet strangely, the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy treated Taoiseach Jack Lynch and his government with a degree of disdain.

LAST week was the 30th anniversary of Charlie Haughey’s election as Taoiseach for the first time, but the occasion seemed to pass without notice in the media. Maybe it is a measure of how low he has descended in the eyes of the public. Although he had always been acutely conscious of carving out a place in history for himself, it seems his reputation is now in tatters.

WHILE at university in Texas during the mid-1960s and early 1970s there was very little news about Ireland either on television or in the newspapers.

ELSEWHERE in today’s paper (News Analysis, page 17) I have reviewed Michael Clemenger’s book Holy Terrors, dealing with life in the industrial school in Tralee in the late1950s and early 1960s. It evoked many memories for me, having grown up within a mile of the school.

FREE Education for Everyone, with the inapt acronym FEE, organised up to 1,000 student signatures in protest against the appointment of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern as a visiting professor at NUI Maynooth (NUIM). They called on the college authorities to suspend the appointment, at least until after the publication of the Mahon tribunal report.