THE publication of Albert Reynolds’s autobiography revives memories of an interesting and exciting period.

WATCHING this week’s RTÉ programme on the beginning of the Troubles in 1969, I was struck by the similarity of what happened then and what has been happening in the past year.

TED KENNEDY was both the most loved and one of most hated and divisive politicians in the United States. Republicans frequently depicted him as the embodiment of evil and amorality, as well as a relic of the self-indulgent liberalism of the 1960s.

In some respects we have aped the worst of America.

RECENTLY in this column, I wrote about the stupidity and futility of spending millions on a drug strategy that has failed so miserably elsewhere, not just over years, but over decades.

SURELY the worst kind of stupidity is the failure to learn from mistakes. Yet we persist in making the same ones. Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

IRELAND has agreed to take two of the prisoners from the American concentration camp at Guantanamo, Cuba because they cannot go back to their home country, Uzbekistan. The Americans would like us to think they have jailed only crazed Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo, but people should ask who were held there.

PHARMACIES have proliferated in recent years and there are many stories about exorbitant prices being paid for medication. It has all been part of Rip-off Ireland.

LIES, damn lies and statistics have long been regarded as the great falsities, but one might also add bureaucrats distorting the national interest in their own personal interest. There was some surprise this week that the Government published the report of An Bord Snip Nua.

LAST Friday three clean-cut young American backpackers arrived at Dublin airport from Texas. They were setting out on the first international leg of a yearlong trip around Europe.