IN On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote about “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”.

IT is cheap and easy to sneer at soccer players, to curl your lip because they are ignorant of Joyce and Shakespeare, to loftily deprecate the vulgarity and the flash and their insane salaries.

I HAVE only met Rebekah Brooks once, in the proper sense. We have fleetingly shaken hands a couple of times at News International receptions at party conferences in Britain which I have blagged my way into as she has glided on to schmooze important political personalities — but that scarcely counts.

Reports into human trafficking typically fail to acknowledge that foreigners who wish to come to work in the EU have very few legal options available, and thus tend to be forced into the shadow economy where they are, indeed, vulnerable to exploitation

STRAW polls would suggest that if Mary McAleese could run again for the Presidency, she would walk it. But the Constitution says presidents can be re-elected “only once”. Thank goodness.

AS the Arab Spring becomes the Arab Summer and with the Middle East set to burst on to our TV screens this weekend with the Irish-owned ship MV Saoirse sailing to join the international flotilla to Gaza, it’s an appropriate time to take stock.

SO An Bord Pleanála has given the go-ahead for the construction of a €460 million, 800-acre “Las Vegas-style” sports and leisure complex in Co Tipperary complete with a 500-bedroom five-star hotel, a 6,000sq m casino, an all-weather racecourse, a greyhound track and a golf course.

BEFORE you fall for the scare about E coli in cucumbers and drive your local vegetable farmer out of business, just consider how insanely wrong the authorities were about so many other predicted apocalypses over the last decade.

AM I the only one who is slightly losing track of the allegations and counter allegations being made at the top of world football?

AS ONE of my Facebook friends aptly put it, now that Queen Elizabeth and President Barack Obama have left our shores we’re back to the French and the Germans dropping in to tell us how to run the economy.