The European expenses scandal is just symptomatic of a much wider malaise, of course. For 14 years, the EU’s own auditors have refused to sign off on the accounts, so uncertain are they about their reliability. So why, having listed just some of the EU’s many obvious flaws, should you make the effort on Friday?

There is a crucial difference between talking to terrorists who are on the crest of wave, who believe they have momentum on their side, and those who have been made to believe their strategic commitment to violence is hindering their political aims

Germany, the traditional engine of the European economy, is contracting more than even Italy, never the healthiest of plants at the best of times. The banking bailouts are largely Anglophone phenomena but the Eurozone has been hit harder by the global downturn. Japan’s industrial production is down severely too

Yes, there is public feeling about the Palestinians and their rotten deal. I’ve never heard Chechnya being discussed on the DART, whereas I have heard Israel being trashed on buses as well as at smart dinner parties. Besides, who’s ever heard of a “Sri Lanka out of Tamil Eelam” march through Cork or calls for a boycott of Russia?

If Jesus were in Ireland today, under the new law, wouldn’t he be one of its first victims, held in Portlaoise, perhaps, while lawyers debated whether he should be deported to Israel, or the Palestinian Authority, or tried here? Muslims might find their mosques under close inspection, too

The very need to popularise the concept of a pandemic reflects our exhaustion with mere epidemics, be they of obesity, bullying or binge-drinking. A new term is required to achieve the level of anxiety that the doom-mongers seek to foster around flu

The trouble with the web — apart from it being home to all sorts of bigotry, hatred and aggression — is that you have to pan through a lot of tedious material to find the interesting nuggets. Anyone can blog, true enough, but the flipside of being free is being free to be boring. Who cares what anyone else had for breakfast?

WITH his slim features, impeccable manners and winning smile, 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva appeared like a boy sent to do a man’s job. The Thai prime minister was passing through Europe last month trying to reassure international investors and I was asked along to hear him speak.

Out of a 7,500-word speech just 300 precious words were devoted to restoring competitiveness. The language was woolly in the extreme. Everything is hedged around by phrases like “where we can” and “with due consideration”

In his actions to date, though, President Obama is acting much more like Senator Obama, he with the spectacularly left-wing voting record, than like Candidate Obama, the classical centrist he portrayed himself as once Hillary had been despatched