Public funding is addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms are painful. But everyone would gain from a system that puts students first so that university becomes an education again, not merely something to fill three years of your life. The model to strive for is varied institutions charging varied fees

THE budget is still nearly three weeks away and speculation is already mounting about the Government’s ability to get it through the Dáil. Against all expectations when this government was formed, the Greens have developed a limpet-like grip on power. Only grim death will separate them from ministerial office, it seems.

IT SAYS something about the news values of many of the London-based tabloids that on Monday they splashed the latest twist in the Jade Goody saga as their main front page lead, not the murders of the two soldiers in Antrim.

SO the Vatican has rejected Bishop Richard Williamson’s carefully worded half-apology for his remarks about the Holocaust. About time, too. He only said sorry for the “distress caused” but there is no sign he has revised his view that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were a Jewish invention. Williamson hasn’t had a change of heart; that much is clear.

IN different times, “nationalise the banks” would be written off as yet another childish far-left slogan. Now, though, David Begg, the president of the ICTU, is saying nationalisation is as good as inevitable within three months, claiming the recapitalisation of the Bank of Ireland and AIB will fail. A usually responsible trade unionist, he is neither far left nor childish, so his views deserve to be treated seriously.

THINGS are bad for Fianna Fáil: on that much the opinion polls are agreed. But are they really behind Labour? Are the Greens going down with them, or holding up well? That’s opinion polls for you: they summarise popular views on a particular day or couple of days.

AMID the encircling gloom, it was a story to melt even the hardest heart: octuplets, six boys and two girls, delivered alive and well. Isn’t Mother Nature a wonderful thing, we thought? And well done the doctors, midwives and nurses for helping them all into this world safely.

IF NICENESS had anything to do with it, George Mitchell will pull off Middle Eastern peace by Easter.

To be young and realise you were gay in 1970s America — or 1980s Ireland — was to await an adulthood encumbered with dim career prospects, fake wedding rings and darkened bar windows. No one person could change all that, and not all the changes are complete, here or in America.

GROUCHO Marx famously sent the Friars’ Club a telegram: “Please accept my resignation. I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”