FORMER Taoiseach Jack Lynch was, as this newspaper editorialised upon his death, “a charismatic leader, political icon and statesman”.

YOU’VE heard it a hundred times: we’re losing sight of what Christmas is really all about.

GOD bless us every one this Christmas. We have much to be grateful for.

THE good news is that Europe’s leaders have made the issue of jobs their top priority as they gather in Brussels tomorrow.

NEXT weekend marks the 90th anniversary of the 1918 general election, the last British election in which the people of the 26 Counties participated.

RUDYARD Kipling wrote: “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Well, never say never, Rudyard.

WHAT with emails, texts, mobile phones and Facebook, when the postman arrives it’s almost always to deliver us a bill or yet more junk mail.

IN politics, it is better to be lucky than to be good. Barack Obama ran a smart, disciplined, well-funded campaign.

IF he had called off his hunger strike, Bobby Sands would be 54 and still, very possibly, the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

MONDAY evening and it was off to an amateur production of The Glass Menagerie; strangely appropriate it seemed too in current circumstances.