THERE is one alleged problem, nay crisis, featured prominently in both the Fine Gael and Labour manifestos but there is no mention in the Programme for Government.

THE fact that I was in Japan the week before last Friday’s tsunami has given the tragedy an extra poignancy for me. How many of those people I was milling around with in Tokyo have lost relatives or their livelihoods, I can’t help but wonder?

Few in the Arab world today, unlike in Kosovo, for example, harbour many illusions about Western assistance. As for suggestions that the West somehow arm the rebels, isn’t that what happened with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and which led to Taliban rule in the first place?

AM I the only one who finds Enda Kenny just a little perplexing?

IT is too early to say we are witnessing the much-vaunted Arab Spring in the Middle East. The removal of Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abadine Ben Ali from power cannot be said to symbolise victories for democracy in Egypt, at least not at this stage. Instead, what we have seen are popular coups.

YOU thought Fianna Fáil weren’t listening. You were wrong. Back in 2007 — two weeks before the last general election — I wrote, “Charles Haughey was on to something when he claimed election manifestos had a ‘Marxian ring about them’.

WATCHING pictures on television of a dictator getting his ass whipped — especially when he is one who has been raping his country’s finances for 30 years — is always a visceral pleasure.

IF the number of Facebook friends were any way of assessing popularity — which they’re not — Micheál Martin would be the leader of Fianna Fáil by close of play today.

I KNOW I am probably in a minority of one but, even if we took Danny Boyle’s intended message at face value, there was something rather sickening about the way he lauded the resilience of his subjects in Slumdog Millionaire. It tended to imply that there is something honourable about being downtrodden.