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.

LAST Saturday’s attempted murder of Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic Party congresswoman from Arizona, and the shooting dead of six onlookers by deranged gunman Jared Lee Loughner has triggered a fierce debate about the health of American democracy and gun laws. For some in Europe the tragic shootings only confirm their prejudice that America is a violent and uncivilised society.

WHEN I think back to my early teenage years, only a few news stories remain implanted in my memory.

THREE days to go: are you ready yet? Ready for what? For Christmas, of course.