I’m not suggesting we stop the Irish army doing its marvellous peace-keeping work in places like Chad.

IN THEORY, after the past week or so, Brian Lenihan should be in a corner, wearing a dunce’s cap. But Brian Lenihan may have a touch of Bertie’s Teflon, because, for some reason, he hasn’t attracted the worst of the odium.

IT’S not just the contents of the budget that have landed the Government in the mire. It’s lack of communications planning.

WOULD I have advised Enda Kenny to take a pay cut, all by his little self? Are you kidding? I’d have stayed a mile away from the suggestion, partly because his colleagues were inevitably going to be asked if they’d do likewise and fail to be thrilled by the possibility, but mainly because I know his wife.

GORDON Brown has one success under his belt. He set out to campaign, on Saturday, at the emergency meeting of leaders of the biggest EU economies, for a support plan to shove under small businesses like a sheepskin, so they wouldn’t get bedsores as a result of inactivity during the recession.

IT MADE headlines, but last week’s official permission for us to use the R word and describe Ireland as being in recession wasn’t really necessary, for some of us.

All politicians are losers. Who, other than a born loser, would go into a business where everybody insults you, every journalist tells you what to do, (based on no personal experience whatever) and gloats when you fail to do it, make a mistake, get fat or are clocked speeding?

SPEAKING at two public sector conferences last week, I was struck by a palpable wave of incoming nostalgia. It was like being at an emigrant wake. All present had the sense of saying goodbye — to each other and to the possibility of a similar conference next year.

The man with the sandbags is one of them. He works for Fingal County Council.

“Oscar Wilde devoured and luxuriated in books. When he was sick and when the prison doors were closed upon him, books were the first things he asked for.He turned to them, too, as he crawled towards death in his final years, for comfort and consolation …"