Because of climate change, sea levels are set to rise.

IT’S CERTAINLY without precedent. Indeed, it’s hard to believe. But it’s a fact. As far as American media is concerned, the valedictory tour of Europe by President George W Bush is of little or no interest compared with Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

She made herself sound like someone going for a middle management post in a manufacturing plant, rather than the aspirant leader of the United States of America.

IT HAS its competitors, but the single most overused word in the lexicon at the moment is “passion”.

COME ON, as Hillary would say, let’s get real here. Nobody was surprised the Taoiseach knew that word and could use it.

In my time, I’ve been asked by one politician to deliver messages to other politicians as varied as ‘Your deodorant, assuming you’ve encountered the concept, isn’t working’ and ‘If you think nobody has spotted you playing offside with yer wan, you’re mistaken.’

WE now have a three-tier ministerial system. At the bottom are the soon-to -be-announced ministers of state. At the top are finance, health, education, justice and transport. In the middle are the others, widely interpreted, since Brian Cowen announced his cabinet, as of minor importance, offering damn-all potential advancement to their holders, and awarded either as punishments or consolation prizes.

YOU only have to listen to Hillary Clinton rubbishing Obama’s statement about the unemployed, dispossessed and generally miserable tending to get consolation from their churches and their guns, to understand that you never, ever insult the voters. They are infinitely wise, thoughtful and responsible. OK? OK.

JOHN PRESCOTT, the former deputy leader of the British Labour party, was defined for a time in the public mind by the day he punched a protester at an election rally.

IF YOU’RE going to set fire to your house, you shouldn’t do it in the middle of the Manchester United v Blackburn match. Trust me on this. I did it, this weekend. And I blame Dick Roche.