A new defensiveness about employment is changing the way America looks at jobs, illegals, and outsourcing overseas.

He regaled me with his miseries for half the journey, did the taxi man.

MAKING a will is a socially approved of activity like taking exercise. I’m all for it. For other people. It may be irrational to believe that taking exercise or writing a will would kill you, but what about Jim Fixx, I ask you?

Because of the times we’re in, when we heard the company next door was moving, we assumed the worst. In fact, the reason is the best: they’re moving to bigger premises because they’re doing fine, thank you very much.

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.