Every city has a few iconic images that identify it: The GPO in Dublin, the salmon weir in Galway, Thomond Park in Limerick.

It’s taken almost 40 years but Conor Cruise O’Brien’s 1982 phrase — GUBU — has at long last been found wanting.

It would be hard not to be moved by the devastation of members of all three families directly affected by the verdict in the case of the murder of Ana Kriegel, yet the prevailing sympathy must go first and foremost to the victim herself, and to her parents.

As if mankind’s effects on the planet and the natural world was not profound enough, it now emerges that our noisy presence is disturbing bird life. New research from Queen’s University Belfast shows manmade sounds mask signals between birds, hampering their ability to communicate with each other through song.

If Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has not asked himself the what-am-I-doing-here question, this week’s report from the Policing Authority may move it from his ‘possible’ file to his ‘pressing’ file. The authority found a number of senior officers were unfamiliar with the policing plans for their areas. How can this be? The report also found that some managers were committed to these reforms, which raises another unpalatable question: Why is this two-tier response tolerated?

Though it always will be with us, history does not force itself into our everyday consciousness, even if it irrevocably shapes attitudes. It is human that many positions are inherited rather than reached. Tribal cultures and communal mythologies prevail. Consensus clings. Some days history is like distant thunder, barely perceptible, not that proximate.

The very different realities facing the world’s population are framed in many ways.

Government efforts to resolve the housing crisis remain unequal to the great challenge so solutions, or at least part of the solution, must come from outside of Official Ireland.

Though it’s almost a quarter of a century since the then Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams offered his chilling and revealing reassurance to his constituency — “they haven’t gone away, you know” — that reality endures, even if those who would undermine this democracy have moved on from the old Sinn Féin/IRA axis and style themselves differently.

One of the real threats to the stability and prosperity made possible by democracy is the powerlessness of so many people, who still, despite disappointment after disappointment, believe in that process. That feeling of alienation was exploited by the Brexit campaign, which called it, with some justification, the democratic deficit. The EU’s wiser champions recognise the issue, but it is not the only entity that must face that accusation.

Our record on climate-change targets is so dismal that we must accept bad-neighbour accusations from societies that take environmental responsibilities seriously. We’ve hardly met one and are unlikely to meet any in the immediate future. That same accusation applies to protecting water quality.

In Finland, the country’s top 10,000 or so earners’ tax bill is published each year. Known as “national envy day”, this openness seems a very practical commitment to the idea of transparency — and civic morality.

“THERE is,” as Shakespeare put it, “ a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

Society shows its support for vulnerable people in many ways. 

When the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, on June 23, it provoked a tsunami of self-centred comment on this side of the water. Would it be economically disastrous for Ireland or would it bring huge opportunities for our financial services market?

THE phrase, attributed to the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, “give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man” points to the power of education and focussed early-life formation. 

SOME time ago, well before this year’s election, when the leadership of Fianna Fáil was questioned in a way it might not be today, party venerable Willie O’Dea admitted that when he looked around the table at a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting he did not see a messiah. 

A newspaper published by China's official news agency has said the new president of rival Taiwan is more "extreme" in her politics because she is unmarried and lacks the emotional balance provided by romantic and family life.

The news that the European Commission is to investigate what are described as tax breaks for multi nationals operating in Ireland will provoke some concern.

We in Ireland are rarely found wanting in acknowledging those moments in history that have shaped our past. Only this week we have been commemorating the 98th anniversary of the Easter Rising and the 1,000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf.