OUR new Governor General, Olli Rehn, is coming to town. Unlike Santa Clause, he is carrying a sackful of bad news only. We, apparently, have been really naughty boys and girls.

LABOUR party leader Eamon Gilmore is full of joy at the prospect of being our next Taoiseach.

I WONDER if I and 14 other citizens ran Brian Cowen over in a bus, would we be able to declare a “systemic failure”?

WESTERN fans (don’t switch over) will remember the scene from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly where the character Tuco is in his bath and an old adversary comes to kill him. The hapless assailant begins a monologue about how long he’s waited to kill Tuco. As he reaches the crescendo of his speech, Tuco shoots him with a concealed gun and utters the immortal line: “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk”.

THE infamous “big lie” quote from Joseph Goebbels had a haunting resonance in Ireland on March 30, 2010 – a day that will live in infamy.

IS it possible Trevor Sargent is at the receiving end of a ‘touché’ knife in the back after what happened to Willie O’Dea?

GREECE is the word that should rightly haunt this country. Billy Connolly tells a joke about a man on the African savannah tying his trainer laces.

IN the British House of Commons in 1906, during an exchange evocative of the age, Winston Churchill devised the term “terminological inexactitudes” as a means of circumventing the British parliamentary injunction against accusing an MP of lying.

THIS state’s de facto invitation to young trades people and graduates to emigrate is clearly the cruellest cut of all in the budget.

I AM a public sector worker and trade union member who will not be striking on November 24 or anytime soon.

THE media’s role in softening up the public sector and those on welfare has been a disgrace. The Comptroller and Auditor General, and the Central Statistics Office are duty-bound to follow political dictates, but the media are joining the fray with one-eyed abandon.