Time is running out but history marches on regardless

IT is just as well that former IRA commander Martin McGuinness has deigned to grant Queen Elizabeth II an audience because time is running out — officially (though, perhaps not “provisionally”).

Scientists claim universal forces are slowing time, so it will eventually cease. That this revolutionary theory comes from Spanish researchers is wonderfully, well, timely, since that country’s slow-motion bailout disaster is again exposing the tortuously snail’s-pace response of EU leaders to the euro crisis.

Given that Italian premier Mario Monti has warned that we have “one week to save the eurozone” — which The Guardian, one of the world’s most respected newspapers and not given to hysteria, interpreted as meaning an “apocalyptic death spiral” is looming — time is of the essence.