Though normally a staple of the holiday TV schedules, none of the major TV networks ran either the 1981 or the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans this year. Perhaps this explains why two of the biggest egos in the Cabinet have decided to do their own re-enactment of the movie and go to

Next Tuesday Ireland assumes the rotating Presidency of the EU Council. Not only does this mean EU Ministerial meetings being hosted here both, it also means six months of unfettered spinning from the government’s handlers. As we saw from the visits of the Queen and President Obama during this government’s first year in office, both

The Coalition provides obvious candidates for the roles of Scrooge, Heep and Micawber. No matter what age you are, you reach a point around the second or third week of December when the Christmas break cannot come soon enough. This can be due to either a sense of over-excitement or anticipation, or a weariness due

During the June 1983 general election campaign, before he became leader of the British Labour party, Neil Kinnock was participating in a TV debate when the issue of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership during the Falklands war arose. Kinnock was arguing that her arrogance should not be mistaken for strength, when a heckler from the studio audience

One way of assessing what impact the Budget announced last Wednesday might have on the country is to look back and see what last year’s budget had. Last year, the Minister for Finance said: “The core [mission] of this Government is to get Ireland working again.” So, measured up against the yardstick the Government set

WE ARE all familiar with the concept of the people becoming exasperated with their government. We have seen it happen here and even more dramatically across Europe. The government gets it wrong, causes hardship for its people and they in turn lose faith and confidence in the administration of the day and the permanent bureaucracy.

There is a form of deductive reasoning called a syllogism. In essence, it consists of deriving a conclusion from two related statements of fact. A classic example is: all mammals are warm-blooded. All dogs are mammals, therefore all dogs are warm- blooded. But there are false syllogisms too, such as: all runners sweat, you are

If there was a prize for hardest working part of government it would undoubtedly go the Taoiseach’s image-makers. Their most recent achievements have been impressive: Enda’s face on the cover of the European edition of Time magazine and his naming as European of the Year by the German Magazine Publishers’ Association. With the Taoiseach’s biography

‘IN this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” So said the American founding father, Benjamin Franklin. Clearly he reckoned without the members of this Government. With the Budget barely two months away we are seeing another absolute certainty in Irish political life: kite flying from Government ministers. Despite protestations

Some months ago here I outlined how ministers in this Government can be divided into three distinct categories: the high=flyers, the passengers and the weak links. Leaving aside the temptation to label them all as passengers following their mass exodus to Brussels, the events of the days before and after that modern-day flight of the