Trying to help my daughter with odd things towards her forthcoming Junior Cert, we calculated the interest on the little savings account I had persuaded her to take with Bank of Ireland. It was 0.04 per cent over the year. "But that's ridiculous and pointless," she said. "Also, don't they lend money at about 10 or 15 per cent?"

The proliferation of CCTV has led some people to fear that we are entering an Orwellian world in which, no matter where you are, Big Brother is watching you. But I think we are far closer to the other side of Orwell's dystopia, where things are the other way round and it is you who is always watching Big Brother! We now live in a world that is similar to that of Winston Smith in this regard: there are fewer and fewer places where you can avoid the numbing, incessant, glare of the screen.

The Irish Traveller Movement is to lodge a complaint with the director general of RTÉ after a debate about Travellers on The Late, Late Show on 17 November. The debate was aired on foot of a new book by Sunday World journalist Eamon Dillon, entitled The Outsiders: Exposing The Secret World Of Irish Travellers, in which he deals specifically with criminals living within the Traveller community.

Éanna Ní Lamhna on the scientific reasons for the change in colour in autumn leaves

Vast majority of private nursing-home reports in 2006 are inconsistent, inadequate and incomplete, despite Leas Cross revelations in 2005. By Sara Burke

Vincent Browne's piece on 'On this day 28 October 1492' (Village 2 November) celebrating – if that's the right word – Columbus Day gives a definite opinion that it was savagery by Europeans that brought about the virtual collapse of the native American populations and culture.

Numerous and widespread, the Great Tit is the largest Irish member of the titmouse family. The common garden species frequently visits bird tables and peanut feeders and will readily use artificial nestboxes; combined with its tame, inquisitive nature and bright colouration, this has served to make it one of our most popular birds.

Éanna Ní Lamhna on the smallest mammal of them all, the ever-hungry pygmy shrew

The Knot is a winter visitor to Ireland, arriving here from its high Arctic breeding grounds from late-August onwards. It can take a bit of practice to separate it from the other small wader species that visit our beaches, estuaries and mudflats, but with experience it becomes quite distinctive.

I write into you again in sheer frustration at the waste of money being spent in Clondalkin lately. Over the last couple of years we have seen the so-called 'Towers' on New Road outside Dunnes Stores and the mess near Tully's Castle. These were built to highlight the entrances to the old village and then they were all taken down again except the one at Tully's Castle. The council, I am led to believe, had to spend this money or it would go back into general funds. Now this weekend they are tearing up Tower Road, which was re-surfaced lately.