Arguably, it is in its role in the continuing subjugation of women that the media is at its most insidious. By Vincent Browne.

There is more to the publication of the topless photographs of Kate Middleton than the breach of her privacy or the hilarity of a long-time dedicated porn pusher, Richard Desmond, finding a principle here, or Independent News and Media (INM), publisher of the Sunday Independent and the Sunday World, suspending an editor on ethical grounds.

One of the reasons why we are stuck with the same politics and the same old codgers - in spite of ongoing austerity and deepening inequality - is because the Irish left is a joke. By Vincent Browne.

Four years ago this month, Paul Tansey died suddenly while playing tennis with Shane Ross. Paul had been a brilliant economics commentator first with the Irish Times, then with the Sunday Tribune (where I got to know him in the mid-1980s), and finally again with the Irish Times.

If the bishops, after all that has happened, have the bottle to engage in public debate on a moral issue, bring them on. By Vincent Browne.

There is insolence abroad. A malign insolence from a once-powerful quarter, and insolence from a currently powerful quarter that is becoming even more powerful - and probably even more insolent.

If the administration of justice in public is essential to the maintenance of a democratic state, then clearly the stability of the state would be supported by making access to what is happening in courts easier by having cases broadcast on television. By Vincent Browne.

The expectation that the silly season will end abruptly with the trial of Seán FitzPatrick and his co-accused is mistaken.

The political structure in Ireland is an absurdity. In practice, the Oireachtas takes almost no decisions, aside from the Dáil electing a taoiseach. By Vincent Browne.

Shortly after Michael Noonan became Minister for Finance in March 2011, he gave an interview to the Limerick Leader in which he expressed his belief that the minister for finance could defy the taoiseach of the day because the position of minister for finance was mentioned in the Constitution.

In so far as we can imagine what Michael Collins might have wished for, it is likely he would wonder what the struggle for independence was about, since we have given away so much of it, so casually. By Vincent Browne.

As soon as all the Katie euphoria dies down, it will remain business as usual for women's sports. By Vincent Browne.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, said that women's sport was "against the laws of nature", and that "the eternal role of [the] woman in this world is to be a companion of the male and mother of the family, and she should be educated towards those functions".

Given his interference in editorial matters in INM, in contradiction of the principles he himself has enunciated, Denis O’Brien is not a fit person to be allowed control the country’s second most powerful media enterprise. By Vincent Browne. (Updated: Denis O’Brien’s two letters and my response to the first can be read below.)

Seán Quinn is an able, personable fellow - and an exasperating interviewee. By Vincent Browne.

There is a charm about Seán Quinn, and a quiet sense of humour. He is very much in control of himself, but there is an anger there too, which seems to be distorting his judgment, giving rise to a strong sense of victimhood and an impulse to strike back.

On 21 June last I received via email a personal letter from Denis O’Brien, marked “Private and Confidential”. The letter was prompted by a column I had written in the Irish Times on 13 June about an anticipated vote of censure against Mick Wallace TD and by comments I had made on the programme I present for TV3. (The correspondence between us can be viewed here.)