Housing, and specifically measures to boost the provision of social housing, has been a key factor in the final stages of putting a new national partnership agreement together. The spiralling cost of housing has put house ownership out of the reach of thousands of people on average wages, leaving such people at the mercy of greed-inspired private landlord renters or waiting hopelessly on a growing local authority housing list.
A friend, a Clareman and a New York-based professor, tells the following story: just two weeks ago he arrived in Florence in charge of a number of American college students on an extended academic lark. The professor is in his mid-30s, tall, shy, smart, charming, the sort of man who has his finger on the pulse of what's going on around him. But he also happens to be a tad absent-minded, not the sort who has yet bowed down to the intricacies of bureaucracy. Scattered, or jetlagged, or both, he had to visit the local Italian labour authorities in order to register.
Teenage rebels ain't what they used to be. By applying a victim template to the recent fuss about the boys barred from sitting their Junior Cert because their hair was too short, the media undermined both authority and rebellion – the latter because it is impossible to be at once a rebel and a victim. The treatment of the story was a reversal of what might have been expected a generation ago, when, if they had become involved at all, the media would have sided with the Tullamore headmaster.
Meet Tony. Tony operates on 86th Street between Park and Madison in New York. His real name is Carlos, but he changes it when he gets south of Spanish Harlem on his way to work. It's easier that way, smoother, more straightforward. It's got an easy ring to it. It trips off the tongue. Tony. As if his name alone acknowledges the fact that he becomes someone else everyday, refined, discreet, proper.
Channel 4's trickery fails to impress, while RTÉ's retrospective on Ireland's economic boom is a timely revisit of old ground. By Dermot Bolger
On Friday (2 June) Pat Kenny accounted on his programme he was going to be away for the remainder of June, July and August. Seemingly, the start of the exodus from RTÉ of the main presenters, with changes to the schedules and formats. How anyone ever agreed to allow presenters the same time off work as teachers enjoy (hardly a coincidence!) is incomprehensible. What is the rationale for this?
Although he has found a new home at the Irish Independent, Kevin Myers' output is largely unchanged from his days in the Irish Times. Roughly half of his columns fall under the category of "fanciful frolics". These pieces are intended to be humourous, although the humour is spoiled by Myers' relentless desire to show off his classical education and his obsession with men in uniform and rugby scrums.
The ugly word "paroxysm" springs to mind for the recent understandable, but largely hysterical, always disproportionate and sometimes objectionable, media reaction to the legal debacle over "unlawful carnal knowledge".
Alastair Campbell famously decreed that if a government politician featured in negative frontpage stories for more than a week, the greater good of government required him to walk the plank, regardless of the facts. Michael McDowell is now well past that line.
Despite a tumult of commentary demanding his resignation, the minister insists he has acted on the statutory rape issue with "good authority and courage" and time will vindicate his actions. He says he will not resign and you just know it is true. By John Waters
Martin McGuinness is forever getting invited to all kinds of events. Dinner parties, garden fêtes, school openings, weddings, farmers' markets, art exhibitions, solemn novenas, Shawaddywaddy concerts, christenings, fly-fishing contests, book launches, organic-baking promos, musical gigs of all kinds. Me? I rarely get invited to anything. Well that's not strictly true. I do get invited to things. But I never get invited to the kind of things Martin gets invited to. You know what I mean? I mean the type of thing you might just go to and enjoy?