It was so much easier when you were a kid. Every gift you gave your mother at Christmas was the perfect gift. Whatever tacky, made in Taiwan, plastic ornament you gave her brought a beaming smile to her face. The Bet Lynch dangling "gold" earrings you gave her when you were eight, she wore with pride all through Christmas day. Even when her earlobes turned green, she persevered and insisted they were just what she would have chosen for herself.
300 people will spend the festive season on the street, many others cannot afford Christmas and the Government has failed to make any real dent in housing waiting lists, writes Maev-Ann Wren
Some 200 people will be sleeping rough on Dublin streets this Christmas and a further 100 will be out in the cold across the country, according to the Simon Communities of Ireland. This year organisations working with the homeless are particularly concerned for their health and well-being following recent forecasts of severe weather.
Our Cara is dead. In the midst of the frenzy of meetings with governments and others, and endless flights across the Irish Sea, Cara Adams, a 10-year-old Rottweiler and a cherished member of our family, died.
It has been well-signalled for some years now that care of the aged is going to be one of the most pressing, and most expensive, problems to confront us in the future.
The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, éamon ó Cuív, has signed an order preventing the use of English-language or anglicised versions of place names in the Gaeltacht. The law is to come into force next March.
I was once briefly employed on the confused periphery of an odd Euro-pudding-esque Channel 4 film, the plot of which presumably made sense to somebody but not to me or, I suspect, to many reviewers because when I spied a copy of it years later in a video store, the only quote they could muster for the cover read "Deserves an Oscar for best use of snow."
It's strange how many things, aimed ostensibly at children, seem to creep out such a big proportion of adults. Clowns, for example, are considered pretty unnerving by many people, despite the fact that they're meant to be figures of fun for kids. The medieval harlequin is damn scary, with its manic grin and crazy hat. And marionettes can make the skin crawl, all jerky movements and ugly, exaggerated features.
Falluja has been a test of the media's independence and honesty. With sad predictability, most outlets have dismally failed.
Conor Brady contrasts coverage of two recent murders of women in Ireland and finds a revealing case study that does us little enough credit
The USA is a complex country with many contradictions. How could it be otherwise? In other land masses as vast as this regional or national rivalries are taken for granted. But here despite ethnic or racial background, all share a common nationality – one flag – one President – one United States.