Opinion

• Ireland's squeezed middle OPINION: IRELAND IS now four years into the deepest economic downturn in modern times. The Government cannot finance itself without reliance on official lenders, the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• Misuse of political labels can lead to bad politics ANALYSIS: IN THE course of taking a swipe at Joe Higgins in the Dáil during the week, Enda Kenny asked how people who claimed to be socialists could be opposed to a property tax. Labour TD Emmet Stagg nipped in to dub the far-left critics of the Coalition “tea party socialists”.
• It's not just the economy, stupid WORLDVIEW: AS POLITICAL cliches go, it’s not quite as tiresome as “events, dear boy, events”, nor as trite as “all politics is local”, but few political slogans in recent years have been at once as persuasive and misleading as “it’s the economy, stupid”.
• Martin fails to appreciate risk in treaty referendum THERE ARE too few occasions nowadays where politicians make the time and the effort to set out a detailed and comprehensive exposition of their analysis and views on a political issue.
• Sexual abuse would still exist without church MARIE COLLINS made news all around the world this past week. Her passionate and graphic description of what it is like to be abused by a priest, and then to find religious authorities dismissive and obstructive when she revealed the crime, seems to have stunned some bishops into finally understanding the depth of harm caused by sexual abuse.
• Right-wingers should learn to use their intelligence RIGHT-WINGERS ARE stupid and prejudiced. They eat their own young, worship pigs’ heads and think The Da Vinci Code is literature.
• This Week They Said I know we’re a lot better than that. – Irish rugby coach Declan Kidney after last Sunday’s loss to Wales in Dublin
• February 11th, 1977 FROM THE ARCHIVES: The hoary old idea of legalising poitín as a means of saving the west economically takes off every now and then, with some beneficial effects, according to this report by Michael Finlan. - JOE JOYCE
  

An Irishmans Diary

• An Irishman's Diary THE COMMONWEALTH of Massachusetts has given us some famous political phrases in its time, none more so than a truism credited to the late congressman Tipp O’Neill.
• Corrections & Clarifications A report in last Wednesday’s edition stated that the decision of Senator Eamonn Coghlan to join Fine Gael would bring the party’s strength in Seanad Éireann up to 21 and reduce the number of Independents to 10. In fact, Fine Gael will have 20 Senators and there will be 11 Independents.