Previous Day
Poor scrutiny and the Finance Bill
THE OIREACHTAS debates and passes the annual Finance Bill to give legal effect to the tax proposals the Minister for Finance outlines in his Budget statement. p
Mr Darling's budget
'TURBULENCE IN global financial markets, which started in the American mortgage market, has affected all economies from the United States, to Asia as well as Europe." Alisdair Darling's observation about US economic prospects in yesterday's UK budget speech was intended to exculpate him from charges of caution and narrow options but is surely well taken. p
Opinion
Paisley's departure will enhance DUP prospects
The DUP now has an opportunity to attract unionists who would never have voted for Paisley, writes David Adams . pWall Street celebrates as Eliot Spitzer's crusade comes crashing down
ANALYSIS: There will be few tears shed in corporate America for Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace, writes Conor O'Clery . pRockets not settlements the real obstacle to Middle East peace
OPINION: Palestinian protests about Israeli West Bank settlements are a red herring as the real aggression is the rockets of Hamas, writes Seán Gannon . pFailure of vision and strategy causing cost overruns
A World Bank management tool could ensure better value for money in government projects, writes Michael Casey . pFairness and balance should be restored for Lisbon poll
OPINION: The role assigned to the Referendum Commission in the wake of the 1995 Supreme Court judgment has been seriously weakened, writes Patricia McKenna . pIt is time we cleaned up our linguistic environment
OPINION: The F-word was once reserved for special occasions, but it has now been reduced to the status of a punctuation mark in everyday speech, writes Deaglán De Bréadún . pThe youth of today are like, y'know, totally connected
IT IS unbearably bleak as winter lingers and a cold wind blows and the people on the obituary page seem better looking than yourself and your prostate feels like a hockey puck and you walk around with your wallet and car keys looking for your wallet and car keys and you read an article about bipolar disorder and think, "Hey, that's me," and so in desperation I flew out to San Francisco for a few days, where the winter rains had stopped and the city was bathed in Mediterranean light and everyone seemed very buoyant, as if the miasma was gone and the halcyon days were back, and suddenly I felt 30 again. Garrison Keillor writes. p
An Irishman's Diary
It must be folk memory of epidemics past that compels us, whenever someone in the vicinity sneezes, to say "God bless you!" or "Gesundheit!", writes Frank McNally . p
