Page 2 - Martina Devlin News Today

At the end of his magnum opus Candide, the 18th century French writer and philosopher Voltaire advises: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin (one must cultivate one’s garden).” This urges practicality – look to the business in front of your eyes – but also points to the future, with work done in the present anticipating dividends yet to come.

When taoiseach-desig­nate Simon Harris takes office next week, his to-do list will be daunting. Not as ­daunting as the 12 Labours of Hercules (which included capturing Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld), but by any standards demanding.

KILMORE

The notion that “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” is an intriguing one. It’s particularly apt for the short story format — reliant on what’s implied rather than said to convey an essential truth.

No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. The Irish State’s €800m investment in Northern infrastructure and capital projects is an example of constructive, affirmative and forward-thinking politics.

In my family circle, there is a mixum-gatherum of interdependent relationships. We have single parents, children raised by one biological parent plus partner, children reared by grandparents and step-grandparents, blended families, couples (both same-sex and heterosexual) without children, and parents plus children where some adults are married and others are not.

Humans have been burning things for millennia. Books were set on fire to control dissenting voices; the property of authority figures was set ablaze in resistance to their laws; streets and communities were burned out as an act of war or intimidation; and individual people were ceremonially reduced to ashes because of religious differences.

An incoming call lit up on my phone from an unfamiliar number, an Irish mobile. I answered – and found myself caught up in a sophisticated and plausible scam designed to empty my bank accounts and plunder my contacts, targeting everyone on that list.

There’s a reason why the exodus story in the Old Testament remains inspiring – the account of an enslaved people’s liberation from Egypt, led by Moses, is threaded with hope and redemption.

Ministerial denials are coming fast and furious, but ministerial denials cut no ice. They fail the duck test: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Cabinet member after cabinet member is rejecting suggestions that the Government has flinched, buckled and withdrawn in the face of local objections to male international protection applicants being housed in their midst.