JUST when you thought the tide was turning and right-wing fanaticism was in retreat, the Argentines elect a chainsaw-wielding president, the Dutch vote for a right-wing racist, and the centre of Dublin goes up in flames when a mob takes to the streets.

As I sit on the Enterprise with my earphones plugged into RTÉ's Claire Byrne show, my mind is bombarded with an apocalyptic and dystopian Dublin smouldering in smoke and ash; the Liffey flowing with tears as Parnell, perched over the devastation, calls halt on the march of the rabble below.

Ignore the hype, the DUP is not about to split in two.

WE are wintering now. The last wisps of autumn’s beauty linger on leafy avenues.

OF all the chores in a house with a young family, ironing is the one I dislike least.

WITHOLDING levelling up funds from Northern Ireland is so blatantly an up yours to the DUP that its obviousness must be intentional.

IF there is one thing we do not need right now, it is another report on education.

I've just printed out a German homework for my 16-year-old son.

IN an uncanny way the DUP mirrors the Conservative party with which the DUP believed it had a close relationship since 2010.

THE fevered pace of events right now means that in the gap between writing this, on Wednesday afternoon, and it being published, on Friday morning, everything could have changed.

MY wife has broken a rib falling over at the Dundonald ice bowl – such a 1980s injury, like burning your hand on a Breville sandwich toaster.

YOU have to wonder what “witty put-downs and clever insults” might be doing the rounds in DUP circles this week as the party looks set to ready itself to go back into Stormont, if speculation is to be believed.

IN July 1966 The Observer newspaper warned the British prime minister Harold Wilson, whom the paper supported at the time, about his plan for a pay freeze to curb inflation.