“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
This is one of the few Bible parables I remember from school. The image jumped – or rather waddled – out of the page at me.
In the 1950s and 1960s, black Americans moved into the middle classes at a rate not experienced before or since. When seen though the lens of 1967, it would have been logical to foresee the American black future as a middle-class one, as represented by The Cosby Show, Toni Morrison and Condoleezza Rice. Yet it did not turn out like that.
Brian Cowen would look great with a soft perm, don’t you think? He would cut a dash in a pair of bottle green, high-waist parallels or snugly fitted into a Bay City Rollers bomber jacket.
In 1990, the Central Bank’s entire economic fraternity crammed into a small office and giddily jotted down figures to assess the impact of the various numbers pronounced by the minister for finance.
When you touch down in Dublin after your winter break in the sun, the purchasing power of your euro drops considerably. What happens to debase the currency once you pass passport controls at Dublin, Cork or Shannon?
Last week, Minister for Social and Family Affairs Seamus Brennan was in Britain advising some of the 30,000 Irish emigrants who are set to return this year to expect a different country.