Well, it was glad confident morning again, last Wednesday!

Bliss was it to be alive, to be a political nerd was very heaven! After the long nightmare of the Bush years, a great democratic uprising had restored the hope of the world.

And that hope still lives, that dream shall never die! Bit of a head, though.

* A curious line in a recent Irish Times book review (of a book about the Irish Times) caught our attention.

‘‘It might be said,” wrote reviewer Fintan O’Toole, ‘‘that under Douglas Gageby and Conor Brady in the last three decades, the Irish Times acquired a more simple and stable identity as a liberal middleclass paper, hospitable to critical social thinking and strongly identified with the movement to sever State from Church.

‘‘Even then, however, it is easy to miss the fact that for most of that period the paper was, in broad terms, editorially supportive of Fianna Fáil, a party which was hardly sympathetic to either of those concerns.”

Really? Has it really been that supportive of Fianna Fáil? This generous support has been lost on many members of the party, we regret to report.

But if that is the case, then Sarah Carey, the paper’s able new columnist, might rectify this Fianna Fáil-supporting tendency. Her website, or ‘blog’ (harrumph), listed ten reasons to vote for Fine Gael before the last election.

Reason 10: ‘‘Oh fuck it, how many more ways are there to say, Fianna Fáil are useless?”

* Michael McDowell, the former Tánaiste and Progressive Democrats leader, returned to the Law Library to lick his wounds after the ungrateful electorate of Dublin South East removed his considerable presence from national politics last year. Things have certainly been duller around Leinster House without him.

But now comes news he has branched out from his not unrewarding legal practice to play another important role in our nation’s life: pedagogue to the snotty brats of the UCD law faculty.

McDowell is teaching a ‘‘specialised module in law and politics’’ this semester, reports the University Observer, an estimable publication. According to Professor John Jackson, t h e De an of Law, McDowell’s arrival is ‘‘very exciting’’.

Well, not much happens in the UCD law faculty - at least, not since they made uncomfortably strenuous efforts to defenestrate the AOB editor in the mid-1990s on trumped-up charges of non-attendance at academic events. But we digress.

Incidentally, we’ve always had a inkling around here that Mrs McDowell - who herself happens to be a highly regarded academic with the alias of Professor Niamh Brennan - might be a likely president of UCD. One to keep an eye on. She should keep an eye on the law faculty if she does become president. They’re overly strict on some things.

* One suspects that, with managers at RTE taking (very hefty) pay cuts, the station’s coverage of the state of the government finances might become rather more hawkish. A little less ‘‘the poor teachers struggling to educate our children, denied money by a cruel government’’, and a little more ‘‘When is the government going to slash public spending?”

Some attention to next year’s pay rises in the public sector can be anticipated. Mind you, according to one very senior former RTE executive, cutbacks of €25 million won’t even scratch the surface.

* On this subject, eagle-eyed readers of the outstanding Agenda magazine last week will have spotted the constructive approach of one of the station’s more prominent, er, public service broadcasters to the current budgetary squeeze. Forgive the repetition, but we think it warrants it:

‘‘Deep within the womb-like environs of Dublin’s L’Écrivain restaurant, RTE presenter Gerry Ryan is mid-rant. RTE, he reveals, has told him that perhaps he shouldn’t receive his bonus next year - that, in these recession times, it might be publicly embarrassing for him. ‘Embarrassing?’ Ryan jabs a stubby finger in the direction of his own chest. ‘I’ll put it on a t-shirt!’ he bellows entertainingly, his feet spread wide apart on the plush carpet.”

Perhaps RTE could sell the t-shirts with the details of Gerry’s salary (€558,990 in 2006) to pay for making news programmes and other public