It appears the Pakistan Muslim League, headed up by twice former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has won the country's elections, held on Saturday.
With negotiations continue to try to achieve an overall majority, Christina Lamb, Foreign Affairs Correspondent with the Sunday Times has just left Pakistan and joined Pat on the line from Dubai.
On hearing the name ‘Edmund Burke’, the first thing that many people remember is his most frequently anthologised passage from the Reflections on the Revolution in France about Marie Antoinette, which begins with the words: ‘It is sixteen or seventeen years since last I saw the Queen of France...’ Brian Friel’s character in Philadelphia, Here I Come, Gar O’Donnell quotes lines from Edmund Burke’s description of Marie-Antoinette as a defence against the onslaught of negative thoughts. Time and again through the pages of the play, Gar shouts out the words of Burke as if they were a mantra to lift his mind above the things that oppress him. MP, Jesse Norman also believes that Edmund Burke continues to have significance today. He says that both conservative and subversive, Burke’s beliefs have never been more relevant than in today’s ‘Big Society’. In his new book, Edmund Burke: Politician, Philosopher, Prophet, Jesse Norman explains that as a philosopher, statesman, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke is both the greatest and most under-rated political thinker of the past three-hundred years.
Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar has called on the NBRU to re-enter talks with Bus Eireann immediately. He says Company management is available for talks at any time. The strike by members of the National Bus and Rail Workers Union is causing disruption to tens of thousands of bus passengers. Valerie Cox is in County Meath find out how commuters have been coping.
Pat also spoke with Bus Eireann Spokesman, Andrew McLindon and Michael Faherty, General Secretary of the NBRU.
As we’ve been hearing there are positive sounds coming from the talks between the government and unions on a new agreement to reduce the public pay bill. Overnight it appears that progress was made in relation to the gardai and those on incomes of between 65,000 and 100,000. Negotiations involving the health sector unions are due to re-convene at 2pm.
Pat spoke with Martin Wall, industry correspondent of the Irish Times; Bernard Harbour from the Impact Trade Union; SIPTU president Jack O’Connor;
At the height of the boom people queued for hours to buy a house off plans in Dublin, it’s a far cry from today where property values have plummeted by 50% or more. Marie Louise O’Donnell went to check out some houses on the market in Dublin at the weekend.
Anyone with rhubarb out in their garden will have noticed it has probably taken off in the past week or two, after its long winter hibernation. So what do you do with it?
Well, with a few ideas, Pat was joined by Domini Kemp - chef/author, co-founder of itsa and Irish Times food writer.
In The Invention of Memory Simon Loftus presents us with a heady blend of family memoir with a history of Ireland, foregrounding the story of the Protestant Ascendancy families.
According to a report commissioned by Providence Oil, the Irish offshore oil and gas industry could deliver enormous benefits for the Irish economy in terms of further foreign direct investment.
