Current Account: Current Account's interest in all things cultural is well documented, in fact, we have culture pouring out of our ears here.
So, we were delighted to see that the London Independent this week had a half page article on the Wexford opera festival that narrowly avoided the patronising tone adopted by English papers on the rate occasions that they cover cultural goings on in the "emerald isle".
The story largely dealt with the festival's efforts to build a new venue in the town. But we suspected we found the reason for the fulsome coverage when it revealed that one Anthony O'Reilly had contributed €1 million to the €33 million project.
That is the same Sir Anthony O'Reilly who happens to be chief executive of the paper's owner, Independent News and Media, which is a sponsor of the festival.
Interestingly, the republican-minded paper referred to him as plain Anthony O'Reilly, and did not use the "sir" on which he's been known to insist.
Staggering array of events in Temple Bar
Staying with cultural matters, Temple Bar is celebrating 15 years as Dublin's cultural quarter and stag weekend mecca with "Ireland's biggest summer festival".
Temple Bar Cultural Trust is investing €500,000 and events will include open air concerts, a Moroccan market, trad sessions and street entertainment of all kinds.
Like all good festivals, it will presumably have a fringe. This is likely to feature events like a competition to find the barman who can keep a straight face when charging you €5 for a pint of stout, a team-based Garda paddywagon relay race for ferrying drunks to Pearse Street Garda station, and the weekly spontaneous "forget the Queensbury rules" boxing match involving members of rival stag parties.
Fingleton's not finished
Former Competition Authority boss John Fingleton may be gone, but he's doing his best to ensure he's not forgotten.
In his new role as chief executive of the UK's Office of Fair Trading (its equivalent of the Competition Authority) he's homed in on the wholesale distribution system for newspapers and magazines in Britain.
The system involves regional wholesale monopolies, which guarantee delivery of all titles in return for being insulated from competition.
Not surprisingly, UK newspapers are devoting a lot of column inches to the issue. But then, that won't bother Mr Fingleton, as he was never a man to refuse a headline.
Bean counter prevails
When the large Deloitte office up around Hatch Street in Dublin got its very own cafe dispensing Starbucks coffee recently, employees were delighted not to have any requirement to leave the building (unless they are smokers), as all their needs are catered for right within Deloitte's four walls.
But one task remained - to name the cafe - and the management decided, who better to ask then their very own employees. To consult the consultants, as it were.
A little competition was organised, and the result, it must be said, does not disappoint. The cafe is now proudly named the Bean Counter.
Summers in new clash
Some people just don't know when to keep a low profile. Larry Summers, the former Clinton administration treasury secretary, must still be nursing his wounds after announcing in February that he would stand down early as president of prestigious Harvard University following clashes with faculty.
But that didn't stop him this week laying into lecturers in Britain's third level colleges for their decision to boycott Israeli lecturers, labelling the position "anti-semitic". He lectured the UK academics that "an academic boycott for political ends is in direct conflict with the mission of a university".
Current Account can see how his acerbic tone could rub the clositered faculty in Cambridge Massachusetts into not one but two threatened no-confidence motions.
