OLD hatreds never die. They just shift their targets.

Just when we thought the decades-old hunting of Catholics by Protestants, and vice-versa, in Northern Ireland was over, comes news of fresh eruptions: this time aimed at a small group of immigrant Rumanians in Belfast.

This is the WAG (that's short for wife and girlfriend) culture that reached its height with the Posh Spice-David Beckham circus (and at least she was a pop singer in her own right) and plunged its depths with the catapulting of footballer Wayne Rooney's girlfriend (now wife), Co

Current theatre on London’s South Bank reminds us that playwrights in other developing countries grapple with the past, politics, social justice, a sense of self and honour, and a yearning for a just future.

It must be one of the few growth industries around, what with the reams of newspaper analysis in the wake of the new Prime Minister, new Cabinet, new slogans, new everything.

And with broadcasters, webcasters, bloggers and Twitterers, the analysis has grown into a veritable dawn chorus, a cacophony of verbiage, written as well as spoken.