THE thing with columns is you can’t be too repetitive. I’m doing this one for about a year and it does get tricky.

If you’ve already written about how depressing it is that Taoiseach Micheál Martin will travel to the White House and shake the hand of a man found liable for sexual abuse, you can’t really do it again. You must look elsewhere for fresh material.

A brief check of the news might offer inspiration for a fresh subject.

This week’s run-down includes a British prime minister agreeing to enter a war on a Middle Eastern country who they claim is being run by a tyrant who has taken away women’s rights.

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The UK have sided with a Republican president who is currently rolling back abortion rights.

I think I walked out of school over this one along with hundreds of other teenagers about 20 years ago. I’ve already covered this subject.

Next, it was the five-year anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met police officer.

It was well known in the force that Wayne Couzens was a predator – allegedly his nickname was “the rapist”. He went on to kidnap, rape and murder a girl my age walking home.

Something we know better than many is domestic homicide. More than 25 women were killed in the north over five years. I’ve written about this too.

Women continue to be terrorised; suspended sentences and leniency towards violence in the home let violent men back into their houses; and an accommodation crisis north and south keeps women there with them.

Israel continues to rain bombs down on Gaza, committing war crimes and murdering people in the West Bank in illegal settlements.

This has been going on since the 1940s, and my columns giving off about it feels like they started around then too.

The people of Palestine have been screaming for help non-stop since the end of World War II and the world has apparently gone deaf.

South of the border, 100 people in one housing estate in Wexford got notifications of termination from the same landlord, just two days before government reforms to the rental sector came into effect.

You know, the way experts said this would happen? The way institutional landlords and investment funds have been treating tenants for decades, and how the government policy in situ allowed them to do?

The Fianna-Gaelers were shocked. They couldn’t believe the thing that they were warned would happen, ended up happening.

Or, is it because the estate is in the housing minister’s own constituency that they couldn’t believe it might come home (at least something can come home) to bite them?

It’s almost as if the two parties who have created 17,000 homeless people really don’t care about housing when it comes at the expense of private profit.

I know I sound cynical, and this is probably a depressing read, but what’s worse is we’re allowing this to happen.

Men who never listen, never learn and never face consequences are allowed to do the same things over and over in different fonts with different speeches.

Keir Starmer’s mealy-mouthed decision on Iran doesn’t mean anything different from Tony Blair’s on Iraq, even if he pretended to be really sad about it.

At the end of the day, nothing for them really changes. Men will continue to murder women, young boys will continue be bombarded with misogyny online, and politicians will continue to wring their hands and say it’s #NotAllMen, as if we’re supposed to stop the man following us home and shout: “Are you one of the bad ones?”

Despite knowing Sarah Everard was killed by a police officer and did everything right.

I’m sick of men in suits living consequence-free while the rest of us muddle on in a cost-of-living crisis, where we can be reprimanded for showing up late to work, while the most powerful men on earth spent time on a private island with a convicted child predator and no-one bats an eye.

I’m not saying everything would change with women in charge, either. Plenty of women would happily bomb Iran or evict children. Margaret Thatcher nearly tore this place apart.

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What we do need is change.

Let’s start with consequences. Consequences for those who bomb hospitals and schools might be a good start.

Men who repeatedly harass and attack women should face some too.

Governments who make their own people homeless, whether its deliberate or through incompetence, should be voted out.

For me, and it’s not the most important thing, banning people who watch videos on their phone on loudspeaker on public transport or public spaces should be fined.

Let’s start with some common decency.

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