ENDA Kenny should run for President instead of Taoiseach. That could solve a lot of problems for him, for his party and for his country.

IN any other country it would be obvious.

ADVANCED age or previous good character cannot be given as legitimate excuses for PJ Sheehan’s boneheaded drunken behaviour in the grounds of Dáil Eireann in early July, as revealed only last weekend.

IT’S confession time. I’m guilty of having once committed much the same sin as Brian Cowen did this week with his drinking/little sleep/subsequent interview routine, but it’s not going to stop me from throwing a few stones at the Taoiseach nonetheless.

THE sight of a handshake would have been hard enough to stomach, but the picture of beaming former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern being embraced in a bear-hug by NAMA resident property developer Johnny Ronan last Tuesday, at the opening of the Dublin Convention Centre, was nauseating.

THE fuss about Fine Gael TD Olwyn Enright’s announcement of her planned departure from politics has been justified because of how it illustrates the difficulties of time management faced by women who want an active political career, especially those with pre-school and schoolgoing children.

IT has been another bad week for the public perception of the Green Party’s behaviour in power. It must have been made worse for those in the party by the fact that the latest blow involved getting the blame for something it hadn’t actually done.

PROOF that politics is often about doing as little as possible, irrespective of whether times are good or bad, and then only when you absolutely have to do something, was provided this week by the Minister for Education, Mary Coughlan.

THE State is getting into the retail shopkeeping business, selling bras and knickers, shoes and shirts, beds, chairs and tables, pots and pans, televisions and games consoles, luggage and lots else too.

POLITICAL contacts can be bought very cheaply in this country. Always has been the case and always will be, it seems, no matter what happens at tribunals and the like in exposing the carry-on between politicians and wealthy business people.