IT’S amazing the conclusions that some people will jump to (on Twitter, at least, and also by anonymous text).

FRANK Flannery is an influential guy. He has been one of Fine Gael’s leading power-brokers for over 30 years, even though he never held elected office, serving instead as an administrator and strategist.

DAVID DRUMM has shocked and provoked me into attempting remedial action. Not in relation to my finances, thankfully. (I can’t blame him for the state of those, other than the impact of the higher taxes we all pay because of the incompetence of him and others in the stewardship of Anglo Irish Bank). No, it’s something else for which he has become famous that worries me about my own behaviour: the use of what is often called “bad” or “foul” language.

LISTENERS to The Last Word were able to hear this week what the former Anglo Irish Bank boss David Drumm thinks of me. We broadcast an extract from one of the now infamous internal recordings in which he made pointed reference to a newspaper column I had written in June 2008.

ALL of the obnoxious wrongs being revealed at Anglo Irish Bank do not make the equally abhorrent actions of the Quinn family right.

I WAS guilty too, like most of the media, and I’m sorry.

THE attacks upon cyclists by grumpy old men are mounting.

THE debate about abolishing the Seanad reminds me of the Groucho Marx line: “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

THE tobacco industry’s unprecedented visit to Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his ministers Michael Noonan and Alan Shatter would appear to have been a failure.

SO now Alan Shatter knows what it is like to be on the receiving end of political attack inspired by Garda tittle-tattle.