Taoiseach Brian Cowen told a press conference on Thursday: “I don’t believe there is reason for people to feel ashamed or humiliated at all.” He was referring to the current financial crisis.

THE Scannal programme on the 1970 Arms Crisis on RTÉ television this week began with me proclaiming that the whole thing was the most serious crisis since the civil war. It has never been properly investigated but then no one should be surprised because the civil war was largely ignored, too.

IT is hard to believe that anyone with any intelligence was surprised by the High Court ruling this week that the Donegal South-West by-election should be held without further delay. The existing delay, since the election of Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher to the European Parliament in June 2009, has been the longest in the history of the state.

BBC viewers voted Winston Churchill as ‘Britain’s Greatest’. He is remembered as the man who saved them during the Second World War, but he was undoubtedly one of Ireland’s greatest scourges. As Minister for War in 1920 he was the politician most responsible for the Black and Tans.

SINCE Dáil Éireann was established in 1919 there have been 125 by-elections. All but 11 of those were held within six months of the vacancy occurring. But the current Dáil has three vacancies, two of which are already more than six months old and the third well over a year and heading for a record delay.

FORMER US President Harry Truman once explained: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. I, for one, believe the piano player job to be much more honourable than current politicians.”

SOME people seem to develop exotic addictions. At one time addicts were limited to alcohol and hard drugs, but then soft drugs like tobacco and cannabis were added. Now sex is included, since Tiger Woods was treated in a clinic.

ALTHOUGH it has become somewhat trendy to denigrate the leadership of Éamon de Valera, he led by magnificent example both at home and on the world stage in the 1930s.

WITH the rumblings of Garglegate in Galway still continuing, we had the story of PJ Sheehan threatening the young garda outside Leinster House when she prevented him from driving his car because he had too much to drink.

BRIAN Cowen’s interview on Tuesday’s Morning Ireland lasted little over nine minutes, but it had enormous reverberations, even though he essentially said nothing. He just fobbed off all the hard questions.