Stinker opinion polls about any government that is well into its period in office create a ritual dance between commentators on the one side, and, on the other, the lads and lassies in power.

BARACK OBAMA made only one nasty crack at Hillary Clinton during their contest for the American Presidency.

OVER the weekend, thousands of people in this country will have put themselves in danger. Some of them will have risked life and limb by engaging in extreme sports, like rock climbing and cliff walking, which don’t usually come under that category heading.

Here’s how it goes. No. Strike that. Here’s how it always goes. The pattern is immutable. Ireland collides with something bad.

IT WAS one of those pictures that made you laugh, then roll your eyes to heaven. Very definitely not the kind of shot a candidate-to-be would want taking up half a page in a local newspaper. The picture showed a man in a long formal overcoat. A very Fianna Fáil overcoat, no offence to Louis Copeland.

I’ll tell you who I’d vote for. I’d vote for any candidate who promises to abolish political opinion polls.

YOU’VE got to hand it to Kathleen Lynch. She tells it like it is. A few people in politics have tried that approach, to transient public and media acclaim and speedy career dissolution. But the minister of state at the Department of Health always gets a free pass.

NEVER mind the morality, consider the electronic threat. That’s arguably the key message emerging from racism controversies on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment.

THE reader has a life. The reader wants the writer to get to the point, rather than spend time revving on the spot. The reader can be distracted by the letters down below or the leading article alongside.

NOT ONLY am I a rotten cook, but I’m never going to be anything other than a rotten cook, and if that’s not important to you, I’m sorry.