IF half a million people attended the St Patrick’s Day parade, relishing the temporary community of other celebratory folk, a fair number used yesterday and will use today to do the opposite: To get away from other people.

IN one area of Irish life, the public sector knocks hell out of its private sector equivalent — the make-up of boards of directors.

THE official title of the Fianna Fáil ard fheis was Empowering the Grassroots.

IT could be because the Government has done everything right from the moment they grabbed their seals of office from Mary McAleese and lashed back to Leinster House to get started.

The whole Freedom of Information process is a bit like scallop dredging.

Although the epileptic may get warnings of an oncoming electrical brainstorm, others don’t get such advance notice, and so, as far as the bystander is concerned, the seizure comes out of nowhere, transforming the person they know into someone they very definitely don’t know.

Fair dues to the Polish ambassador for coming out fighting over Magda, with his facts and figures in a row.

The three-year old wasn’t so much draped over his mother’s shoulder as collapsed over it, head heavy against her neck, one arm caught in the hood of her anorak, the other hanging loosely.

I HAVE a crow to pluck with the Taoiseach.

ST FRANCIS was just addressing a sparrow as Sister Bird up there on the big screen when a man sat down beside me in the cinema and squeezed my 13-year-old knee. (The other knee was the same age, but he chose to fondle only the one on the right.)