No matter how well planned it is, no matter what vested interests are tackled, healthcare is like a virus which constantly morphs into a form resistant to the most recent prescription.

‘Applied to Bertie’s house, “orchestrated” suggests that a bunch of disparate media personalities in constant mutual competition and employed by rival media outlets, got together under the direction of one conductor to damage the Taoiseach.’

MOST journalists spent the weekend chasing political party leaders. I met a more interesting group. A group of improbably cheerful victims of child abuse.

Almost every single one of the constituencies contains a variable factor that will change the nature of the result from the overall picture presented by opinion poll statistics, no matter how elegantly balanced.

At this stage, if you’re presentable, reasonably lucid and prepared to promise bundles of new gardaí to improve the quality of everybody’s life, that will more or less do.

You know that juggler’s trick where they yank a table-cloth out from under the crockery, glasses and cutlery so suddenly that the table stays set, with every glass, plate and fork in the same position on the now-bare table?

IT’S well for some, that’s all I can say.

THE Fianna Fáil conspiracy theorists have it all worked out.

WHEN the national broadcasting station — in the days when there was only one national broadcasting station — sent out an invitation for families to compete in a quiz programme, I entered our family in the contest.

Charlie McCreevy was a great man for quoting himself.