NOW, you might say that the white flower protestors, in their serried ranks — affiliated to Gerry Ryan or Joe “Spontaneous Demonstration” Duffy — last week showed up the politicians and changed the face of Ireland for the better.

BEFORE the top crook from Enron heads off to do a lifetime’s porridge, he needs to meet the lads from the Ancient Order of Hibernians. They have so much in common. Especially God. He’s on their side. They’re sure of it.

THE sun is so hot, the bus-loads of Japanese tourists put away their cameras and deploy fans instead.

It’s pretty unnerving to see yourself on film when you didn’t realise someone was filming you. Which is why several nurses, doctors and administrators are going to be a tad distracted, all day today, by the expectation that tonight, RTÉ’s Prime Time Investigates may show footage surreptitiously filmed in the A&E units of three or four hospitals.

THE received wisdom is that any minister who goes up against nurses is a lone lemming, headed over a cliff.

THE worst moment for an after-dinner speaker is the point when a silver teaspoon is clanged off a glass for silence.

THE other papers presented to this conference on The Disappeared Civilisations deal with historic or pre-historic cultures which became extinct: Easter Island and the Inca empire in Peru among them.

HE never glanced up. Never. It was head down all the way. No telling glances across at the opposition. No gesture to hammer home a point. Not a single behaviour that the camera would like.