Everything that is sacred will eventually become superstition

The problem for Timmy Dooley and Niall Collins is that they are denied the status of knaves because they have been certified as fools instead, writes Gerard Howlin

When you trade in votes on an industrial scale — and that is the basis of what politicians do for a living — the sanctity of the act loses its allure. The vote, as an offering to inviolable principles of democracy, needs, must be carved up in the abattoir of events. That is what Bismarck meant when he quipped that laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.