He who filches from me my good name robs me of an election

THE Taoiseach, bathed in Farmleigh sunshine this weekend, walked into European history.

He was double-kissing fellas from countries Bertie didn't even learn the names of when he was at school. Back then, those countries were mushed together in the communist bloc.

Hardly had the last head-of-state jet-trail dissipated in the sky, however, than Trevor Sargent gets into in an awful state over someone knocking down an oak in the interests of a good camera angle. I'd have thought his knickers would be more twisted over the waste-management challenge posed by €25 million worth of e-voting machines, but maybe when he gets over the oak, he'll address what landfill is going to take Martin Cullen's redundant technology. (And it not even out of the box. Untouched by human hand. Virgin, so to speak.)