Provisional licence-holders told to eat cake

INFAMOUSLY, when told that the French people could not afford bread, e Queen Marie Antoinette suggested that they eat ‘cake’. (Factually: ‘brioche’ — a form of pastry — but not for the last time, the media ‘spun’ the story. Maybe over-baked it).

The poor queen, to use John Gormley’s equally infamous remark about the Fianna Fáil negotiators, was actually ‘really quite a nice person’. Just slightly out of touch.

On Sunday I heard Transport Minister Noel Dempsey — very much a ‘really quite a nice person’ and known to his adoring civil servants as ‘Dempo’— suggest on radio that 100,000 ‘second’ provisionally licensed commuters and students leave their cars at home and take buses. Immediately. And don’t tell Bus Éireann.