Why you can’t save the world with a simple click of a computer mouse

IF the number of Facebook friends were any way of assessing popularity — which they’re not — Micheál Martin would be the leader of Fianna Fáil by close of play today.

Actually, my hunch is he will be the leader anyway. He has played his cards deftly in recent times, unlike his rivals. Still, 4,000 “friends” is pretty impressive.

One or two of his rivals who haven’t gone down the Facebook route might counter that, having lost touch with citizens in the real world, only desperate politicians go online in search of “netizens”, clearly, but mistakenly, seeing the internet as a place where they can fix the disconnectedness they’re experiencing in the offline, political world.