Tapping into the public mood can make you seriously hacked off

DURING last week’s pinking of Dáil Éireann, courtesy of Mary Mitchell O’Connor, one politician after another, one ex-politician after another, told us we shouldn’t be talking about the Miss Piggy episode.

There were, we were sonorously instructed, more serious things to be talking about.

Now, the choice of serious things we might be talking about includes how broke we are, individually and severally, how much broker we’ll be after Michael Noonan has his way with us on budget day, and whether we’ll still be saving soap scraps and living off baked beans in 30 years’ time.