McGuinness ties himself in knots over travel expenses controversy

JOHN McGuinness is the latest TD to be undone by that highly contagious, and extremely debilitating, political affliction, entitlement.

The chronic condition manifests itself in politicians as soon as they are elected and get their first sniff of power. Unless regularly treated, with liberal doses of accountability and transparency, pretty soon you have a ministerial megalomaniac on your hands.

Mr McGuinness was barely in his junior ministerial office a wet week in 2007 before he was displaying stage 5 symptoms of the disorder: a pig-headed refusal to listen to reason, an absolute conviction in the superiority of his own unquestionable wisdom and egregious displays of prodigious pomposity.