The winding stair to political power

Blame is the open-plan office of politics, writes Gerard Howlin

OPEN-PLAN houses have ruined it. Offices are even worse. There was a time when you knew exactly where you stood in the pecking order by what room you were invited into. There is a big difference between the parlour and the kitchen.

In a country only one generation removed from the farm, a lot of people can still remember wakes and threshing days when the house was full of farmers in the parlour and labourers in the kitchen.