Emissions/Kilian DoyleMine can sometimes be a difficult remit, that of coming up with a suitable topic every week for this little strip of bile down the right hand side of Page 3. But then, occasionally, something happens that is so begging of my attention it would be criminal to dismiss it.
Thus it was with today's subject. How could I ignore aul' Mr Brennan and his driving licence saga? As some of you may have noticed, I've been very nice about the wee man of late. He seems a decent chap at heart. For all the fiascos surrounding penalty points, the LUAS, the Port Tunnel et al, at least he's trying.
I regard him, to use the language of a benign teacher, as a good lad who applies himself well but has unfortunately fallen in with a bad crowd.
I'm aware I'm skating on seriously thin ice here - after all, I'm a motoring hack on a provisional licence, with at least another nine months to wait before I get the chance to progress into the Big League. But, what the hell, integrity bedamned, I'm having a lash anyway.
First off, where else in the world would you have a Minister for Transport without a driving licence? It's so Oirish. We might as well give control of the country's finances to some clown who's mad about the gee-gees. Oh, dear. We did that too.
I felt a tad cheated when I heard aul' Mr Brennan had secured himself a full licence, years after letting it lapse because the Plain People of Ireland deemed him worthy of being driven everywhere and elected him to government.
Whatever about him keeping that particular gem of information from us, here was me thinking he was a closet environmentalist, cycling his merry way into work in Kildare Street every day, whistling as he went. That's that bubble burst, then.
I'm also a bit miffed he only had to wait five and a half months for his test, while the rest of us are digging in for the long haul. Of course, he may just have been lucky. You hardly believe he pulled strings, do you? And he hardly had the audacity to claim he needed it for work to skip the queue, when the very fact his job means he doesn't need a licence is the reason it's even an issue, did he? One law for them . . .
Despite passing with flying colours (yeah, like he was really going to be failed - even Charlie refused to open a book on him), I'm still concerned he may be unsure between his right and left.
The bad crowd with which he associates went to great lengths before the last election to portray themselves as a party of social conscience, and promptly formed an administration just slightly to the left of Saddam Hussein's.
So, now we have a minister, trained to drive by a rally champion, careening down streets unable to tell left from right. Great. He'll blend in perfectly.
One final thing - what did de minister do during the wilderness years of the mid-1990s, when his current opponents were earning all the money for him and his mates to waste, when he had no ministerial Merc parked outside, no driver at his beck and call?
Are we to believe he diligently followed the rules and refrained from popping down the supermarket en voiture? Of course we are. And did he swallow his pride and think it tolerable for a prominent, though powerless, politician to be pedalling his way to constituency meetings? "Jaysus, Seamus, willya ever take off dem bicycle clips when yer addressing de punters?" his campaign manager would screech as the Fallen One arrived for yet another rubber chicken fundraiser. "Dat's not de election machine we were talking about, man, we're de party of progress, not some poxy shower of tree-huggers!"
In all seriousness, good luck with the driving, Minister. I'm looking forward to you racking up the penalty points. Mid-January would be nice, when I'm a bit stuck for something to write about post-Christmas. There's a good lad.