Emissions/Kilian Doyle: I'm wrestling with the desire to break into Leinster House and slash the tyres of every official-looking Mercedes or other ministerial-standard motor. Reckless, feckless and pointless? Perhaps. Potentially deeply satisfying? Most certainly.
Why? Simple: The behaviour of the so-called leaders of this grand little country has descended into the realms of deep farce. I just can't take their unbridled hypocrisy and carelessly concealed contempt anymore. If it weren't so infuriating, it would be comical.
We here in good self-righteous Ireland scoff and bemoan the likes of Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe and other tinpot dictators swanning with impunity, speeding cavalcades scattering all before them. "For shame!" we cry, hackles raised. "Depose these loons!" we demand of countries with bigger guns and bigger wallets.
Well, I have three things to say - Noel Treacy. Bertie Ahern. And, finally, Pat Byrne. Let me elucidate.
Mr Treacy was hauled up before the Morning Ireland inquisition in January, charged with allowing himself be driven at 95mph in a 60mph zone by an official driver, who was stopped and subsequently fined €€500 for his efforts. The schoolboy-standard excuses from the shockingly uncontrite junior minister? Roughly, this: I was in a rush, I didn't tell him to do it, and I wasn't watching anyway. Honest.
Not only did Treacy, still a junior minister inexplicably, try to brush off the incident as unworthy of his time, but he then proceeded to blame his constituents for electing him in the first place.
"I regret very much that we had to exert ourselves on that day but that is the requirement of office; you must do your best to be available to the people," he said. Oh, sorry, stupid us. It's our fault, the ever-so demanding electorate, without whose crushing demands this otherwise faultless man would never have been driven - to coin a phrase - to such behaviour.
It's obvious the chap is chronically over-worked, poor lamb. One can only imagine him on the leather seats, adrenaline pumping, his overworked heart approaching explosion status, cursing the rest of us slovenly, speed-limit-observing clowns as he rushes to Dublin in time to save us all from lives of penury and misery. And what does he get for his trouble and unquestioning devotion? Abuse. It's almost enough to make him resign in disgust. As if.
But where did he learn this from? Sure wasn't his very own glorious leader, Bertie, observed hoofing it around Wexford and Meath at the same impressive speed by political hacks who ended up falling off the back of the General Election convoy, their Irish Times-issue crocks unable to keep up?
Remember, this Boy Racer is the same feller who, without even a hint of irony, put the strong-arm on the ever-suffering Mr Brennan to come up with a way to stop so many people being slaughtered on Irish roads.
But then again, if he hadn't been covering the country at such a belt, would the good people of Wexford and Meath have not missed the opportunity to see their saviour in the flesh? They may even have voted for someone else's party. God forbid.
And Mr Byrne? Well, he takes the proverbial biscuit. Rather than, as surely a Garda Commissioner should, condemn this behaviour outright and promise to attach an individual speed camera to the bonnet of every minister's motor, he pats them on the head like bold children and tells them to run along.
Perhaps the real reason they're beefing up Oireachtas Airlines is so they can avoid driving on the same roads as the rest of us filthy peasants altogether. See if we care.