Herr Bruton

I nearly spilled my skinny latté this morning as Gunther...I'm sorry I mean Minister McDowell actually apologised for his outburst yesterday when he likened Richard Bruton T.D. to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister responsible for propoganda.The apparent background to this was that Bruton had made selective use of figures to suggest that the number of Gardaí had only increased by 2 in the course of 2005.Minister Michael went berserk at this and came charging out to the awaiting media scribes with pages of statistics which he claimed showed the true story.The Irish Times analyses the figures today and shows that while Bruton was technically correct for the dates he quoted, makes it clear that choosing different dates would have resulted in a different impression being created.The figures quoted by the Times show an annual increase year by year from 2002 to 2005 .McDowell , the Times points out, never actually said Bruton's figures were wrong.

They were at it on the tv yesterday like two schoolchildren .

McDowell obviously had some PR advice last night and came out all mea culpa today ."I played the ball not the man.." said the errant PD Stormtrooper, as he did the decent thing and ....apologised.I wonder if he's ill ?