I don't know why, but recently I have been thinking about. For those of you who weren't around at the time, most of you, I suspect, Hall's Pictorial Weekly was a series of humorous TV programs broadcast on RTÉ in the 1970's. Devised and produced by Frank Hall, the program concentrated on lampooning politicians. This it did by depicting a meeting of county councillors in charge of a place called Ballinagash. Leading the actors in this satire was Frank Kelly, a pastmaster at mi

The Irish Medical Council has 25 members. 12 of these are elected by their peers from the Irish Medical Profession; they are elected doctors, in other words. The other 13, the majority, are appointed by the government; they are non-elected lay people with government affiliations. The 12 doctor-appointed members tend to be conservatives who canvassed their conservative colleagues for votes to be elected in the first place.