What, asked Labour's Derek McDowell in the Dail on Tuesday, did Charlie McCreevy mean by saying, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the European Commission was a bunch of communists who always opposed tax reduction? The Minister for Finance said he had never used the phrase, even as a student. Other phrases, yes - but he never said a bunch of commies. He would look into it. What McCreevy did say, in Ireland and in Lisbon last month, was that those who criticised his tax changes were left-wing pinkos. He mostly meant the media. The Wall Street Journal picked it up in Lisbon, presumed he was referring to Eurocrats and, being politically correct as only Americans can be, translated left-wing pinkos into communists. It was later suggested that if they hadn't done so, it might imply that Charlie was attacking gays.
What, however, would they have made of Bertie Ahern's Creepin' Jesuses?