That's logic for you

Journalist Sam Smyth's Thanks A Million Big Fella is out this weekend and there are promises of big revelations on the finances of Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry. Quidnunc hears the book has details of a Haughey plan to have Judge Brian McCracken removed from the Tribunal on Payments to Politicians; of further overseas bank accounts; and of Ben Dunne's introduction to cocaine in Dublin. Smyth starts with a quote from Machiavelli's The Prince which he says indicates the latter was writing about Charlie 500 years ago. "Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects', or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality . . . because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you."