IT’S BEEN A lively week here at TheJournal.ie.

Every Saturday, we like to take a look back at all the comments left by you lot on the site over the week and pick out the ones that most grabbed our attention. It’s  our way of highlighting the most interesting, funniest, and unexpected things said by our lovely readers over the past few days.

This week, there’s been a lot of talk about the bus crash in the Swiss Alps, NAMA, the Mahon Tribunal, Cheltenham, the gardaí, Sean Gallagher, gender discrimination in the workplace, Tallafornia, Goldman Sachs, and of course, Patrick’s Day.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s the standout comments from this week:

I was on a train between Edinburgh and Glasgow that was delayed for 30 minutes because, and I quote, “The usual driver died and the other one had to go to his funeral”.

- Terry McDonald explains why he isn’t a fan of British-style privatisation during the discussion on Wednesday about whether Ireland’s trains should be opened up to the private sector.

Chocolate won’t make itself RT @thejournal_ie: The Swiss have voted AGAINST an extra two weeks’ holiday every year jrnl.to/A25rxE

- This tweet from @Sparkle_Miss was one of our favourite tweets of the week.

As I look back on my wasted youth, I am grateful there were no reality television shows.

- A lot of commenters had strong feelings – to put it mildly – about Tallafornia in the wake of David Norris branding it ‘obnoxious’. Seamus McDermott was a bit more sanguine about it.

It’s a bit of good craic. Tacky parades and a couple of pints with the lads! And this year we have the rugby AND a bank holiday on Monday. What’s not to like?

- Conor Farrell got a lot of thumbs up for this comment on whether Patrick’s Day cheers people up or not.

Jaysus, people are taking things waaay too seriously and are so negative about this whole weekend that it pains me greatly.If you don’t want to be in town for the parade and the madness then stay at home and watch the parade on TV with a big Irish brekkie followed by Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Then go to your local and have a few pints watching the rugby.

If you do want to go to the parade, don’t go to the middle of O’Connell Street. Go to either end of the route – less chance of getting crushed. Drinking wise – go a little bit out of O’Connell Street and College Green to avoid the drunken idiots vomiting around 9pm that night.

I love the atmosphere of the day whether I am staying at home or heading out.

Things are tough for so many at the moment, so let’s just have a day to celebrate being Irish and knowing how to have the craic regardless of the our country’s circumstances and let’s have some escapism from the doom and gloom that is constantly being showered upon on us by the media.

Drink some Guinness and stay off the white WHINE!

- And on the same thread, Brendan Liam Walsh went into more detail about why Patrick’s Day is definitely a positive thing.

Agree totally Brian. Huge questions to asked about pre flight security – this guy could as easily have smuggled in a bomb or gun. I was recently put thru the hoops at Dublin airport because I had a pair of nail scissors at the bottom of my bag I’d forgotten about. Of course they were taken from me. So what went wrong in this case. We need an investigation and explanation for everyone’s peace of mind.

- CMD was one of many commenters on Friday’s story who questioned how a man on a deportation flight was able to slash and injure a garda accompanying him on a plane to Lagos.

I would be completely in favour of putting an end to “commercial sensitivity” as a shelter from FOI or transparency laws. If you are doing business with the state you are doing it with citizens, and citizens should not be shut out from knowledge of any aspect of it that does not directly violate the privacy of an individual. (I do not include corporate “legal persons” in the definition of individual).

- The chairman of NAMA has said he is opposed to proposals to make the organisation subject to the Freedom of Information Act for commercial reasons. Auntie Dote was one of many commenters who were unimpressed with his attempts to explain why.

They were on their way to an Irish themed pub at the north pole that was opened by two Russians last year. Its meant to be great crack! I was talking to a friend of mine from Newfoundland the other day, he was up there last week,”packed to the rafters” he said. They were belting out Luke Kelly and a crowd of eskimos were giving it “socks”. “F**king nightmare” trying to get a taxi out of the place!

- This was the response by limofax when another commenter questioned why two people were undertaking an expedition to become the first Irish team to reach the North Pole.

How can you rate an entire University, for pete’s sake? A university might have a world-class engineering faculty and a rubbish faculty of philosophy. All that this “Top of the Pops” list tells us is “how like Harvard these universities are”. The best thing Irish universities can do here is stop trying to compete with other universities and walk their own path (which they did before they got roped into this game). The quality of education and research (you can’t have one without the other: each feeds, inspires, and invigorates the other) has fallen because the attention of lecturers etc. is continually distracted by this “competition” juvenilia.

Excellence is a comparative notion. If you’re excellent, it just means you’re no worse than the others. If you want to lead, you ignore the status quo and go your own way. The sole goal of a university is the unwavering pursuit of perfection. Regardless of what society wants.

Don’t worry: I’m perfectly aware that writing this was a complete waste of time.

- Jonathan Biggins had this to say in the wake of Stephen Donnelly’s article on how no Irish universities made it into the top 100 in the world according to new rankings out during the week. (We didn’t think it was a complete waste of time after all…).

Should be called ” pope pourri”. I can really see that flying of the shelves alright !!!

- This suggestion by Agent for what Pope Benedict XVI’s new fragrance could be called was the best out of some pretty excellent suggestions in the thread.

And finally…. the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that that is already ten comments, but we thought we’d throw in a good one from one of this week’s caption competitions. What the hell. It’s a bank holiday weekend. Let’s go wild.

On Monday we ran the photo (above) of Ruairi Quinn in a Dublin primary school. This caption from John ‘Trips’ Gallen got a lot of thumbs up:

Quinn – “If claim for 5,100 kilometers at €0.2846 / Km but only do 1,000 kilometers how much extra expenses do I get that could have gone to your education?”

Spot any good comments? Mail them to christine@thejournal.ie to be included in next week’s bunch.