It's all plane sharing

Relations between John Bull and his other island are now so cordial that Bertie Ahern can safely accept an offer of a lift on the British Prime Minister's aircraft. It was not always so. In 1986, Garret FitzGerald went to New Delhi for the funeral of the assassinated Indira Gandhi. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister who was also there, inquired of him how he was getting home. Garret said he was going commercial. "Nonsense," said Thatcher - as she often did - "you're coming with me." Word of this arrangement leaked out, and the then leader of the opposition, Charlie Haughey, excoriated Garret for such intimate consorting with the British.