Back in the bad old days (circa 1988) when Evil stalked the land, a well-got businessman of my acquaintance imported in his briefcase a floppy disc of business software for which he had paid £100 in Manchester. Although he knew well that there was zero chance of being caught "smuggling" it in, as plenty of others still do regularly, being an upright pillar of the business community, he approached the customs officials at Cork airport seeking to pay the proper excise duty and/or VAT.

Under pressure now, he may allow that he was indulging his curiosity and/or being a bit disingenuous. If one were being cynical - a rare event hereabouts, I know - one might suspect that he had recently encountered the UK Internal Revenue services on a typically unsympathetic day, and wished to compare and contrast.

The man to whom he spoke was rather taken aback - "£100 for that ?" - and clearly had never seen a diskette, nor wanted to know of imported software. Having unsuccessfully ventured to suggest to my friend several excuses for non-declaration that might be usefully claimed, he finally said "Yerra, go on, we'll let you off this time", but my friend was insistent. He tried to explain that he intended to use it in his business and it would cause all sorts of accounting problems, as well as awkwardness with the tax and VAT Inspectors if it wasn't all "above board".

The official looked at him as if he had just tried to persuade him that Charlie Haughey was the Son of God, but agreed to see what he could do. He then walked down to the other end of the office, and made a phone call.

The official was - you've already "twigged", haven't you ? - one of those endearing characters with a naturally clear Cork voice which carried all the way down to where my friend waited.This is how it went:

Mick, howzit going ?... Great stuff... Go way ! I hate those Meath fellas more GAA gossip deleted...Listen, Mick, I have this fella here with a piece of plastic that he says he wants to declare...no,no, he's not from expletive deleted Dublin ... yeah, Irish...yeah really...I think he's one of them family name deleted fellas, I know ... looks useless to me...£100...looseware or sumpthin'...no, that's it, soft, yeah...I dunno...is there a code ?...no, I know, yeh, yeh...(snort) yeah...no, Mick,

...no...

I already told him that but he don't want-ta...

... the people should indeed take ownership, not of the reform process, but of the political system itself

I say that many of the people - he calls them "morons" - Anthony and his ilk get most annoyed about, e.g. Eoghan Harris, already tried to get "the People" to do that: they "don't want-ta".

It's not some kind of accident that we have a Fianna Fáil-dominated government, or that we have had one so often: it is the result of a functioning electoral process that is not "rotten", and produces political leadership which is the genuine free choice of the voters. Like it or not - and I don't - we have to live with this. (Only until the next election, if the opinion polls are to be believed, mind you, when Anthony will get to suffer under a different set of "morons").

This does not mean that there is nothing for good people like Anthony, his nephew Gavin, Dr Elaine Byrne, John Handelaar and many others to do. Mr HandelaarIf nothing else, and there is plenty more where those named are concerned, they are part of the corps who provide the "eternal vigilance" without which our freedom from tyranny will atrophy.

Anthony, temporarily (I hope) carried away, calls for our "current rotten system" to be destroyed so that it can be replaced with ... well, "the people should take ownership", Anthony says. This would seem to mean in practice (bear with me !) that pure, idealistic, good people - by whom is meant, one has to suspect, people like himself and Elaine Byrne - with rational, transparent, ideas uncorrupted by money, or anything else, would guide The People to A Better Place.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that Elaine, anyone who shares her views, or indeed anyone is capable of putting into place - just like that, Tommy Cooper-like - a "system" that works better. It just might be otherwise (though I doubt it) if everyone was like Anthony, or like you, or even like me, but everyone isn't, and they are never going to be.

And don't fool yourself that it is otherwise anywhere else in the world, even if it is undeniable that Ireland is very imperfect in all sorts of maddening, and impoverishing, ways.

I think that I can confidently say that Mr Flavin has made many more than three (but perhaps not as many as I have). However, I am confining myself here to setting out what I see as his three key errors in the transaction which gave rise to the action against his company (DCC plc) by Fyffes plc.

Failure to Use the Legal Shield

The law of which Mr Flavin fell foul provided a mechanism which, had it been used, would have protected him and DCC from Fyffes'action.The provision is here.

Talking to the Buyers

Within DCC, only Mr Flavin had the information which was later deemed price-sensitive. Had he referred the first call from Kyran McLaughlin (representing the first group of eventual buyers of the Fyffes' shares) to Fergal O'Dwyer or another director of Lotus Green, it is likely that the outcome of the court case would have been different.

Insufficient Legal Advice

Mr Flavin discussed his awareness of the information with Mr Scholefield and with the company's solicitor, Alvin Price of William Fry, but he did not fully share with either of them the exact nature of the information. He did not seek a meeting with, or formal opinion from, senior counsel.

Even if more extensive consultation had not changed the advice given, he would have been less likely to have been subject to the criticism that he had merely "gone through the motions".

You are a journalist. You are lucky enough to receive a story exclusively which turns out to be sensational and publishable. Following publication, your paper's circulation and advertising rates rise dramatically. You earn satisfying amounts of extra cash on TV and radio talking about the story, and from commissioned articles all over the world. You are promoted to a more senior position.

The story is about the boss, Mr Big, of major company A plc which was attempting to take-over a slightly less major one, B plc.

The take-over is aborted, and the boss, though denying the story, loses the confidence of his board and retires. Shortly afterwards, B plc is taken over by C plc. It so happens that members of your family, but not you, own lots of shares in C plc. You didn't know about the shares. No-one knew at the time of publication of your story that C plc was remotely likely to buy B plc.

Not so long after that, it emerges that your story was a massive hoax, in which you were a totally innocent dupe like everyone else.

Mr Big comes after you, alleging that you were not innocent at all, that you dreamed the whole thing up yourself, and that you among other things defamed and defrauded him to promote your own career and earn money both for yourself and for your family. He sues for defamation and demands that you be prosecuted for fraud.

The defamation action proceeds, but the police are "still investigating the case".

You, and only you, know the full truth, which is that you are actually totally innocent, in the sense that you believed that your story was true, and that you genuinely had no idea that C plc was owned in part by your family. You also knew all along, though, that your anonymous informant was involved with C plc. You have never disclosed her identity - even to your editor. You didn't disclose her connections because you did not think that they were relevant, although the paper's legal adviser had suggested that you might need to examine your conscience. Notwithstanding all that, you defend that because you say, and many agree with you, that you not possibly have realised how really relevant it was.

The defamation action comes on for trial. You successfully defend it in the High Court, on the basis of the new "reasonable publication" defence created by the Defamation Act 2009.It is quite clear that even the Reynolds privilege would not have sufficed under the pre-2009 legal position. The judge is very unhappy that enormous damage has been done to a lot of lives by your false story, but agrees that you were bona fide fairly careful and lays some emphasis on the fact that your editor and you spent hours discussing the legalities of publishing with solicitor and senior counsel before deciding to publish.

In her judgment, the judge also forensically (your fave word, until the appeal !) examines the evidence for Mr Big's assertions that you were motivated by malice against him, that your informant perpetrated the hoax in order to stymie the A plc/B plc deal, that you knew this, and that you happily went along with it because it suited your family members. She clearly and emphatically finds that each and every one of these claims is at variance with the evidence.

During the trial, Mr Big's legal team made an issue of whether the 2009 Act actually applied. It was an entirely technical issue of whether or not the relevant part of the Act had been brought into effect by Ministerial order on the date of publication of your story. (As is fairly standard, the Act has a provision that meant it did not become law until the Minister for Justice made an order bringing it into effect). The High Court judge decided that it had, because the Minister had indeed signed the order, even though it remained sitting on his desk throughout the period that the story ran.

Mr Big appealed to the Supreme Court on this latter point alone. The appeal succeeded, the court taking the opportunity to clarify the important constitutional principle that a document signed in private cannot change the law until promulgated in public. The senior judge made no attempt to hide his dislike of the new Act, and prefaced his judgment with some robust remarks about it being a charter for smart-aleck trust-fund junkies who wanted the freedom to destroy the careers of public figures without ever having to justify their smears cloaked in the language of serving the public interest.

Although you do not have a trust-fund, and the judge was probably unconsciously echoing (it happens) someone else's attack on a well-known former journalist turned successful author, everybody you know seems to take it as an accurate label for yourself. Some of your best friends even take to calling you "TFJ" semi-affectionately, and the nick-name sticks. Worse, everyone - even your own colleagues ! - incorrectly thinks that the whole Supreme Court decided that the High Court judge was wrong to dismiss Mr Big's nasty claims about your good faith.

You suffer a nervous breakdown ("go bananas"), and never write a by-lined story again.