I was sitting in the Dail canteen with some press colleagues recently when the conversation turned - as it often does - to the subject of leaky metal teapots.
Like many restaurants, the Dail canteen uses metal teapots, which have the advantages of being inexpensive and highly durable; the only disadvantage being that they're not really designed for pouring tea into any vessel smaller than a bucket.
On the day in question, we were observing a particularly grim struggle between a colleague and one of these teapots. The colleague was attempting the always-tricky task of getting a majority of the tea from the teapot into a cup, while the teapot was (more realistically) aiming for the next biggest target, which was the table.
It finished about even, which was a fair result in the circumstances. Some of these teapots are so cunningly designed that they simply will not pour any tea into a cup, no matter how you manipulate them. In these cases, the best way to fill your teacup is to (1) pour the tea directly onto the table-cloth and (2) wring out the table-cloth.
I admit that leaky teapots are a relatively small problem, but they are also an age-old one. For as long as I can remember metal teapots have been leaking, and the situation does not appear to be improving. No doubt this is because - like the Trabant motor car, with which it shares its design values - the metal teapot is indestructible. It may have built-in incompetence, but built-in obsolescence it has not.
How long the problem has existed is anybody's guess. Some scholars believe that Shakespeare - a known tea-drinker - was making direct comparisons with the quality of metal teapots when he wrote in The Merchant of Venice: "The quality of mercy is not strained/it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/upon the place beneath".
These may or may not be the thoughts of a man frustrated by strained metal urns, from which tea droppeth everywhere except upon the place beneath. But either way, it seems ridiculous that in the late 20th century - in an age when science is answering all the great questions from the origins of the universe to the origins of the female orgasm - we still have not created a reliable metal teapot.
I blame China, personally. I have no evidence that the Chinese are responsible for making all the world's metal teapots, but it's the sort of thing they do. And there is a perfect motive for them building in a design flaw in this case. China is a major exporter of tea: metal teapots waste tea, as a result of which consumers to have to buy more.
QED.
Maybe it's something that should be debated in the Dail, and not just in the canteen. There are precedents for such things. In this very newspaper last Wednesday (Times Past: "Story of an Irish Spade"), there was a description of a 1930s Dail debate in which a Mr H.M. Dockrell complained about the quality of Irish-made spades, compared with British ones. To illustrate the problem, he brought a broken spade handle into the chamber, giving rise to the following exchange, as reported in The Irish Times of July 8th, 1938:
"A voice from the Fianna Fail benches inquired if the deputy wanted to shovel out Irish manufacture, and Deputy Dockrell said he was talking about spades. Another member suggested that Deputy Dockrell needed more `spades' for a good hand, and the deputy retorted that he had the ace of spades."
This caused much hilarity, as you can imagine. And there was more: "The Speaker observed, amid laughter, that Deputy Dockrell should be allowed to `handle' the matter himself. Deputy Dockrell said he was not going to allow anyone to `dig in' on the good nature of the minister and his department."
One can only marvel now at the wit of these exchanges. Admittedly, there is no mention in the report of anyone on the Fianna Fail benches producing a shovel and spade and asking Mr Dockrell to "take his pick". But then this was 1938 and that joke would not be discovered until after the war.
However, the most interesting point of the story is that it shows deputies were able to bring things like defective spade handles into the chamber in the 1930s - a healthy approach to consumer debates, which could be usefully resurrected.
It would be refreshing, for instance, to see debates on the quality of farm produce accompanied by the handing around of sample potatoes or genetically-modified beet. Or in the light of developments this week, the Opposition could bring a front door into the chamber to illustrate the dangers of low-lying letter boxes, as it proposed banning them.
And yes, perhaps the Minister for Consumer Affairs could demonstrate the inadequacy of the metal teapot while introducing legislation requiring restaurants to decommission these things for once and for all. (I can imagine the report of the debate: "A voice from the Fianna Fail benches asked what the Fine Gael member was `spouting on' about. Meanwhile, the Opposition accused the minister of a drip-drip-drip approach. . ."
But enough of that. The other big consumer-related story this week was the death of Roy Rogers. I know that doesn't sound like a consumer-related story. But I bet when they saw Mr Rogers described as "the last of the singing cowboys," a lot of people had the same thought as me: "What about the guy who built our extension last year?"
Of course, as the letter-box case has reminded us, we live in an increasingly litigious society. So in case he's thinking of suing me for slander, I should remind the guy who built our extension that he is completely fictitious. We haven't even got an extension, in fact.