A rabble gathers outside Whitechapel tube station at 2pm every Sunday afternoon, waits for the guide to make him/herself known, pays a fiver, then sets off to hear about the real history of the area.

Almost every pub and nightclub has scores of security staff watching out for trouble yet when the same rabble get to the public street a tiny number of Gardaí are expected to do the same job.

And it's no surprise. Nobody with any choices would agree to stand up in front of an undisciplined rabble every day.

Approval of words is obviously not obtained by referring to the official Scrabble dictionary, but is solely subject to the opinion of the vile rabble with whom you are playing.

‘Independence day has always been a noisy holiday celebrating the dizzying rabble of a populist uprising,’ he writes in his inimitable style.