EVERY SATURDAY MORNING we like to take a look at all the best comments left on the site by you lot over the past week.

We’ve started doing something a little bit different: as with last week, we’re going to look at some of the comments which received the most thumbs up from other readers, plus the articles which received the most comments – as well as the usual mixture of the best comments of the week.

So here, in no particular order, are the standout comments from the week that was.

The top 5 articles which received the most comments this week:

1. Poll shows drop in support for Sinn Féin, rise for Fianna Fáil

2. Column: Why shouldn’t there be ‘abortion on demand’?

3. As it happened: Advocacy and religious groups address Oireachtas on proposed new abortion laws

4. Suicidal man calls Dublin radio station

5. Nurses protest plan to pay graduates ’80 per cent salary’

Some of the best comments left on the site this week:

This slideshow of ludicrous photographs from a London catwalk provoked much admiration of the fine craftwork involved. Kidding.  Claire Nolan summed much of it up with this:

Go home, Fashion, you’re drunk.

… Although as random pointed out, there was one upside:

At least we’re finally done with skinny jeans.

The report on the State’s involvement with the Magdalen Laundries is due to be published in the next four weeks. Gordon Meade explained why he wanted to see a full and frank explanation:

As someone who who has witnessed the damaging effects of these institutions on my mother and her friends. To still see the pain and anger ridden in their faces so many years after the events in those days. The fact that the people carrying out these crimes are more then likely dead. I really hope the report does justice to the women who suffered and had their freedom taken from them

Fitch ratings agency has said Irish house prices could still fall by another 20 per cent. Are they right? Peter Richardson thought so in this (slightly abridged for length) comment:

The Fitch assessment is a note of sanity. The Irish Independent and the Sunday Independent have been flogging the line that residential property prices are on the up, buyers have missed the bottom of the market, that investors have already managed to flip on properties on a short term basis with massive gains and trying to encourage a recovery in prices as as a result.

The actual problem was the hyper inflation in residential property values, a function of liberal or reckless lending policies, especially from 2000 onwards. It would be bad for Ireland for a residential property boom to happen again but that will not happen. There are too many adverse factors, some of which have been identified by Fitch.

The fact is that there was a massive property price bubble, prices were unsustainable, borrowers were and are over burdened with debt, there is a massive mortgage impairment crisis yet fully to hit the banks and the economic context is really bad, especially unemployment, emigration and the inescapable of reduced demand driven by austerity.

There cannot be a recovery in house prices unless or until the economy actually recover. I must be colour blind because the green shoots are still invisible to me.

It’s impossible to choose one but there were a lot of moving comments beneath yesterday’s column about the women campaigning for medical terminations to be made available in cases of a fatal foetal diagnosis. Worth a read.

Rugby player Paul O’Connell baffled some this week with his Cantona-esque description of how his back injury is like ‘a piece of toothpaste coming out of an onion‘. Indeed. Little Jim knew what it was about though:

I’m actually a huge fan of his poetry.
Massively underrated.

If you were looking for a way to get rid of your Christmas tree this week, you could have done worse than take part in the Christmas Tree Throwing Championship in Ennis at the weekend. Things got pretty competitive though, as Jamie McCormack pointed out:

that little fella in the orange lagging-jacket in the first photo is clearly over the line as he releases that Christmas tree.. they need to bring in video technology if we’re going to take Christmas tree-throwing seriously as a sport.

(Catwalk image: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire. Christmas tree photo: Image: Brian Arthur/Press 22)

Top 5 comments with the most thumbs up this week:

(Paul Faith/PA Wire)

1. This comment by Brendan Cox on the article about the Dublin radio station which broadcast a live conversation with a man threatening to jump off a bridge got more than 1,340 thumbs up, making it the most popular comment this week:

I hope he comes out of it ok… dunno what I would have done if I was the presenter

2. Spookily enough, for the second week in a row, the second most-popular comment on the site this week was about puppies. It was this post by Aisling Mulvenny on the puppy found with its throat slashed in Portlaoise:

Horrible sick individuals doing something so awful to an innocent puppy. Hopefully he’ll make a full recovery an find his forever home!!

3. Loyalists from Northern Ireland have postponed their plan to hold a sarcastic protest outside Leinster House today. Gaius Gracchus was sanguine:

All those Celtic jerseys washed and ironed for nothing

4. Paul Martin got more than 1,210 thumbs up for this comment on the article about how often people drop their phones or tablets on themselves as they read in bed:

Dropped my iPhone on myself one night, now wearing an iPatch

5. Pharmacists aren’t too happy about the new credit card-sized driving licences which they say will take crucial business away from small pharmacies. Kevin McNeela was unsympathetic – and had the fifth most popular comment this week:

Boo hoo they have a monopoly on drug sales and last time I checked you still need photos for lots of other things like passports and the garda age card. It’s pathetic. And then the cherry on top is it might cost jobs.

Spot any comments which you think should make the list of top comments of the week? Let us know: mail christine@thejournal.ie with any suggestions.