A tale of two Irelands

Partition is a reality. We're a number of generations down the road from the creation of the border, and while the two sections of the island have grown closer in recent peacetime, there's no doubt that a cultural gap has grown in the intervening years.

I'm not talking about the presence of significant numbers of Protestants in the North. They've been there a long time. I'm talking about the difference in cultures that is demonstrated by these two stories of health service junketeering:

1. On Monday, the Irish News in Belfast had a story all over its front page about jet-setting NHS chiefs, swanning off to America on health service money.

2. Today, the Irish Times in Dublin has a story mentioned briefly on its front page about jet-setting Irish health service middle-manager, swanning off to America on health service money.

What's the difference? Well, in the Northern case, the top two guys (named and shamed in the article) in the ambulance service attended a legitimate training course in Boston this year that cost £6,000 but could have been cheaper by about £1,500 if they'd stayed in cheaper hotel rooms.

In the Southern case, an unnamed official went on SIXTEEN foreign junkets to places including Australia and New York, wracking up an unmentioned total bill on trips that were found to have little relevance or merit.

In the North, the culprits are named and the costs identified, and even though it was one trip and the figure relatively paltry, it made the front page. Because the culture in the North is to be disgusted at any waste in the health service when front line services are being cut.

In the South, we'll never know who the culprit was. We aren't told how big a bill he wracked up. He's already retired, so there will be no punishment, no comeback. And it's a tiny story, because we're so inured to this sort of corruption, from Government ministers, to Fas, to every arm of the state using the country's money like a holiday voucher, that sixteen pointless trips abroad, often suspiciously around St Patrick's Day, is just another drop in the ocean of corruption and greed.

£1500 quid too much spent on a legitimate training trip, and the North is up in arms. Many multiples of that squandered on pointless junkets in the South, and we don't find out who was responsible, or how much they wasted, and the story will pass into history without a second glance.

For me, this is the single biggest obstacle to uniting Ireland. I know plenty of Unionists and Loyalists. They're coming to terms with the rest of the island. Many of them can imagine a single state with them in it, as long as their identity was protected.

They're not fearful of 'Rome Rule' anymore. They're fearful of this - ending up in a basketcase economy, rife with corruption, where a blind eye is turned to cute hoors with their noses in the trough.

The cross-border bodies set up under the Good Friday Agreement have been enlightening in this regard. With the singular exception of the Ulster-Scots Agency, which was a junket fund for spoofers, bigots and paedophiles, the cross border bodies have been one long litany of Northern civil servants complaining, appalled, about how their Southern counterparts behave in regards to wasting funds and pulling fast ones.

This gombeen culture, and our collective tolerance of it, has to stop. The media can play its part. The Irish Times deserves some credit for reporting this at all. But until the day when these sort of stories of corruption are reported with the same appalled horror that a much more minor misdemeanour in the North attracts, there will forever be two Irelands on this island.

The Celtic Tiger disease

Image courtesy of The Community Voice.

I was listening to Start The Week tonight. (Well, it beats watching Prime Time, obviously.)

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson was on explaining how come a disease researcher like him ended up penning a book about why societies need to be more equal.

His book is top of my 'must buy and read' list already. But if I got him right, basically he was researching illness caused by lifestyle (stress, obesity and so on) and found it more prevalent in the most unequal societies, even if they were overall very affluent.

By contrast, more equal societies like Sweden have much lower levels of all these social and personal ills, despite having less disposable income overall.

Then he looked into things like violence, and found again that deeply unequal societies have the worst violence. What was really interesting was that he discovered that the very rich elites in these societies suffer too. Their wealth merely takes the edge off the risks.

He made the very good point that in such unequal societies - America, Britain, us, but also places like Singapore and Portugal, as well as the obvious African despotocracies - everyone suffers from status anxiety.

In other words, having the big car is no comfort because someone richer has a bigger car. And meanwhile, everyone works harder to earn the money which they then squander on such status symbols instead of using it usefully to develop their lives and society in a genuinely positive way.

Any of this sound familiar?

This goes to the core of the Celtic Tiger lie. The rising tide may well have lifted many of the boats (although you'll always meet plenty of people who it completely passed by.) But it didn't improve Irish society or make our lives more fulfilling and happier.

Instead it made us work harder to live in worse conditions (boxy apartments in dormitory estates miles from anywhere) in order to support the ostentatious consumption that was thrust forth as the be all and end all of our human existence.

Now that the Irish people are finally waking up from the nightmare, we can come to acknowledge that the squandering of the wealth we created wasn't just the fault of bankers, politicians and a golden circle, culpable though they all are.

We're all collectively responsible, and that can be seen in the fruits of our labour. The Celtic Tiger disease is best expressed by what we wasted our money on.

The rise of vacuous celebrity magazines, trumpeting the values of vapidity like the Beckhams or Jade Goody is possibly the most defining symptom of our collective disease.

So was the proliferation of bling, the pointless plumage of the self-obsessed. As were the overt penis-extensions like the big cars, the McMansions and the endless foreign holidays where people went to ever more exotic locales with the sole intent of boasting of it afterwards.

There is a cure for both this emptiness and for the deep social inequality that caused it. But that cure is currently a dirty word. Don't believe me? Listen to the shills scaremongering.

Let's start with a personal favourite, the Sunday Independent, mouthpiece of 'Sir' Tony O'Reilly, the man who got our gas and oil for nothing who now resides as a tax exile in Barbados and who closed Waterford Crystal, such is his commitment to our economy.

Here's his trustworthy senior journalist Jody Corcoran, a hack who previously excelled himself by accusing the late Liam Lawler of being with a prostitute when he died in a Moscow car crash (the poor woman was his interpreter.)

According to Jody, there is a battle for the hearts and minds of Ireland, and our Jody fears - gulp - that the battle may already be lost. Apparently the future of Ireland is socialism.

Yup, the S word. The word that the neo-cons successfully, and utterly inaccurately, linked so directly to Soviet gulags and Stalinist purges, to Mao's mayhem and famine and death, that even socialists themselves rapidly felt the need to rebrand as social democrats all over the world.

The word that Bertie Ahern once risibly sought to claim.

Socialism, the big boogyman, the dangerous ideology that would destroy our society.

How did we not see this 'reds under the bed' nonsense for what it is the SECOND time they played us with it? The truth is that it was the exact opposite of socialism, the inane, greed-driven inequity at the heart of neo-conservatism that destroyed what was good about Ireland.

I hope Corcoran is right (that's possibly a first for me.) I hope the future of Ireland IS socialism and for one very simple reason - we already tried the alternative he and his ex-pat billionaire employer espouse, and it's brought us to the brink of destruction.

We've destroyed our social cohesion, squandered our wealth and bankrupted our nation, while simultaneously abandoning the sickest in society to the vicissitudes of Harney's marketplace, and beggaring our young families on lifetime long mortgages for piss-poor accommodation.

Don't let the very people who beggared you, who stole your healthcare and social services, who sold you on extreme debt to fund crap you don't need that enriched only their already obscene bank balances - don't let them scare you any more.

The only way out of our current crisis is to recognise it for what it is, and wake up from the nightmare we sleepwalked into. The way out is to build a more equal society. The way out is to adopt the one political vision that this country has never tried in its entire history.

The disease, as Dr Wilkinson rightly diagnoses, is that we replaced a slightly unequal society with a desperately acutely unequal one.

The cure for that inequality is socialism.

A close brush with death

I'm sorry again for another extended absence from this blog.

This time I have a better excuse than the dog ate my blog post. I was in hospital, in the cardiac ward, after an unfortunate incident earlier this week.

I was rushed to hospital by ambulance by a crew which arrived almost instantly they were called, ushered me quickly but professionally into the ambulance and rallied me safely to A+E.

In A+E, I was triaged instantly and moved to the resuscitation area (though I was conscious at the time.) That's where I had my first brush with death. As I was receiving morphine and being examined, the person in the cubicle next to me (an elderly lady who'd been found in her nursing home room unconscious) failed to recover and passed away.

Later, as I recovered in the cardiac area of casualty, two more elderly patients who had suffered cardiac incidents failed to make it.

I was in the hospital for two days, and I saw up close and personal the tremendous dedication and ability of our frontline medical staff. From consultant cardiologists to porters, and all the student doctors, nurse practitioners and other staff in between, I couldn't fault the professionalism, patience or ability of anyone of them.

These people work in a literally hellish environment. Like the rings of Inferno, the wails of the ill pervade.

In some cases, the patients just do not stop fucking moaning. Sure, they're unwell and they're in hospital. But why add to a difficult situation by moaning your hole off all the time? Especially when the staff are performing superhuman efforts in almost impossible circumstances?

Anyway, my case ended up not being anywhere near as serious as it first appeared, thank goodness. I'm fine and dandy now, and after witnessing the deaths of three people this week, I'm very thankful and grateful to be so.

And it is the staff of our beleaguered health service I have to thank for that. I owe them all a great deal of gratitude.

And on their behalf and on behalf of all patients languishing on trolleys in casualty wards across Ireland tonight, may I just add, I hope Mary Harney dies alone in absolute untreatable agony with alsatians chewing her bloated carcass while she still lives, the fat evil bitch.

Budget carnage

Did you enjoy your decade of gombeen government?

I hope you did, because the bill just arrived:

1% 'levy' on all earnings.
2% over 100K.
HSE middle management axed; review of public service to find more job cuts.
Decentralisation paused till 2011.
8c a litre on petrol, 50c on pack of fags, 50c on bottle of wine.
'Review' of pension reserve fund (he's going to raid it later.)
Dublin Metro on pause.
Over 70s med card axed for those who don't qualify - but they'll get a 400 euro donation towards med costs in its place.
Capital gains tax up.
10 euro tax on airport departures, 2 euro for 'shorter' journeys.
Tax on second homes and let homes, but not on homes for sale but not sold (got to look after those poor builders).
Child benefit halved for 18 year olds, and to be scrapped in a couple of years.

When your next pay cheque arrives, notably lighter than before, remember who to blame. You'll get a chance to have your say next year, when the local government elections come around.

(Pic shamelessly nicked from the geniuses at The Irish Sentinel)

The PDs are dead!

Hooray! At last some good news.

The PDs wound themselves up tonight, after winding up the rest of us for years. Obviously they couldn't face the hammering they were going to get next year in the locals.

Good feckin riddance to some seriously toxic rubbish.

What a rogue's gallery of chancers, gombeens, blusterers, pocketliners and ne'er-do-wells. I don't know how they ever had the audacity to pitch themselves as Fianna Fail's mudguard when they were the most damaging gombeen opportunists of all.

I note they leave just as the economic meltdown they helped create gets properly underway.

Chickenshit bastards that they are, they won't even try cleaning up the mess they made.

Can we now, pretty, pretty please, kick that lump Harney out of health before there are no public hospitals left, and implement some tax hikes on the superrich?

Thank you.

Where the cuts should fall (and what we need to spend more on, even in a recession)

1997 - 7,000 Administrators employed in Irish health service across ten health boards.
2008 - 18,000 Administrators employed in the Irish health service across a single Health Service Executive.

Conclusion: Sack no less than 12,000 of those Administrators.

1980 - Number of acute hospital beds in Ireland for a population of 3 million - 18,000
2008 - Number of acute hospital beds in Ireland for a population of 4 million - 12,000

Conclusion: We need at least 3,000 more beds in our acute hospitals, no matter what state the economy is in.

Death by a thousand cuts

History will not record that Louth Fianna Fail councillor Tommy Murphy dealt Bertie the first cut.

Nor will history record that Progressive Democrat senator and leader candidate Fiona O'Malley dealt Bertie that first cut.

Despite the belated scramble by the abject Green Party leader, Minister for Environment John Gormley to slide a knife into Ahern, history will not record that he dealt the Taoiseach the first blow.

No, the first of the thousand cuts that kill Bertie's Taoiseachship came from Minister for Health, Mary Harney.

Let me be clear. I do not like Mary Harney or her policies in the Department of Health. She has presided, literally, over a repudiation of responsibility that verges on criminal and has undoubtedly contributed to circumstances in the Irish health service which have cost people their lives.

But I will acknowledge that she has integrity. She left Fianna Fail because of its endemic corruption and has remained outside since. Many will query whether that made a big difference, since she so cleverly positioned her tiny party in such a place that it propped up successive Fianna Fail governments.

I would suggest it made a difference to her. Fianna Fail used her as a mudguard in regard to the health service. She knows this, and knew it when Bertie re-appointed her to the position recently.

There are easier jobs she could do, no doubt. Especially following the decimation of her party last year, and her having the leadership foisted upon her after McDowell had so rudely demanded she relinquish it.

But her integrity ensured that she remained at her post. More's the pity, I would say. There are few other health ministers who would have pursued the privatisation of our health service with such blinkered vision and such disastrous results.

But just as her integrity can have negative consequences, so it can occasionally be positive for the nation also.

Such as today.

Her conscience jogged by Fiona O'Malley, Harney finally spoke out, finally removed the knife from the belt and slammed it into the back of Bertie.

Apres ca, le deluge.

Let the bloodletting begin.

Is medical tourism the only answer to Ireland's health famine?

After years of fulminating against the Irish health service, I finally put my money where my mouth is.

For a long time, I have headed across the border to the North anytime I needed a check up, some primary care, or some minor emergency treatment. Who wouldn't, given the opportunity, since the British NHS is actually free? No fifty quid to see a doc, no fifty quid to get into A+E. Free to those who need it.

Not to mention shorter A+E queues, cleaner hospitals, more English-speaking staff, fewer flesh-eating bugs, etc, etc.

But I have needed a small operation on my toe for some years now. It wasn't the sort of thing you would get done quickly in the Irish health service, as I wasn't actually bleeding to death and don't have a VHI Plan E insurance card.

But increasingly, it was impeding my ability to walk. It's been years since I could kick a football. And because it is an existing complaint, even if I did sign up for private health insurance that I can't afford, the VHI or their corporate rivals wouldn't pay for the op.

I costed the operation in Ireland, and was quoted a significant four figure sum from a very well known private hospital in the greater Dublin area. This is a lot of money to me. So I decided to keep on suffering.

But the pain got progressively worse, so I looked further afield. In Britain, a number of private hospitals appeared able to do the minor operation required. They were, however, reticent to quote a price without my actually coming to them to be assessed. I can understand this need to assess first, but it is a very simple operation.

A doctor of my acquaintance warned me that it should be as easy to quote for such an operation as it would to quote for, say, laser eye surgery. He also warned that due to increasing medical tourism from Irish patients, and a perception that Irish patients are all loaded, some UK hospitals might possibly be guilty of inflating prices for Irish patients to the upper end of the scales.

Then I came across the Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok. Go look at their website. This hospital is as good as anything anywhere on earth. Their doctors are nearly all American or UK trained. The facilities are second to none. Ex-pats living all over Asia flock to it when they need medical treatment.

And they're cheap. My operation took an hour and cost 230 euro. In perfect sterile conditions, by highly qualified staffd, and complete with two follow-up examinations and post-operative medication.

While I was there, I met a lad whose cousin tragically succumbed to a drug overdose and has been in a coma in intensive care at the hospital for seven months. A doctor relative had told the lad I spoke to that he didn't believe the patient would have survived in Britain (or, by extension, Ireland) because the quality of care at Bumrungrad so greatly exceeded what was available back home.

I can believe that.

On the one hand, I feel cheap and tawdry for using what little financial clout I have to fly away from the car crash of the Irish health service to avail of proper world class medical facilities. I feel sad for those who can't afford to do likewise, for all those poor people trapped in squalor on trollies in our crowded and dangerous A+E wards.

On the other hand, I was never going to get my operation if I hadn't flown to Thailand to have it done.

Today, Newstalk Radio are holding a themed broadcast day about the Irish health service, which they've rightly entitled the 'Health Famine.' They've been asking people to call in with their stories. I don't do call ins, so I'm putting my story here instead.

This country is infinitely richer than Thailand, yet we cannot even approach the quality of care available there, at a fraction of the cost of healthcare in Ireland. That fact alone ought to have long since accounted for Mary Harney's political career. Why it hasn't is simply beyond me.

Perhaps the people of Ireland are too complacent and accepting of appalling healthcare to demand better. Or perhaps I should fly back to Bangkok and have my head examined.

God knows, it would be inexpensive and the quality of care would be magnificent.

My toe's grand now, by the way. Thanks for asking.