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.

Harney's not the only one should quit

Of course, Mary Harney should quit as Minister for Health with immediate effect. Her performance in the role has been little short of diabolical.

But it is worth recalling, as 97 more women fret about their cancer results, that there is a concept often cited by our Teflon Taoiseach known as collective cabinet responsibility.

They're all responsible for this mess we call a health service. All of them. Some of them are particularly responsible. Some of them, you could say, are more responsible than others.

On this list from the Department of Health, you can see that the two front runners to replace Bertie Ahern as Fianna Fail leader (and de facto Taoiseach of the nation) are BOTH former health ministers.

It is worth remembering how Micheal Martin, as health minister, commissioned over 200 reports which were not subsequently acted on while simultaneously robbing nursing home patients of up to €2 billion which the state had to pay back.

The senior civil servant in the Department said that he had told Micheal Martin about this scandal and had even given him the file in Martin's office. Martin denied this utterly. The file has never been found since, needless to say. Martin remains a cabinet minister. The civil servant moved sideways to the Higher Education Authority.

Brian Cowen, who charmingly called the Department of Health 'Angola', due to the amount of political landmines to be found underfoot, was also Minister for Health for three years. His time in Hawkins House is notable by its lack of anything notable. He didn't do a thing, tiptoeing around hoping no bombs went off until he could scamper for the safety of another Department.

If you were to believe some people, the Irish health system is permanently a wreck, unfixable and always was. This is nonsense.

A potted history of Irish health would run something like this:

The churches ran health provision forever, then the state, having missed the opportunity to create a National Health Service like the UK have, finally and belatedly intervened and the health boards were created in 1970.

Things remained okay for a while, then Charles Haughey slashed a quarter of all hospital beds, because we all had to tighten our belts.

Since then, those beds, that infrastructure, has never been replaced, while the population has exploded. In the Eighties, the scandals began. Organ retentions, blood infections, the lies, the spin. This was the period when the administrators came to power in health. But at least they were monitored by public representatives on the health boards.

When Mary Harney rationalised the health boards into the HSE, in itself not a bad idea, she made two massive errors. Firstly, she eradicated the ability of people to be elected to monitor the administrators. All of a sudden, no one was watching the watchmen.

Then she vowed that no jobs would be lost. The result was that we now have up to eight times as many health administrators as are needed, most aren't doing anything to justify their salaries, and none of them can be sacked.

This led directly to scandals varying from the millions upon millions spent on IT projects that either didn't work or didn't exist to the fact that neither Harney nor her overpaid mudguard Brendan Drumm even knew about the 97 more women whose cancer tests were wrong until yesterday.

By all means, by any means necessary, Mary Harney should quit with immediate effect. Her poodle Drumm, the €400,000 man, must also go.

But so should those who share collective cabinet responsibility for this unholy mess costing Irish lives. I'd start with Martin and Cowen, who have both directly contributed to the ongoing horror. But I wouldn't end there.

Ahern himself interfered in the decision of where to place the national children's hospital by making public statements, with the result that it went to the Mater, in his constituency, and his former employer.

Cullen ensured that Waterford would not get public radiotherapy but a privatised system instead. He even turned the sod on the site of their private hospital for them.

The entire cabinet share responsibility for the beleaguered state of our health service. If any one of them had a single shred of honour, they'd leave now.

When the PDs come knocking...

... banging on about their achievements in Government, remind them of some of these little statistics that their party leader is responsible for presiding over.

Thanks to KrayZpaving of Politics.ie for this.

Fleece the rich

Whatever happened to good old Robin Hood and taking from the rich to give to the poor?

I ask this in the context of the Irish Labour party proposing tax cuts which will disproportionately benefit the better off. Now we'd expect this from the 1% party, the Progressive Democrats. And sure enough, they didn't disappoint during their conference at the weekend.

Fuhrer McDowell, who had vowed not to engage in what he called 'auction' politics before the election, waved a nice cut in the top rate of income tax to entice his well-heeled, but increasingly vanishing electorate.

Today's Sunday Telegraph, a paper usually considered to be the mouthpiece of the old guard Tories in Britain, has a fascinating little poll in relation to the rich in the UK.

Nearly three-quarters of voters believe that the wallet-busting, multi-million pound bonuses awarded to top earners in the 'City of London' are "excessive" and need to be curbed. The other quarter polled were, I'm guessing from the Torygraph's usual readership, recent recipients of such bonuses.

The poll by ICM also revealed that nearly 70% of people think the gap between the highest paid and average earners is too large, and 43% believe Britain has become more selfish under Tony Blair.

The Loadsamoney stereotype of the city trader, as portrayed above by Harry Enfield, typified the excesses of the Thatcher era. But it has arisen again, only nowadays the stereotype of bling-bling excess materialism is considered a legitimate aspiration rather that worthy of contempt.

When even the Torygraph is complaining about excessive greed, you know that it is appalling in the extreme, especially when social inequity has never been so acute.

In commentary accompanying the stats, one New Labour MP Ian Gibson claimed that senior party colleagues are "very sympathetic to the rich. They have their holidays with them, they are envious of them."

So here's my question. Given that the gap between rich and poor has never been wider, and since Labour in Ireland are proposing tax cuts and Labour in Britain are holidaying with the superrich, who in the hell can I vote for who will promise to tax the have-too-muches and close the gap with the have-nots?

In other words, when even the allegedly left wing parties are playing the tax cuts game, who is the Robin Hood party?

What is Steve Staunton?

A spanner is a handy technical implement used for tightening up loose connections and to keep moving parts in good working order.

Steve Staunton is therefore not a spanner.

A muppet is one of an ensemble of entertainers who brought delight and joy to people the world over with their wonderful performances over a number of decades.

Steve Staunton is clearly not a muppet.

The gaffer is the person responsible for overseeing the lighting arrangements on the set of a movie, ensuring that illumination is shed both behind the scenes and on the performance that is broadcast to an audience of millions. The gaffer is often responsible for providing a steady source of power during the performance.

By no stretch of the imagination is Steve Staunton the gaffer.

Steve Staunton has presided over a national embarrassment, squandering national assets and demonstrating a hitherto unknown level of incompetence.

He has shown an utter lack of leadership, has failed to come up with even the simplest forward planning and relies on preposterous excuses to remain in his job, despite huge public unhappiness with his complete lack of achievement.

Obviously, Steve Staunton is actually a cabinet minister.