Championes Championes!!

It’s official. As of yesterday, not only are Scunthorpe going to be promoted to the Championship, but they go up as winners of League One.

What do you make of that? The Wrinklies are in confusion, as I am myself, and though we’re all agreed that while it will be great to see Scunthorpe playing against the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Norwich and maybe West Brom, we’ll have to find some new underdog to follow.

Wrinkly Joe suggests Cowdenbeath, but Wrinkly Paddy rejects that out of hand.

Scunthorpe is cold and gloomy enough, as he put it. I’m fucked if I’m going to visit an even colder, even gloomier town when I could be following some crowd from the south of France.

I’m inclined to agree with Wrinkly Paddy’s point of view. We’ll have to look around for some obscure, struggling Spanish or Italian no-hopers with a beautiful home town and a balmy climate. Any suggestions?

Anyway, that’s enough football shite.

I’m off to town to meet Jimmy Da Wop and Joe the Inquisitor. We’re going to see I’m Your Man, the Leonard Cohen movie. And then we’re going to a live gig. And no doubt we’ll all roll home shit-faced at some ridiculous hour and we’ll have to phone in sick.

Hello? Uh, hi. Look, I can’t come in. I’m sick.

Sick? Every Monday you’re sick.

But I am. I’m really sick.

Yeah? How sick are you?

I’m in bed with my mother.

But your mother is dead.

See? I told you I was sick.

Paddy’s Mandocaster

I must show you something, said Wrinkly Paddy and leapt up from his chair.

Look at this! he exclaimed, pulling something out of a bag. I got it last week.

I reached out and took it. It’s a guitar, I told him. A very small electric guitar. A child’s electric guitar, in fact.

With that, I handed it back to him, grinning smugly.

Look again, said Paddy, holding the instrument out to me.

On closer inspection, though it certainly seemed to be an unfeasibly small electric guitar, I noticed something not often found on guitars: it had four pairs of strings.

Good God, man! I ejaculated. Is it – ? It’s not a – ?

It is indeed, my good fellow, replied Wrinkly Paddy. What you hold in your hand is none other than an electric mandolin.

Well, I said. Fuck me sideways if it ain’t.

Indeed, said Paddy, and no ordinary electric mandolin either.

No?

No, he confirmed. What you’re looking at here, my friend, is a Mandocaster.

Really? I was astonished.

Yes, really, he nodded. And do you know who used to own it?

Eh, no, I had to confess.

I thought not, said Wrinkly Paddy. The previous owner of this here Mandocaster was none other than a man by the name of Hendrix.

You’re joking!

Would I jest about someting like this? Hendrix was playing this very instrument when the bikers attacked the crowd at the music festival.

Yeah, I said. Altamont. The Hell’s Angels. Sonny Barger. But I thought that was the Stones?

Paddy stared at me like I was mad. What?

Altamont, I said. ‘Sixty-nine?

Lisdoonvarna, he said. Seventy-eight.

Jimi Hendrix? I said.

Seamus Hendrix, he replied. Look. You can still see the burn-marks.

Bertie’s Parallel Universe

See?

And they laughed at me for being such a big fan of Stargate! Ha! I bet they’re sniggering on the other side of their faces now that scientists have discovered an earth-like planet only 50 million light-years away, orbiting the Sol-like star, Mu Arae.

See? See??

Ha!

I suspect this discovery is more significant than the scientists realise. I suspect, in fact, that they have discovered the home-world of our esteemed and beloved Prime Citizen, Bertie Ahern.

Jaysus, dat was some ride. Howya?

Why do I think this? Well, it seems to be our nearest Earth-like neighbour, its gravity is such that its inhabitants are likely to be short, thick-boned and squat. Furthermore, to judge by what our Prime Citizen said yesterday, he can’t possibly be from Planet Earth, but must come from a parallel reality just slightly skaw-ways of our own. The Bertieverse.

Did you hear the shit he was talking about the electronic voting machines? I’m sure everybody remembers the e-voting debacle presided over by Bertie’s moronic minister for some-crap-or-other Martin Cullen. No? Oh, really?

Well, it was like this. They bought a big pile of computers from this Dutch company called NEDAP. They were special computers you see, and all you had to do was push buttons to select whoever you wanted to see elected. This was great for Bertie, cos, see, it meant Ireland was all modern, see, not like in the dark old days when we made a mark on an old-fashioned piece of paper with an old-fashioned pencil. Oh, and an old-fashioned pile of votes in a box that you could count again if you thought somebody was attempting electoral fraud, but that would never happen in our modern democracy, would it? Not according to Bertie, anyway.

OK. So here we had these special computers which were really just PCs with no keyboards, and they were programmed with this special Dutch software, but the special Dutch programmers wouldn’t let our people see the special Dutch source code, even though we were paying for it, and our civil servants said No bother, Boss. That’s fine!!

The fucking fools.

What? You call that a voting machine???

So they used it in a couple of elections. Oh, did I mention PR? No? Silly me. Unlike, say, in Britain, we don’t have a first-past-the-post electoral system. No. We have the single transferable vote: proportional representation. Which means that the NEDAP software has to do all sorts of things it isn’t used to, like tranferring surpluses, and lots more besides, and it’s very important to be sure it’s doing it right. But of course, as we couldn’t look at the code, we couldn’t really tell.

Now, people started to object to this. They started to say, well how the fuck do I know my vote was counted at all? Where’s the paper trail? they started to say. And where’s the verification of the software, they asked.

That was when Bertie called us Luddites.

Luddites!

Bertie Ahern: Soldier, Statesman, Poet and now Software Expert, found himself confident in dismissing all the IT professionals who spoke out and questioned the new Dutch voting system. All the people who were concerned to protect our democracy, Bertie found himself able to dismiss as Luddites. Not to mention people like myself, who aren’t IT professionals but aren’t stupid either.

Minister Martin Cullen explains his plans for the system

What do you think happened? There was such a public clamour, the government had to set up a commission of investigation. And what do you think the commission found? Yup. The whole thing is a crock of shit – that’s what it found.

So the special Dutch machines went into storage, where they remain, and so far the whole ridiculous saga has cost €62 million. How about that? But I’m not finished. After the commission reported, a Dutch team used the data it produced to hack the very same machines in Holland, proving that the system was far from secure and could easily be subverted by any unscrupulous person with sufficient access to it.

NEDAP’s chief software engineer arrives from Holland

Now. Fast forward to yesterday, when Bertie told the world that Ireland was the laughing stock of Europe for using paper and pencil to hold elections. He was embarrassed because the French had used e-voting in their presidential elections, and we were still stuck in the distant past.

What Bertie either neglected to say, or didn’t know, was this.

The French used mostly paper and pencil, except for a pilot test on 1.5 million voters.

They used three different suppliers of machines on trial, inlcuding NEDAP.

They weren’t operating a proportional representation system like ours, but a straight first-past-the-post system.

There’s great concern in France about electronic voting due to the same worries as we have here in Ireland.

I dunno. Push a button, see what happens!

Now. Did Bertie acknowledge any of this? No.

When asked by the Opposition politicians about the waste of money on a useless system, did he hold his hands up and say Sorry, lads. We made a shit of it?

No.

Well then, did he blame his idiot minister, Cullen the fool, for wasting €62 million of taxpayers’ money?

Eh, that would be a No.

e-vote THIS, motherfucker!

Who do you think Bertie blamed for wasting all that money?

That’s right. In spite of the fact that an independent government-appointed commission reported that it’s a big pile of crap, he blamed the Opposition politicians for objecting to the system. He didn’t blame the people who bought it without knowing what the hell they were doing. Oh no. By speaking out against a flawed, anti-democratic system that was riddled with weaknesses and open to electoral fraud, the Opposition were somehow responsible for wasting all that money. They were supposed to let Bertie implement this big pile of wombat-droppings so he could strut around in front of his urbane European colleagues and feel a little less like the thick lumpenprole he is. And the rest of us were supposed to lie down and shut the fuck up. Bertie knew best.

Were the cretin Cullen or his civil servants responsible at all? Ah God no.

This my friends, is a terminal case of hubris. This is a man who has forgotten that he is only a man and not the Sun King. Now, unfortunately, we have as an Opposition a crowd of complete muppets, so I don’t know what to advise you. I suggest you vote everybody out.

Eh, let’s see. Just hit B for Bertie, right?

This ludicrous outburst by the Prime Citizen reminds me of something Wrinkly Paddy told me about. Did you know that you can walk into a bookie’s office now and you can watch a computer-generated horse race, with little cartoon horses and jockeys running around a make-believe track, all coming out of a computer chip? I swear to you, it’s true. Maybe that’s how Bertie would like to see our elections.

Our new President: Vlad the Impaler.

This is the planet Bertie inhabits.

This is Bertual Reality.

Thanks a Million

Thanks a million.

It’s such an insipid insincere expression, isn’t it?

Thanks a million. Like a horrible verbal air-kiss.

Mwuh!

I never say thanks a million, though I might say thanks a hundred. Or maybe thanks eight.

Thanks ax²+by²+c.

Thanks a parabola.

Thanks a huge enormous biggest ever in the whole world hyperbola.

Thanks haemorrhoids.

Thanks a heart attack.

Thanks Gandhi. Thanks a coelacanth. Thanks an ounce. Thanks a scab.

Thanks Ulan Bator. Thanks Phil Spector.

Thanks a hail of bullets.

My favourite of all, and the one I use most often is this: Thanks.

My Dog, Satan

It’s very difficult to own a dog. Very. It’s hard. Dogs demand a great amount from their owners, and anyone who tries to tell you that pets lower your blood pressure should be shot down in the street like a – well, like a dog.

I have, as you probably know, two dogs. Satan and Dermot.

Dermot is a fool. A dimwit who follows any passing pedestrian. A cretin. A moron. A half-wit.

Satan is rather different.

Jimbo and I went for a walk with our collective doggery yesterday, down around Plassey and the University area. It’s our favourite walk because it’s nice to stroll beside the beautiful River Shannon, especially in the wonderful weather we’ve been having lately. It takes about an hour, which isn’t a huge burden and what’s more, we get a bit of exercise too. The dogs get to run through the fields and chase creatures into bushes. Occasionally, Satan gets to kill something, but it’s usually something you’d want killed anyway, so we don’t mind too much.

The University is building an amazing footbridge across the Shannon – did I mention that before? An astonishing elevated thing that meanders among the islands on the river and connects the Limerick side of the campus with the Clare side. Wonderful. I’ve always loved that part of the Shannon. We used to swim there as kids, and paddle flat-bottomed boats down the river. You can still sit on the bank and wait for the trout and salmon to jump in the evening.

It’s lovely, and guess what? Who do you think is building the bridge? Eiffel!! That’s who. The same people who built that tower over there in Franceland.

Here’s a picture of what the bridge will be like when it’s finished:

Won’t it be nice? Anyway, that isn’t what I started to talk about. What I started to talk about was dogs. During our walk by the River Shannon, Jimbo looked around and said

One . . . Two . . . eh, Three?

Eh, no, actually. No Dermot. Why not? Very simple: Dermot gone. Dermot wandered off because Dermot completely stupid, and therefore we spend another thirty minutes driving around looking for the completely dense, incompetent, but very friendly and cute Dermot. We found him at last, following – what else? – two old men and a little grand-daughter walking their dogs.

We pulled up beside them, and I leaned out the window.

Jesus, thanks lads. I’m very-

That was as far as I got before Satan jumped past me out the window and savaged both of the poor old men’s mutts and a little timid creature led by the screaming child. We left in a cloud of smoke with the old men shaking their fists at us and the little girl giving a statement to the University security people.

Satan is a problem.

Gagarin Way

We haven’t been to the theatre in a while.

Tomorrow, a few of us are off to the Belltable to see the Island theatre company doing Gagarin Way.

I’ll report back with news.

UPDATE

Go and see Gagarin Way immediately. It’s great. The cast are great. It’s well worth it. Go now.

Irish Medical Consultants

There’s an almighty row going on at the moment about the contracts being offered to new hospital consultants.

An incredible uproar.

And the reason? Well, the government is going to hire more consultants, but they’ll have to work exclusively in the public health service. They won’t be able to have private patients under the new contract but instead will have to devote their full attention to public work.

This won’t affect the conditions of employment enjoyed by the present consultants, nor will it reduce their income in any way, but they’re not a bit happy. They don’t want their money-making system changed, and they’re not used to being questioned. You see, Irish consultants have a great set-up, whereby they get a salary from the government and can also treat private patients in public hospitals, using theatre facilities, laboratories and hospital beds provided by the taxpayer. Not to mention all the nurses and junior doctors, also paid for by the taxpayer. On top of all that, many of them behave like arrogant strutting demi-gods, as we saw for instance in the Neary scandal.

They like it that way, and who could blame them?

I had a look around and, as far as I can establish, these are the only group of public-service workers entitled to this kind of working arrangement. As far as I’ve been able to find out, all other professional groups within the civil service and in local councils are barred from doing private work. Lawyers, engineers, veterinarians, architects and a host of others are all explicitly barred from working privately in their own profession.

When you walk into an Irish hospital, you can choose to be a private patient or a public one, and it is a festering scandal in this country that, if you walk into a publicly-funded hospital and choose to go private, you will get faster treatment in the hospital and better attention from the consultant, because you can pay. This is true and it’s a disgrace.

Did you know that in Ireland, by law, there’s a universal entitlement to free healthcare, regardless of whether you have private health insurance or not? And yet, everybody entering an Irish hospital is asked if they have insurance, and if the answer is yes, they’re automatically routed into the private channel.

The Comptroller and Auditor General recently published a report into all of this. He concluded that, even though hospital consultants have, by agreement with the government, a right to use up to 20% of hospital beds for their private patients, they routinely take more. Likewise, they refuse to account for their hours of work though – depending on thair category – they receive between €140,000 and €180,000 a year to attend work. In addition, for their private work, they get all the back-up services available at the hospital, paid for by you and me, including staff to work for them.

Now, I know I made this comparison before, but just let me say it again. It’s the very same as if you walked into your local Council, and you said to the planner: I want to build a house.

The planner looks back at you and says, OK, but you’ll have to wait two years. I’m busy.

So you say, But I can pay!

And the planner takes a step backwards. Why didn’t you say so? Come into my Council office here and I’ll get a Council technician to draw up the plans for you. We’ll print them out on the Council’s printer and you’ll have permission tomorrow morning.

Seriously. Isn’t it exactly the same? And yet, any planner attempting such behaviour would be arrested.

There was an article in the Irish Times last Friday that I thought was very revealing of the sort of elitist condescending mindset at work among some of the medical profession in this country.

It was written by a guy called Ronan Cahill, described as a senior specialist registrar at Cork University Hospital. He’s close to becoming a consultant himself, and he’s not the slightest bit happy that the gravy train is about to come off the tracks. He thinks that the level of pay on offer won’t attract people to take up consultant posts in this country. Incidentally, the salary is in the order of €200,000 a year, and I heard one English-based consultant on the radio during the week saying it was better than the British rates, and better than many self-employed consultants in the USA could make.

But the real giveaway, I thought, was a nasty little comment embedded in the article where he remarked that the new contracts would prove attractive to clock-punching, detached, disengaged automatons whose ambition is levelled at achieving a reasonable monthly salary.

I had to read it twice to be sure I was right.

clock-punching, detached, disengaged automatons

Hold on. That’s me he’s talking about, isn’t it? And you. And nurses. And junior doctors. And technicians. And radiographers. And physiotherapists. And everyone else inside or outside the health service who holds down a paying job. This is a guy who regards just about the entire world with contempt and I have no doubt he’s a good example of his breed. No wonder he’s peeved: this man is clearly consultant material, in his condescending attitude if nothing else.

Ronan makes the point that exceptionally innovative, educated people – such as himself – won’t train to be consultants any more because the money won’t be good enough. All along, thoughout his training, he expected to get the State salary and also have his own private income, and to be fair to him, you can see his point. There is a lot more money in the private work. He’s right.

Aha! I have it!!

Why doesn’t Ronan forget about the public work? Why doesn’t he just go off and work in a private clinic where the rewards are so much greater? That will solve his problem.

Oh! No, sorry, I was wrong. It won’t.

You see, then there would be no €200k from the State. No free beds. No free nurses. No free theatres. No free technicians. No free pathology. But worst of all, there would be nobody at the front desk to tell 20% of publicly-entitled patients that they have to go private.

And they accused the nurses of greed?

================================

related article from The Bitter Pill

Scunster

Now look. It’s like this.

We travelled to Llanelli in high hope, and we were beaten fair and square by a team who were better on the night. We have no complaints, though obviously we were downcast and disappointed. We travelled home in our thousands, sadder but philosophical about it.

And then we heard the news that the French and the English clubs don’t want to take part next year, so there might be no more European Rugby Cup for Munster to win.

Today, sadly, Llanelli lost to Leicester and are out of the Cup.

Dear God Almighty, is there no end to this dismal litany?

Well, actually there is, because last week our little Scunthorpe club, whom we follow with devotion, though they are located in a foreign land and play not rugby but Association Football (soccer to everyone but the Brits) secured promotion to the Championship. That’s only one league below Manchester United and Chelsea. Scunthorpe!! What??

And today, by beating Tranmere, they virtually guaranteed their place as champions of League One.

Now, this is no consolation for Munster falling out of the European Rugby Cup, and I’m not suggesting it has any significance at all for Limerick people. I’ll be more direct that that : it hasn’t. Most Limerick people have never heard of Scunthorpe, with the exception of the worn-out few who have to listen to me ranting on about them.

Nevertheless, for those who actually travel to Scunthorpe for games, when idiot airlines permit it, this is a bit of a lift. OK. It isn’t rugby and it isn’t Munster, but hey, it’s something to lift the gloom. N’est ce pas?

Championes!! Championes!!

Management-Speak

I was listening to an item on the news about a new report from the Comptroller and Auditor General. This report is about hospital consultants, or more particularly about whether we’re getting value for money from them. A very topical matter indeed in this country.

I googled it and and found the report, entitled Medical Consultants Contract.

Here’s an extract:

General Finding

The failure to evolve and implement a model that integrates responsibility for resources, activities and outcomes was a factor that contributed to the failure to activate the key terms of the 1997 contract in regard to monitoring commitments and clinical audit.

Overall, any new contractual arrangements need to specify the administrative and governance changes that are required to achieve effective implementation and be underpinned by a change management drive. Moreover, it would be desirable that the arrangements provide for a verification process to ensure that the agreed change envisaged is delivered in accordance with action plans tailored to the circumstances of individual hospitals.

Eh.

What?

The really depressing thing is that the report probably contains a lot of valuable information, and I’ll have to wade through this kind of lazy shit writing to find out what it says.

Bah!

Sometimes Mass Murder Is News and Sometimes It Isn’t

Did you see this guy’s video on the news?

He was as mad as a bag of spanners. A fruit. A complete nutcase.

I’ve been listening to the coverage since waking up this morning. Every station has it, on radio and tv. The world is shocked and horrified by the mass killings at the university, and quite rightly so.

This guy went out and deliberately killed 31 innocent people as well as taking his own life. Imagine: 31 people whose lives were full of possibilities until a suicidal maniac snuffed them out.

No wonder the world is convulsed with horror. No wonder the radio and television stations are full of it.

********************

Meanwhile, in other news, 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by suicide bombers yesterday.

Not much about it on television.