akebook.


"I'm having pea and carrot soup yums yums, on the veranda with my besties!!" (200 Likes)

"I'm feeling depressed today, masturbation doesnt help anymore, I'm drinking too much. She's having an affair with someone at the office. I am thinking of checking out!" (No Likes)

So who's fault is it anyway?

The usual solution to a problem involves finding out who it was put the spanner in the works. Who left the lid down, the gate open, or cleaned out the biscuit tin on the sly? Once there is another at the end of the crooked finger were on the road.

Only thing is, what if the pathology is attached to the other end of the finger?  In such an instance, there is no point even turnin the key as the auld yoke is not even goin to start. If, as is often the case, we-ourselves are the cause of the effect we are wont to bellyache about; what then? In a more formal sense we might ask, what or where is the mechanism whereby democracy might protect itself from the ravages of democracy; from it’s own excess, it’s myopic focus upon fulfilling the material fantasies of the masses? Well that’s another kettle of herrings entirely.

The Genie is out of the bottle, our revolutions have given us our democracy and it‘s one track mind. The initial priority of democracy was to fulfil the wishes and the needs of the people; our need for bread, for a share of the riches of the dictator, the king or our former oppressor. Democracy is programmed to do little else, other than provide for the wants of the masses. It is confined to this thought-horizon and as such our politicians promise economic growth,  lower taxes, more money cheaper hamburgers, etc, and they are duly elected.

Yet the wants of the masses are no longer consistent with our needs. We have enough bread (almost half of it ends up in the garbage and half of what is consumed, clogs arteries and bursts buttons).  Our poverty is one of relativity, or a consequence of some individual pathology, rather than the old model of the lion’s share going to our masters. The left, the unions and the socialists remain  trapped within this thought-horizon.  

In many respects our Democracy has permitted us to become the new masters, to re-inhabit the old palaces, to add a few more en-suites, and squeeze into the tights and ruffs of our former Lords. We have lacked the courage or the intellect to see the folly of their wealth, ‘the idiocy of the millions’, and so we have retianed the ideals of slave-master.  Their former oppression has validated the ideology of greed, it has confirmed the castle and the title as the universal aspiration, the dream of the multitude, imitation being the highest (or the lowest) form of flattery. And yet, the Emperor, as our children remind us has no clothes, possession is an illusion, wealth is superfluous and consumption is our greatest pathology.

Anyone who has lived and worked in Africa as I have, would baulk at the notion of our Western ‘poverties’. Is it more of an immorality that Mary in Dublin cannot afford her cigarettes or petrol for her car, than the plight of Mary in Somalia who must abandon her dead child by the roadside? When a journalist or politician speaks of the recession in Ireland, of how people are 'suffering', and are finding it ‘hard to get by’, the words should set their mouths on fire.

In the west we die of cardiovascular disease, we die from fat, not from famine, our only depravity is one of intellect and reason. Whoever should point the finger in this case is sure to bring the house down on top of him or herself. In a democracy the first and most sacred right of the masses is the freedom to blame someone else for our mistakes and our ills. Not only that, but whomever should be foolhardy enough to spot the Emperors nakedness, will be instantly reminded of their unavoidable hypocrisy, given that our Ignatius is part of the very problem her or she is alluding to. The job is banjaxed from the beginning.

In order to generate a bit of momentum for change the purveyor of that illusive and illustrious substance must first unearth a scapegoat, once there is a pariah in the room, the rest as they say is child's play. The momentum for Irish independence was out in the open in all her crimson glory; red post boxes, red coats, the Union Jack, these were symbols of the oppressor, the cause of the slums, the depravity and the loss of the language and the poor old woman at the gate. In Ireland prior to our independence one did not have to look far to find the enemy.

Hitler turned this universal hunger for goats meat into a potent force that culminated in the grotesque obscenity of human beings putting other human beings into ovens and gas chambers. Somebody once wrote that ‘there is no inhumanity like man’s inhumanity to man.’ I'm not sure that I agree, and given the rate of a species or two per day that are eternally extinguished as a consequence of our consumption, it is unreasonable to assert that we humans enjoy a monopoly on our inhumanity. Ultimately our obese consumption of the ecological web that sustains us will translate into human suffering; when the ice caps melt, the oil runs out and richer nations must openly steal the goodies from poorer ones. Perhaps our destruction of global ecology will manifest as the greatest inhumanity towards ourselves.

And still we see only shadows on the wall, we remain chained within a cave, locked into a thought-horizon of yesteryear, one where our problems are described in terms of the medieval need for bread, for more wealth and the all consuming cancer of economic growth. The approaching end-points of; ecological destruction, peak oil or the free markets and globalisation are becoming something of a cliché; one that points to melting ice caps, to heart rending images of lonely polar bears floating on ice cubes, to the belching smoke stacks of power station or factory, or the pile of rubble and the bodies beneath that was once the sweat shop of our too many clothes.  All of it is becoming facile, dreary and predictable, as effective as the warnings printed upon cigarette packets, impotent, tired and more likely to make one want to have another smoke rather than contemplate giving up.

The pursuit of change is as wilfully ineffectual as the delusion of charity.  It lacks a scape-goat and suggests that the cause of the problem is at the other end of the finger; if we smoke we will give ourselves cancer, a pointless and cancerous reiteration of the obvious. Throw a goat into the mix however, uncover that  'The Man' is putting something into the cigs to make people smoke more, before you know it an army of instant ex-smokers will be standing around tobacco bonfires and an auto-da-fe for the Marleborough Man.

This reluctance for introspective analysis in the context of the self, encourages us to see our problems as being external to the self. The crisis of ecological degradation is not one of individual consumption, rather it becomes a crisis of 're-cycling' of 'green energy' . The environmental movement has neither the courage nor the social space to analyse the real cause of our private and ultimately our environmental  malaise. The sacred cow of consumption cannot be violated at the risk of social and political isolation. 

We remain confined to our intellectual horizon, chained as it were to a number of sacred cows, material idols that a more enlightened age will undoubtedly scorn.  I live in a house that is two hundred years old. I have no idea who were the original owners, who were the loving (or not so loving) couple who turned the key in the front door of their 'forever' home, and were thereafter  waked-out in an oak coffin in the same spot where sits my leather sofa today. 

The original owners are gone and forgotten and I am the owner now. Of course ownership is entirely transitory, it is a human delusion, one that we will ultimately evolve beyond. In reality there is no such thing as ownership, and all that we own (or think we own) is simply borrowed, much of it will be passed onto another, or returned to the earth in a degradable or non-degradable form.

In his lesser known but very pertinent essay The Soul Of Man Under Socialism, Wilde states that 'it is immoral to treat the ills that are caused by private property, with private property.'  In essence, we are trying to cure the disease with the same process that has produced the disease.  Wilde rightly concludes that Charity is immoral, that it degrades and demoralises.  Charity is in itself an entirely ineffectual institution, one that works on an immediate level by relieving in a limited but obvious way, the sufferings we impose upon the world in a massive globalised and yet invisible way.

Our allegiance to and dependence upon the idols of today, those of; private property, economic growth, fashion, and material wealth, are of the same variety and potency as the Pharaohs or the Golden Calf, or that of the Jews being genetically inferior. We cannot evaluate our 'problems' until we first understand the nature of our sacred delusions and move beyond them, to a different intellectual horizon. The question remains whether there is sufficient time for the human animal to undergo this intellectual evolution of sorts, or whether present consumption, the markets and private wealth, have already pushed our ecology beyond the point of no return.

Personally I suspect the latter but hope for the former, and yet the vitriol and vehemence by which many of my peers and compatriots cling to these defining delusions of our age might relegate that hope to the realm of a purely romantic optimism, one that awaits the laughter and perhaps the scorn of generations to come.

VHI-Tis The Silent Killer

VHI-Tis

I have been aware of the disease for some time but have been waiting for sufficient 'evidence based medicine' to link the various symptoms that are caused by this terrible plague. As the disease is in the early stages of recognition by the medical establishment, here in Ireland and will undoubtedly prove controversial it might be easiest to explain its effects and how it is contracted with an example of the most recent case I encountered this weekend whilst working at the out of ours service in Ballymun.

Sean is a Sargent in the army, he presents to me at the out of hours with his 3year old son Stevie. Sean is concerned that Stevie has a chest infection and might not be fit for an urgent operation which he has been scheduled to have next week.

Sean and his wife Jane both work, Jane is a bit anxious about her working and leaving the kids with a childminder. As a consequence of her anxiety she and her husband purchased private health insurance for their family this year. This is the point where I believe the family may have contracted the disease.

Because 3 yr old Stevie sometimes does not immediately respond when spoken to mum was anxious about his hearing and as a consequence of Stevie was seen by a private ENT consultant 1 day ago in Dublin (for the small non-refundable fee of some 200 euro). Stevie was diagnosed with “fluid” behind the ear drums and his surgery (insertion of grommets) was booked for next week.

Strangely when I examined Stevie's ears at the out of hours I found them both to be full of dry hard compacted wax, and as such I could see neither eardrums nor fluid. Stevie was otherwise well. It appears that as a consequence of his VHI-tis a large amount of compacted ear wax materialized in both of Stevie's ear canals within the past 24hrs. It would normally take weeks if not months for dry compacted wax to build up to this degree. From this readers might begin to imagine just how dangerous VHI-tis can be in the rapid manifestation of pathological conditions and the need for extensive testing and expensive surgical procedures.

I have not come forward to warn the public of this disease because I am as yet not certain how the disease has become so virulent. I have no doubt many in my profession will deny its existence altogether. And yet the above example is just one of many where private health insurance has resulted in the eruption and exacerbation of many pathologies and results in a need for a level of testing and surgery which medical card patients and those without health insurance seem to be immune to.

I first encountered the disease as a medical student at during my Obstetrics training in Dublin when I noticed that those women with private medical insurance were far more likely to have caesarian sections than public patients. The difference between the two patients being that those with Insurance were required to have their private consultant called from his bed or his clinic to await the natural progress of labour; whilst public patients would be attended by a midwife who is 'on her shift' and as the saying goes.. 'has all the time in the world.'

I would like to advise your readers that if they do not wish to contract the disease and suffer from its many iatrogenic consequences they should get rid of their private Health Insurance as soon as possible and with the large amount of money they save, they should buy their family doctor a nice expensive Christmas present and insist upon a proper level of care from the most tax-expensive and most dysfunctional public health system on the planet.

Young People of Ireland... Piss Off!

Emigration the 'secret' to our economic recovery!

Years ago if you got sick you could just get sicker and leave the outcome up to mother nature, or if you had the shillins you could visit the surgeon-barber and perhaps live a bit longer, albeit in the same conditions that probably made you sick in the first place. Today surgeons don’t cut hair and they charge a little more, but the options for the non-medical card holder remain largely unchanged.

Back then if you could afford the ancillary services of the barber, he might offer an array of options; from amputation to trephining of the skull (boring a hole in your head to let your headache out), the application of leeches, or perhaps a tasty syrup of radish, pigs-liver and urine? Sometimes he might cut to the chase and offer to rid you of your illness by bleeding you to near death?  Whilst medicine has evolved in recent centuries the fields of economics and politics remain largely steeped in the practices of yesteryear. 

Although our ears might be bleeding from talk of ‘austerity budgets’ ‘fiscal targets’ and the Troika, the truth of our present economic ’remedy’ is rarely discussed in its real and prescient form.

The mainstay of Ireland’s economic plan for the future is built upon the old practice of blood letting. The haemorrhage of 1000 young people from Ireland each week, that was recently referred to by Michael Noonan as a ‘lifestyle choice’ …a lovely opportunity for young gossons and colleens to see a bit of the world! .....And the funny thing is, he wasn’t joking!

This is the unspoken policy that is keeping the ship afloat. It is for this reason that it must be trivialised by Government officials and actively encouraged behind the scenes. Each week this silent policy produces tangible results: 1000 less dole recipients, 1000 less medical card applicants, 1000 less protestors, 1000 less people to ask why? Why after all the promises of change do Irish politicians remain some of the highest paid in the world and why so many thousands of state employees and government officials are in receipt of salaries far in excess of 100k per annum. 

Emigration is good for the troika, good for the books and good for the government.

When one considers the amount of air time and free advertising that was afforded to the recent ‘work abroad’ fair in Dublin, by the state broadcasting agency, one begins to read the invisible ink on the walls of Lenister House which clearly states, ‘young people of Ireland do your government a favour and get out!”

Ironically it is the legacy of our colonial past that we must thank for the silent ‘antidote’ to our ongoing economic disease. We speak English, and as such we are welcome in those English speaking countries that are undergoing growth and are recruiting at these private jobs fairs. 

It is English that allows us the option of taking to the plane or the ferry, whilst the Greek or the Spaniard must take their medicine, or take to the streets.

Dear Mr Obama

Dear Barack

Years ago when I sat my inter-cert I remember my auld English teacher waxing lyrical about things like; metaphor, onomatopoeia, and the iambic pentameter whoever they are when they’re at home? I cant help but wonder what my auld English teacher might make of the metaphor of our Taoiseach presenting your good self with a begging bowl of shamrock and a sham certificate of 100% affiliation to the people of Ireland on Paddy's day. The bowl was full of what we feed to the cattle, and the certificate is not far from what we stick on our beef before we ship it off to the mainland!

With an election looming and your eye firmly fixed upon the Irish vote you accepted our Taoiseach’s little offerings with the good grace that you are well known for all over the world, (except perhaps in North Africa and the Middle East) and that was very good of you. However I can’t help but wonder if perhaps deep down in that honest place where politicians are rarely allowed to go; if perhaps you might have cringed a little with embarrassment, on behalf of our leader? If you did, you hid it well, and fair play to you.

Don’t worry about our Enda that’s just his way of going on, as he is a bit shy at those big international gatherings with all kinds of important people all gathered around,- fixing the worlds problems and everything. Sure wasn’t your other pal President Sarkozy patting him on the head last month in an equally awkward moment that was passed off with a bit of a laugh.

Rest assured Mr President that there are plenty of us here in Ireland who were quite embarrassed by the bowl and the certificate. We would like to apologise and to offer you a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses or Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, instead.

The next time someone offers you an embarrassing gift like that, don’t be afraid to tell him to “cop on to himself ” …..because that’s what most real Irish people would do.

Here in Ireland we are always getting silly presents from our government. Some years ago when we were flush with cash, we all got a ‘milenium candle’ as a gift! Some time after that we were all given a present of a box of iodine tablets in case Selafield Nuclear Plant were to accidentally blow up, or be bombed by one of them terrorists that you are minding us all from.

We never take offence, and take it all with a pinch of salt (which has plenty of iodine in it anyways).

Anyhow, best of luck with the election and we hope to have you back with us for another pint ….as soon as the day is long.

‘Cead mile failte’ to you and yours and ‘top o the morning’ as well!

Yours etc

Bertie and the Klu-Klux Klan

Bertie and the Klu-Klux Clan.

When I was a lad I was occasionally bad. On one such occasion in my late teens myself and three pals decided to go to a Fancy dress party in skerries in North Dublin, not far from the former village of Lusk where we grew up. We decided to go as The Drifters; a band of male black 'do-wop' singers that were quite well known in the seventies. At the disco (that's what night clubs were called back then) there was to be a competition for the best costume. Winning was a certainty with our plans of black shoe-polish and raiding our parents wardrobes for the most ridiculous seventies outfits we could throw together. The following days we got great mileage out of showing each other the flares and technicolor ties we intended to wear on the night.

However the funny thing was not so much the idea of the Fancy dress, but the fact that three of us were lying!   Relative to the drug use and sexual license of today's more' progressive' society, we were rather innocent back then. Perhaps the most gentle and innocent of my friends was Marcus Hamilton, or Hammy as was his rather unimaginative sobriquet. Hammy was the only one of our group who was not aware that we were not going to the disco as The Drifters, instead we were planning to go as hooded members of the Klu-klux Clan.

Before the politically correct get their collective knickers in a twist, one must point out that this event took place in the eighties in a small village in North Dublin where racism was impossible (due to the lack of other 'races'),and where the appearance of a black man would have been greeted with the same amazement and enthusiasm as a Martian.

So there we were on that fateful evening in the sitting room with the lights turned off, pillow-cases over our heads waiting for poor Hammy to knock on the door, in his polished face and Drifters costume. One of the lads had a pair of toy hand cuffs, and with a couple of pieces of two by four nailed together as a cross, we were set to make the headlines of the local paper. Amidst the haze of our enthusiasm, and despite the hand-cuffs we failed to recognize that the plan was doomed to failure if Hammy decided not to play along.

I am sure only one man in Ireland can properly describe how Bertie Ahern felt when he read the Mahon report and found that his pals and prodigees were deleting his number from their phones, faster than he had deleted from his mind details of the various depositors to his various bank accounts. I would imagine when Bertie looked towards his old party for a bit of support he felt just like Hammy did, when he turned on the lights and came into our sitting room so many years ago.

However unlike Bertie who truculently deprived his clan at Fianna Fail of the relatively benign sanction of expelling him from the party. Hammy took it very well, he did not deprive us of our fun and decided to play along. He even put on the hand cuffs and accompanied us to Skerries. We never made it into the local paper and we didn’t win any prizes at the disco which unfortunately (but not unusually) descended into a bit of a melee, when the local lads wanted to kill us because we were attracting too much attention from several Skerries girls who found our efforts to be quite entertaining. From what I recall we ended up licking our wounds on the early bus home after being chased from the disco, by a group of clan hating thugs.

Perhaps one of the greatest things about being in politics in Ireland is that no matter what you do you will always be relatively forgiven, as long as you don't ever apologize or admit your guilt. If you do that.. your a goner, you will likely receive the worst imaginable sanction; disappear from the media glare and die in obscurity.

As a nation we Irish have endured; 600 years of an often tyrannical domination, ten years of a famine that halved our population, countless botched revolutions, a civil war, the more recent banking debacle, and the betrayal of the people in the vilest manner by our religious leaders.

The fact is,in politics and business you can be as bad as you like and we will always be able to say that in relative terms “it could have been worse” and “didn't they give the pensioners the free bus-pass” .

The credible time for Fianna Fail to expel Bertie was before the Mahon Report, yet throughout the Mahon-years the Party did not consider an internal investigation into Bertie's affairs, and instead focused its efforts (from the top down) on de-railing the tribunal.

The real question we should be asking is not the €300 million question of whether Bertie lied or has ever taken bribes? But rather why he believes wholeheartedly that the bribes were not bribes but merely 'gifts'. Perhaps we don't want to ask these kinds of questions because we begin to approach some uncomfortable home truths? Our politicians didn't know what to do with the borrowed Tiger money and neither did we.

Bertie made a yearly salary of €248k. Yet in the midst of his social circle of developers, bankers and corporate pals he was a relative pauper! During the boom what the spice girls sang of sex was (and remains) equally applicable to power.

“If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends”

If Bertie considered his wealth in relative terms, then relative to his millionaire pals he was certainly in the hay-penny place. Of course he took 'donations' and 'gifts' from his friends, he says as much himself, and in Bertie parlance he refers to them as 'dig outs'. In truth he had little choice if he was to fit in and be the same as his pals which, in fairness to Bertie, is exactly what most of us spend much of our income trying to accomplish.

During the Tiger we were happy with Bertie, with his philosophy (or the lack of it) so happy that he was elected for three consecutive terms. If Mahon had published its findings during the boom, the headlines in the papers could just have easily read “Not Guilty of Corruption”, rather than “Liar Liar”. Perhaps it is only the recession and the greed fueled collapse of our economy that encourages us to throw mud at Bertie and his cronies.

When the lights went on after our party we took off our hoods and we knew that we were just kids, pretending and trying to fit in. Hammy lives in Australia and we haven't spoken for years, but our friendship remains in tact.

Ireland still struggles to distinguish between reality and the fancy dress party that once defined our national philosophy. Bertie reminds us of two important points; firstly when the costumes come off, there is often very little of any substance underneath; and secondly that many of our closest friends have fled the naked truth and are nowhere to be found.

As yet there remains no new philosophy in politics and we struggle to return to the same economic growth that brought us into our present mess. Perhaps we should ditch the costumes, take counsel from the spice girls, and think about what we want in life.... “what we really really want?”

The Health Minister and the Ikea Generation

The Minister and the Ikea Generation.

There was a recent storm in the proverbial teacup in respect of the Minister and the designation of a site for the development of a Primary Care Centre by one of his supporters or associates within Fine Gael. Given the amount of time Dr Reilly spends embroiled in controversy over his public and private business dealings, it might not be entirely unreasonable to suspect that if the present government is to fall Dr Reilly may well pull the final Jenga piece from the pile.

In fairness to the Minister he has undoubtedly inherited a poisoned chalice from the vanquished and the vanished.  However the Minister’s difficulties are generally not associated with his difficult portfolio, but rather his financial affairs, his fiscal priorities and his difficulty in accommodating the wishes of his subordinates. I suspect that the coalition may have got the personality mix a bit wrong with the former Minister for Primary Care. Undoubtedly it has now become clear that Mr Burns works best with a Smithers, and not an opinionated Lisa Simpson as his junior colleague.  Fortunately the new Minister for Primary Care has as much experience in Primary Care (or Health for that matter), as the Minister has in conflict resolution.  Being almost entirely out of his depth Minister White cleverly conforms to the wiser political career path of; 'towing the line' and saying 'yes' when appropriate?  Primary Care has recently been annexed in to the empire, and has become a Duchy state with a loyal Duke.

When I was a teenager my first job was to bag potatoes in the rear of what was once our local shop, 'Hands Supermarket' as it was known. Some years ago the shop and the site were bought by our family GP, Dr. Reilly.  The shop was demolished and a magnificent three storied complex comprising shops, a pharmacy and a large medical clinic, (one that I have had the pleasure of working in on many occasions) was opened.  One day the medical clinic will undoubtedly make a fine primary care centre, if the owner can bypass the scandal as easily as planning objections.  

Back in the Harney era Minister Reilly had the financial acumen to recognise what the Primary Care Initiative would mean for local practices and it remains to be seen if his own building in Lusk is to be designated as a primary care centre along with that of his associate in Balbriggan.  Regardless of developments in Lusk or Balbriggan, from a financial and a business perspective we must take our hats off to the Minister.  It is just a pity that this Celtic Tiger philosophy of turning muck into millions, is utterly pathological, entirely wasted, and for the most part should have been buried with the Haughey era and Bertie's forgotten bank accounts.

That is not to say that the Minister should go, it is merely to state the obvious fact that we have the right man in the wrong place, and rather than his junior Minister storming out of the cabinet; wouldn't we be a billion or two better off if the Minister for Health was the Minister for Finance and the Troika were storming out of the office, banging the door after them, and shouting '...that's our bottom line Jim and not a penny more' ?

When it comes to Irish history isn't it always the case that we invariably unleash our greatest soldiers upon ourselves. If the Chiefs had united, Strongbow would have never got his foot in the door.  If a mere fraction of the effort that was put into the Civil War was put into the Rebellion in 1916 when the enemy of the day was sailing gunships up the Liffey, the whole country would probably be speaking Irish today?  In short, when Ireland faces a threat from abroad, the first thing we do is to counter that threat with a solid wall of disunity and a swell of bitter infighting. Our taxes bail out the banks and our youth take their English language to the former colonies.  

Government is busy storming out of the office and banging the door, whilst the Troika quietly empties the larder and watches the show.  It is too late for Eoin O'Neill to change his mind and back the winners who lost the battle but won the war... however it is not too late for Enda to see the strengths and weakness of his cabinet and give the Troika a taste of real negotiations, Dr Reilly style, but then again that would not be in keeping with the Irish paradigm of history repeating itself would it?

Accountability in our political and banking world is defined by; Lowrys, Haugheys, Ahern's, Walaces and Fitzpatricks; in like fashion the ideology behind these personalities is defined by the fiscal priorities of Dr Reilly and the the legacy of the Ahern era. We have yet to move beyond the ideal of wealth as the primary objective of life and politics.

Almost two years ago at the outset of this coalition of promises I wrote to the Standards in Public Office, to enquire into the ethics of a Minister being in receipt of a Ministerial Salary and continued benefit from a Medical card list. Dr Reilly's list is managed by a locum GP, it's income continues to go to his practice in Lusk; it pays the mortgages on his property and although the contractual details are closely guarded by the HSE  it quite possibly continues to contribute to to a bulging HSE pension, as it waits patiently for it's absentee landlord to return.  Aside from these benefit’s the Minister gets no benefits.

To be in receipt of dual pension contributions from the state, to have the mortgages paid on ones investment property by the state in addition to a Ministerial salary and a hefty Ministerial pension are all part of the perks of public office in Ireland.  Not to mention an 80k per annum tax break on the family castle as it is a listed building.  Not surprisingly the Standards Office have reassured that all of the above is entirely above board.  As Mick Wallace reminded us poor plebs not to make the mistake of mixing up "Wallace the Man and Wallace the Company".  We should not make the mistake of mixing up Minister Reilly and the Doctor Reilly who although no longer a registered medical practitioner has a large GMS list tended by a salaried locum and its income carefully minded by the HSE.

To effectively capitalise upon all available opportunities is the mark of an astute businessman. However the difficulty with health is that it is not entirely a business, and in this we have the right man in the wrong place, a financial Michael Collins doing his best work on his own people.

  

I am a firm believer that you can tell a lot about a book by its cover, and as much about an era by it’s furniture. The eighties was the Dallas generation, it was a time of frills and pelmets, puffy sofas and islands in the kitchen as well as the Caribbean. This generation however is the'Ikea Generation' and a brief walk through this hellish warehouse of screaming kids and human traffic jams, exposes one to a little of the philosophy of a generation that is coming of age. It is one of straight machined lines, of stainless steel and wood finish, plain and austere, without frills, or  pelmets.

We have been moving house recently and my fifteen year old son remarked to me that if there is one thing he has learned from his parents is; to buy nothing more than he needs and to live a materially simple and uncluttered life. This is a lesson that will assuredly earn him more happiness than six hundred points, it is the philosophy of the future, and it is refreshing to consider that one day we might actually evolve beyond the Reilly and O'Reilly ideology that appraises our prosperity and defines our national vision in the context of a no frills air-line. For politics, however this evolution will take many years. We will never teach the old dogs of politics the new tricks of a modern philosophy, and as such can only await the inevitable process of decay and evolution. 

I have yet to encounter a teenager buy a lottery ticket and dream the Dallas dream of millions, beyond ones needs. I am sure there are some out there, but I am optimistically convinced they are in the minority.  That the ideology of material wealth has almost reached its sell by date, and is not as virulent amongst those of the Ikea generation. 

Whilst many of us might sigh at the broken record of jingoism and stroke politics, of favours to developers and aspirant billionaires…(Yes Lord Sugar)  ho hum!  We can take some comfort from the fact that this is the voice of an old expired generation, one that can only be resurrected for so many times before its limbs begin to fall off. Regardless of the poor condition of the earth that will be passed onto this Ikea generation they will undoubtedly do a better job with it,  and it will at least look so much nicer without the pelmets, the frills, the plastic flowers, and the islands in the kitchen.

The Murder Machine of Irish Media

When I was a teenager my first concert was to see the Pogues play at a venue in Dublin. Myself and my friends were right up the front, and at the time it seemed like an honour to have a drunken Shane McGowan spit beer all over us as he spluttered through the half forgotten verses of the Sick Bed of Cuchulain. McGowan is hardly a poster-boy for the Irish Music industry, and I can't imagine him having cucumber sandwiches with Seamus Heany and Michael D. at the Aras, or presenting Mr Obama with a certificate of Irish ancestry. Unlike Bono,or Pat Kenny or Ryan Tubridy etc, Shane Mcgown is representative of a particular type of celebrity, one who isn’t 'squeaky clean', who doesn’t have a full-time make up artist, an editor or a PR consultant. In my experience there is something deep in this shallow little distinction, a profundity that in old money is often referred to as 'honesty'.

 

Sinead O'Connor is perhaps another, and although I don't agree with much of what Sinead tends to go on about, I can't help but feel a sense of admiration for her, simply because she is honest and she truly believes in her convictions. You get what you see, she wears her heart on her sleeve and you can take it or leave it.

 

How much can we say of the private opinions of a Kenny, a Bono, a Gay Byrne or a Joe Duffy? Arguably these celebrities are the weathercocks of public sentiment, they make it their business to be so, and coincidently their opinions (if they are opinions at all?), are rarely out of line with the majority.

 

Imagine Pat Kenny was to say on his morning show that; 'the Olympics was a profligate waste of money, and if a mere fraction of the cost were spent on rape victims or the starving, we would have accomplished more than a wheelbarrow full of gold-plated medals!'? Or if Joe Duffy were to assert that; 'there is something inherently obscene in the sight of two girls (or two supposedly evolved human beings), punching the faces off one another in a ring surrounded by equally evolved humans shouting and applauding at each violent blow.'?

 

Whether you agree or not is not the point here. What is the point is that there is an alternative view out there, one that is no longer heard within Irish media. This reality is perhaps one of the most frightening aspects of life in modern Ireland, where our society has lost it's watch-dog and lacks the capacity for an independent analysis of the real.

 

The media must sell their wares they must appeal to the majority, this is the ideology of the market, it is the reason we heard no alternative voice during the boom and it is the reason we hear no alternative voice during the so called 'recession'. Economics and growth are the only coordinates that can be accommodated by market ideology, and as such it is no wonder that we describe the ills of modernity in terms of 'recession'; despite the reality that we have never been as affluent in the history of our race!

 

Media must sell its wares and to do so it must tell us what we want to hear and not what we need to hear. Some years ago, perhaps around the time the Pogues were in their prime, we began to loose sight of this important distinction.

 

Some might say that Gay Byrne was brave to open a condom on the Late Late show, fifty years ago. However another might argue that the condom would have been put to better use if Mrs Byrne herself had opened it some 50 years previously?  That the act was inevitable, time was right, that Gaybo' s ostensibly rebellious act, ultimately cost him nothing and gained him plenty.

 

Celebrities like Byrne and Kenny will never grow old because in essence thy don't really exist, their opinions are not their own, they are those of the fickle majority. Keeping with the herd is indeed essential to success, to a fame that extends beyond one's sell by date. Unfortunately it is only when the herd have galloped over the cliff, that the voice of the dissident has any real currency. For my part I would rather listen to the honest opinions of a heroin addict from the inner city than the polished predictabilities from the living dead at RTE.

 

McGowan and O'Connor, Luke Kelly, Brendan Behan, Wilde, Beckett, Joyce, Padraig Pearse, Christ, Gandhi and a handful of others some living, most gone, simply don't sit comfortably in the celebrity world, by virtue of a particular type of honesty, one that is endangered and near extinction. It is not just talent ....but not fitting into that celebrity world, that are the makings of a real celebrity.  In history this point is repeatedly made by the Roman Crucifix, the Hangman's noose or assassins bullet. 

 

McGowan, Kelly, and Brendan Behan choose to self destruct through alcohol. Wilde endured prison, whilst Beckett and Joyce fled our nation's intellectual paralysis and lived in exile; Ireland is no country for real celebrities. Try stating something honest on the Pat Kenny show and you will initiate a commercial break or send Pat into a polished panic attack.

 

Outside of this box, beyond the delusions that define today's Ireland, there are alternatives to the ideals of the market, to the notion of 'growth' and 'profits' as being the new Gods, and shopping malls the new Cathedrals. Padraig Pearse had a few of these alternative notions, it was he who referred to our largely unchanged education system as 'The Murder machine'.

 

Despite a patently commercial agenda the equally murderous machine of modern media cannot entirely stamp out our appreciation for honesty. Despite our national predilection for the polished superficial analysis of RTE, deep down we retain a little sympathy for the underdog, for his genuine passion or her challenge to the establishment. These are the ingredients that can jolt us from of our stupor, shock us out of the mundane routine of daily life. A routine that moves to the rhythms of our national media like Athenian slaves pounding their oars into the surf in time with the pilots drum.

Many of us can as yet, still recognise a spark of truth when we see or hear it. Some of us even retain the capacity to enjoy its brief exposure; like the sun on our skin after a month of rain and cloud. It is part of the reason for the allure of a young Irish rogue who sneaks to the upper decks to win the heart of a society girl before the ship sinks. It is the fact that the young rogue does not wish to be there that makes him more entitled to be their than all of empty aristocrats. Yet it is also the reason he must ultimately slip beneath the icy depths. It is the reason real celebrities must flee, drink themselves to obscurity, or put their brains to the wall like Hemingway did with a shotgun. We like our heroes but we don’t want to have to listen to them for too long, we must close the book of fantasy and and return to the real of 'the daily grind'.

 

The real crises of modern Ireland is not entirely economic; it is that our national and personal philosophies have become entirely defined by the ideals of the market, the Gods of growth and profit. This ideology, this national philosophy is reflected back to us by the very institution that might have offered us a vaccine. In taking €160 from each household in the country and countless millions from hotels and businesses, RTE has an obligation to the people of this country, an obligation that it has repeatedly and profoundly failed to meet. The Irish irony here is that RTE should derive such an enormous revenue from licence fees and yet, unlike the BBC, or NPR it also, sells advertising and numbs its viewers with endless hours of it. On the other hand private media with zero public funding must compete with RTE and its enormous public purse. What country but ours would flout fair competition so blatantly? Yet why should we be surprised, this is the same country that insists upon treating private patients ahead of the queues at Public hospitals. What is most interesting about life in Ireland is not that it should be so corrupt but that there still remain a few who think it should be otherwise. What is almost funny in the Irish context is the additional irony that we have a multiplicity of quangos who's function it is to protect the public from this sort of duplicity and inequality. Where are the Competition Authority, Patient Representatives, Equality and Law Reform, Consumer's Rights, and all the omnibusmen etc etc, whilst RTE sells advertising and derives its second massive income from the mandatory tax that is the TV licence? Why must I wait at the bottom of the list to be treated at a public hospital whilst those with health insurance can skip the queue? This is the duplicity that defines our nation.

 

Two hundred years ago there were two classes of people in Ireland there were the masses and the rulers of the masses. For both classes there were distinct laws, different laws, penal laws. Our rulers dwelt in castles and manors, they paid little or no taxes, gave lengthy speeches in the parliament, preached austerity, and were by and large listed amongst the bankrupt in the equivalent of Stubbs Gazette. One must question evolution and ask what has really changed?

 

Irish democracy has failed utterly, because it has become no different to Facism or any totalitarian regime, in that it has no tolerance for dissent. It has lost the essential counterbalance of an independent and truly free press. Nowhere is this new Facism more obvious than amongst the living dead at RTE. Here the ideology of the market, of profits and growth reigns supreme. Here national news is merely a preamble to the reading of the lottery numbers. In its subservience to profits, the national media has no space for what we might need to hear, for the voice of dissent. It has allowed democracy to be undermined by capitalism, to the point that it is no longer possible to distinguish between the two.

 

Democracy without freedom of the press, is a sham. Yet Irish media is by no means free, it is the humble servant of market ideology. It's deeper philosophy is personified by the late Gerry Ryan, the surface being entirely different to the undercoat. RTE must sell its wares to the majority, it must keep its costs down and profits up; hence the cheap entertainment and recent dangerously sloppy journalism that earned them a ministerial slap on the wrist. It's presenters (that untouchable inner circle) must remain subservient to mass sentiment rather than challenge that sentiment when it becomes corrosive as it did during the Celtic Tiger.

 

After reading these lines turn on your radio, tune into RTE and ask yourself; Is there anything truly different here? Are these the same old songs? Are the same old condoms still being opened by the same exhausted celebrities? Listen to the music, to the news, the lottery numbers.... and ask yourself, Is there anything different here? If you arrive at the same answer that I always do then go a little further than anyone at RTE ever does, and ask why this might be so? Ask it not for the sake of an answer, (this is Ireland after all) ask it just for practice. Just to make sure that you are still alive, that you have not forgotten how to ask, and joined the living dead.

The Stagnation and Paralysis of Irish Media.

As I sit in my office on a quiet morning in General Practice I can hear strains of Mr Tambourine man wafting in from the radio speakers in the waiting room next door. This is followed by Pat Kenny talking about something utterly predictable, elucidating an array of opinions on the usual subjects; all of which entirely  in keeping with those of the majority of the listening public.  Indeed the rather predictable form of the 'questions' that Kenny asks and the entirely predictable nature of the answers call into question the pace or the very notion of cultural or intellectual evolution, at least in an Irish context? If you hunger for something new then RTE would be a starvation diet of H-Block proportion. 

Mr Tamborine man was written and recorded by Bob Dylan in 1965. It was famously re-released by the Byrds sometime later and is included in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 best songs ever. It is often described as an ode to the use of drugs such as LSD, which was certainly part of the social experiment that was the Hippy sixties.  My point here is that whilst Dylan's muse is of some historical relevance and was clearly of significance in the sixties, why does it and so much more, remain part of the stagnant musical repertoire of RTE today?
 

Fortunately with the internet and Yu-Tube we have access to a world outside of the 'Groundhog-day' that is RTE, and to my delight and sadness my 14yr old son almost every night introduces me to a world of music that evolves on a different planet to RTE. Bands like; Beirut, Joanna Newsome, Anthony and the Johnsons, Life in Film, Devandra Bernhart, M.Ward, and many more all of whom will hardly see the light of day if they are to struggle through the fixed concrete that RTE has poured upon the landscape of Irish media.
 

The interesting thing here is that the artists I have mentioned are not only almost entirely unknown to the Irish mainstream but are however known throughout the world. If the numbers of hits on their Yu-Tube videos are anything to go by, they are part of an evolving world of music that is passing Ireland by.
 

Yet there is also a sinister twist to the artistic stagnation that defines our national Media. It is possible that this national ossification is more by design rather than by accident. One is not suggesting a conspiracy theory here, however there is at present a massive global evolution occurring on the intellectual front as well as the entertainment and artistic front. An evolution which we in Ireland remain almost entirely ignorant of.

Old dogs are being buried around the world, new thinking and new art is awakening. Popular philosophers like Slavov Zizek are re-inventing democracy, capitalism and socialism, and would be very quick to point towards the brutal irony that Joe Duffy is as much a media millionaire as he is a 'man of the people'. That he walks in the material footsteps of the developers and bankers of yesteryear, as much as the footsteps of a self styled James Connolly.
 

The actual social distance between presenters like Duffy, Kenny Finucane, or the late Gerry Ryan and the 'real' people of Ireland could be measured in light years...., and yet theirs is the petrified view that spans the airways and silences dissent and almost all hope of newness. Not only is RTE incapable of evolution and intent upon containing it beneath a thick layer of stone, but it is happy to resurrect the retired, in the form of Gay Byrne who, not arguably but definitely retired years, if not a decade ago! He is now back, presenting a number of shows on radio and television. RTE has at least evolved the notion of the job for life into a job for the after-life.
 

The newness of thinkers of artists and of ideals remains an anathema to RTE, perhaps because newness is an anathema to the Irish people? That we ourselves continue to 'play the lotto' and suffer from the same GPI (General Paralysis of the Insane) which Joyce accused us of in Dubliners and again in Ulysses. The same GPI that caused him to flee to Trieste, and caused Beckett to flee to Paris? Perhaps it is this same paralysis which causes 1000 young people to flee Ireland every week. Perhaps the usual palavar about our young having to leave Ireland because of the recession is as untrue as it is true.. we will never know because only the media tells us so.
 

Perhaps many of the emigrants themselves believe that the sole reason they depart Ireland is economic? And yet despite the media embrace of the recession, there may be more to this. It may be that we Irish have no sense of ownership of our land, no sense of belonging to Ireland! No real sense of pride in who we are and where we have come from. That is why we find it easier not only to leave but to; litter, to decimate our bogs, despoil our heritage, ignore our language and carve up our countryside with motorways and ghost estates?
 

I consider myself a middle class socialist, it is to my mind the path of least destruction amongst the by-ways of political philosophy. I suspect that most in Ireland are of a similar political leaning. The socialist TD Clare Daly has embarked upon a campaign to ignore the new residential tax. The Left as usual in Ireland have missed the bananna boat. Their tactics remain unchanged since the water charges and the bin tax a decade ago. Don't pay,- go to jail and hopefully raise the profile of the socialist agenda. Yipee and here we go again! But the government is ahead of Clare Daly and Joe Higgins, the government has passed legislation to ensure that the socialists will be denied their day in jail, as no one is to be jailed for non-payment, and the non-payers are to have the residential tax taken at source from their wages. Checkmate to socialism.

The real charge that Daly and Higgins and the entire Leopold Blooming nation of ours should be rejecting with heart felt enthusiasm is our TV licence as it is this money that pays for the concrete that is being poured upon the intellectual and artistic landscape of Ireland every single day. And yet it is hard for us to see the trees or the forest, or even the wolves and the sheep, when all is concrete and we must contend with our General Paralysis of the Inane.

The Abortion Bandwagon and the Ass of Contraception

The Abortion Bandwagon and the Ass of Contraception

There is perhaps no single story in Joyce’s Dubliners that can be described as better than the rest? However at different periods in my own life I look at Irish society and particular stories have greater or lesser relevance. In these times I often think of Evelyn, a virginal metaphor for the old sod, locked in the poverty trap; her freedom, self expression and sexuality, all pressed beneath the oppressive boot of the church and state that was Ireland in the early 1900’s.

At last for a tired and lonely Evelyn, an out presents itself in the form of her young lover’s invitation to elope, to flee the poverty, and paralysis, to escape upon the ferry and away across the sea.

The third class tickets were finally bought and the few pitiful possessions wrapped in a worn travel bag. The night before, unshared goodbyes were spent upon lingering glances and quiet tears.

The lovers met at the docks, he passed through the gates upon the pier and she let go his hand for a moment. She could not bring herself to do it, she could go no further.  He watched her from the deck and she watched the ship melt into the bay.

I always smile when I watch the festivities on Bloomsday, or when I hear praise for Joyce, for Dubliners or Ulysses. It is ironic that we Dubliners should be so proud of a literature that insults us so blatantly, and paints such a grim and dark picture of our paralysis, and intellectual or philosophical depravity. We Irish are stuck in our ways, we are Evelyns steadfast upon the peer, unable to move, frozen by what Joyce often called our GPI (general paralysis of the insane). We celebrate our literati here and abroad, we put them to the fore when we create such farces as ‘The Gathering’ and attempt to coax the diaspora home for a fiscal ambush. Or when we filch pennies from unwary tourists amid the traps and souvenir shops, gathering (in Yeats' words) the half pence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer'.  Pennies and prayers for the new God, the 'God of the Markets'.

We should on occasion remind ourselves that Joyce and Beckett fled Ireland, Wilde was thrown in Jail and Behan drank himself to death. If we are courageous, or even awake enough one day we might ask why? Post Celtic Ireland is no country for intellectuals, it never has been. They are forged here within a truly opressive fire, one that consumes the intellect, insists upon conformity, and must be escaped if the soul is to breath and stay alive.

It is interesting that Eveyln's lover did not throw himself from the ship and swim frantically back to shore, as 'true' love might have demanded.  However there is perhaps something compelling about the view of Ireland from a departing ship or an aeroplane window. One seems, for a moment to see clearly why flight is the only option, and that to linger, to look behind is to risk being turned into a pillar of salt.

In the mid 1800’s the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin wrote a pamphlet suggesting that the Irish might better survive the famine if they were to eat their children rather than die of starvation. We have been eating our children ever since. A woman in Galway is denied her request for an abortion, and she dies of septicaemia. Her death and that of her child have become the property of the public and vested interests from Ballyjamesduff to Bangladesh. Had she been granted her request she would probably be alive today, and yet any woman who has died as a consequence of Childbirth, or committed suicide from post natal depression, might yet be alive had she sought and been granted an abortion before hand. In this case the tragedy was a consequence of septicaemia and not her being refused an abortion. Had her life been in danger she would and should have been offered an abortion. The 'mistake' (if any were made), was the failure to recognise that her life was indeed in danger. This 'mistake' would have little if anything to do with the abortion issue.   

In the 1800s when death from postpartum septicaemia was much more common than it is today a Hungarian Obstetrician Ignaz Semelweiss, recognised that at his maternity hospital the majority of maternal deaths were being caused because the attending doctors were not washing their hands.  They would move from the anatomy dissection theatres to the maternity wards and the blood on their hands was a sort of status symbol, like the white coat or the stehescope draped about the neck. Semelweiss was ridiculed and shunned by the profession for suggesting that doctors were passing infection to their patients. He ended his days as an inpatient in an insane asylum where he died from septicaemiaia, (most likely and most ironically from the same organism that causes post partum septicaemia).

The death in Galway if not a failure in recognising a moribund mother, is certainly a result of bacterial resistance to Antibiotics. This resistance is caused by us doctors over prescribing antibiotics, and the general belief amongst we Irish that penicillin is the secret cure for flu and the common cold. In this sense the death in Galway is as much the fault of many of those who are doing most of the shouting.

It is unclear whether the pro-choice campaign contacted the woman’s husband or whether he contacted them in order to use this tragedy for their own particular agenda? Regardless of the answer here both she and her death are being used, consumed by the public and the media to inform and entertain. Used by the opposition to score points against the government and by the government to supplement its back bone and pass laws that should have been passed 20 years ago. The woman's husband has been advised by her solicitor not to accept a HSE enquiry, but demand the bigger fanfare and bigger legal bill of a public enquiry. In a recent speech delivered at DCU Hillary Clinton has decided to have a piece of this macabre pie, and lecture to us Irish that we should 'respect the rights of women'. She did not specifically mention; Iraqi women, Afghan women, or the women powerful men have affairs with, but I am sure she meant all women, and not just wealthy middle class women of the west.

From the deck of the departing liner real Ireland and the feeding frenzy looks entirely different to the mythological mist we have chosen to dwell in. Every day young women are pushed into teenage pregnancy by the same society that is indulging in this dark comedy that is the abortion debate.

How many teenage girls have 50 or 60 euro to pop into their local doctor for contraception? Not to mention the additional 20-30 euro to spend on their prescription? How many young men have the readies to see their doctor for; sexual health screening, for STI checks or contraception advice? How much profit does the government, the GP and the pharmacist make upon the same contraception that if readily and freely available would save so many boat trips, so much misery, and so many lives?

If contraception were as cheap and as readily available as alcohol is to teenagers, what would remain of the abortion debate? Of course in Ireland we want to have a debate on abortion before we even begin to think about simple access to, and the actual cost of contraception and sexual health screening. And so the cart sits in front of the paralysed ass. The irony is so grotesque that one must question the motives of the voiciferous pro-lifers and pro choicers alike. In Ireland we may not eat our children but we continue to put them on the boat to flee, perhaps we would do them more justice if we follow Swift's advice and fill our bellies.

Under the Medical Carpet

The Auld Squint.

When Leopold Bloom was on the way to the funeral of Patrick Dignam at Glasnevin Cemetry, a fellow occupant of the carriage remarked, at the crumbs and damp seats. “Corny (the funeral director) might have given us a more commodious yoke:” To which another replied “He would have, if he didn’t have that squint about him.., if you know what I mean?”

‘Squint’ in lay-terms might be described as one eye looking at you and the other looking at your shirt pocket. Joyce’s use here, is in reference to duplicity or insincerity; the ‘all too human’ ability to be truly at variance with the ideals or persona that is ones ‘public Gar’ so to speak. In post colonial cultures, this ability to appear sincerely aligned with the presiding social order, or mores of the day, is a talent that we have had 600yrs of perfecting. Our finely polished insincerity may be one of the reasons we Irish make some of the best performers in the world, and may explain why we are so capable of inventing a story to others, and particularly ourselves.

Sometimes (but not too often) it is refreshing to lift the carpet of the Irish Medical Establishment and see the sweepings underneath, awaiting posterity and the review of a more sober and focused generation. Beneath that well-worn Axminster we may find some of what the crooked eye was really focused on all the time. A most recent addition was the 25 million retirement package agreed with the former CEO of the IMO, whilst the present sale of GMS contracts by the ICGP is awaiting the swish of the broom so that it too might join the pile beneath the pile.

What is perhaps most telling about the McNeice package is not the fact that the initially agreed 25million handshake was magnanimously negotiated down to a modest 10 million; but rather the fact 90% of the membership of the IMO have voted with their cheque-books and membership dues to ‘stand by their man’ and to pay the piper’s plentiful pension for many years to come. Ethics and intelligence are perhaps not as mutually inclusive as we might like to believe?

In recent years access to a GMS contract was the remit of the HSE. After much ado about nothing, and the intervention of the Competition Authority, reform arrived in the guise of GMS contracts being made available to all GP’s on the Specialist Register. The Medical Council (in the spirit of all that is institutionally Irish) have abdicated responsibility for determining eligibility for the specialist register to the ICGP, thus allowing the college to become the new GMS gate keeper, and the Medical Council to act in the less-work and more familiar role of a rubber stamp at the end of the process.
With a curtsey to the ‘God of the Markets’, the ICGP has turned this nod from Council into a very lucrative financial wink, and they have begun the harvest of the millions. In Ireland whenever reform is attempted, the auld squint invariably turns a noble idea into a good business plan. As such the ICGP have unveiled their ‘Alternative Route’ to membership of the college (and the all important GMS contract). The fee for suitable candidates who might turn up at the back door of Lincoln Place, is a mere €7000, and one doesn’t even need a brown envelope.

Behind the scenes, driving the venture forward, is the growing reality that Lord Reilly has some form of Universal Health care in the pipeline. As such, the dogs on the street know that if you are not a member of the oxymoronic ‘Specialist Register for Generalist Practice‘… then you are likely to be left in the cold when the Minister’s carves the cake of universal ‘free’ GP care.
In addition to financial extortion, part of the mandatory requirements for the ‘Alternative Route’, is having ones BCLS certification up to date. Of course on the surface this seems a wonderfully enlightened idea.. Yet through the straight eye, one sees that up to date BCLS certificates are not a requirement nor are they held by the vast majority of practicing GP’s and college members. One rule for the members and another for the paying plebs.. sounds bankingly familiar? My own BCLS has lapsed since moving from New Zealand where such certificates form a mandatory part of a relevant ‘CME’ program, one that is less about institutions turning regulations into profits.

This heavy handed ‘application fee’ is being levied upon those GP’s who are the most financially vulnerable within the entire profession, as we are deprived of the ‘benefits’ of a GMS contract. Going after the most vulnerable is apparently as familiar to Irish institutions as it is unfamiliar to their mission statements.
 
The ICGP has declared that around 250 Doctors are likely to apply for the AR. In truth the figure could be between 500 and 1000, representing anywhere between 3 and 7 million of an income stream for the college. This coupled with the mandatory CME payments that must be made to the ICGP by all GP’s in the state, would certainly mean that the college CEO should be well placed to demand from his indentured shareholders a similar package to that of the former IMO chief. ‘Business as usual’ one might say.

Perhaps one day we might lift that old carpet and apply the hoover. After which the dust might settle and a few of us might begin to see straight once again.

Many thanks to the 39 who voted for me in the MC elections ‘Tiocadh ar La’ as the Shiners used to say!’