Belfast Blogs.com

With a title like that, you're possibly expecting another economic rant from me.Nope, it's option two on this occasion - this rancid government.I wish I didn't feel compelled to pen my outrage on these two topics so often. It's wearying and depressing to return again and again to stare into the abyss and yell back what I see.God only knows what you lot feel about it.(Well, actually, Statcounter knows. And he says you're way more interested when I write about dead porn stars, or tattooing in Goa, or music piracy, or Irish whiskey, or the farce that is Ulster-Scots. Anything, in other words, other than the above two conversation-stoppers.)So I'll try to think of posting about tattooed porn stars pirating Ulster-Scots albums or something similarly gripping later this week.Remember when John...

It's important to cut through the shrill 'Sky News' breathless scaremongering and establish some facts about Swine Flu.Let me endeavour to do just that, because once the facts are known, it is likely that many people might join me in hoping that Swine Flu breaks out globally and becomes a dreaded pandemic.Firstly, you should know how influenza works. It's a vast family of viruses, constantly changing, some of which affect birds, some pigs and some us.Because it's always changing, and because there are literally hundreds of strains out there at any given time, it's not possible to create a perfect flu vaccine.So Swine Flu is basically a pig flu that has jumped species to humans and is now being passed from person to person. So, no, eating Irish bacon is not a risk (unless they've filled it...

I'm sorry again for another extended absence from this blog.This time I have a better excuse than the dog ate my blog post. I was in hospital, in the cardiac ward, after an unfortunate incident earlier this week.I was rushed to hospital by ambulance by a crew which arrived almost instantly they were called, ushered me quickly but professionally into the ambulance and rallied me safely to A+E.In A+E, I was triaged instantly and moved to the resuscitation area (though I was conscious at the time.) That's where I had my first brush with death. As I was receiving morphine and being examined, the person in the cubicle next to me (an elderly lady who'd been found in her nursing home room unconscious) failed to recover and passed away.Later, as I recovered in the cardiac area of casualty, two...

Hooray! At last some good news.The PDs wound themselves up tonight, after winding up the rest of us for years. Obviously they couldn't face the hammering they were going to get next year in the locals.Good feckin riddance to some seriously toxic rubbish.What a rogue's gallery of chancers, gombeens, blusterers, pocketliners and ne'er-do-wells. I don't know how they ever had the audacity to pitch themselves as Fianna Fail's mudguard when they were the most damaging gombeen opportunists of all.I note they leave just as the economic meltdown they helped create gets properly underway.Chickenshit bastards that they are, they won't even try cleaning up the mess they made.Can we now, pretty, pretty please, kick that lump Harney out of health before there are no public hospitals left, and...

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...

After years of fulminating against the Irish health service, I finally put my money where my mouth is.For a long time, I have headed across the border to the North anytime I needed a check up, some primary care, or some minor emergency treatment. Who wouldn't, given the opportunity, since the British NHS is actually free? No fifty quid to see a doc, no fifty quid to get into A+E. Free to those who need it.Not to mention shorter A+E queues, cleaner hospitals, more English-speaking staff, fewer flesh-eating bugs, etc, etc.But I have needed a small operation on my toe for some years now. It wasn't the sort of thing you would get done quickly in the Irish health service, as I wasn't actually bleeding to death and don't have a VHI Plan E insurance card.But increasingly, it was impeding my...

But I'm proud of Baby Ian. Not because he's been diddling the taxpayer over his office expenses (150 seater office, Ian? WTF?) or because he was blatantly lobbying to privatise the Giant's Causeway into the hands of his pal, private developer Seymour Sweeney.Nope. I'm proud of Ian Junior because he has singlehandedly resurrected a political practice I feared had been abandoned forever on the island of Ireland. That of resigning when you've been caught doing wrong.Okay, he hasn't (and won't) admit he's done wrong. And he only resigned to protect his da, who also has a series of hard office-related questions to answer.But it is entirely refreshing to see an Irish politician having the relative decency of falling on their sword when caught out.I do hope the denizens of Leinster House will...

It's a little shocking to my ears, having spent my childhood in the bosom of the British NHS, to listen to how Americans are responding to Hilary Clinton's plan for universal health entitlements.She's been roundly lambasted by the Republicans for her 'Hilaryaid' proposals, which sound nothing more than the mildest, weakest version of what most Western Europeans would consider a fundamental human right.While Barack continues to witter pointlessly about bringing 'change', without ever specifying what change he's bringing (loose change, perhaps?), at least La Clinton has put an actual concrete proposal on the table for discussion.And to me, that discussion has been frightening.If you were to listen to Mitt Romney or Huckabee, you'd think that she was proposing Communist totalitarianism. The...

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...

Gwen loves life by the shore. Whether its her lakeside apartment, or the harbour views from her second home in England, or indeed the clifftop Italian hotels, five star naturally, in which she likes to holiday, Gwen loves to have water nearby.I'd love to post a picture of Gwen Baker in one of her spectacular Venetian masks or swanning around in a stunning Mediterranean villa, so you could truly appreciate just how much she enjoys her life.I'm not allowed to, though. I'd link to some pics of Gwen, but she's taken them all down off the web. She's taken down her CV too. This is also a pity, because if it were online I could link to it and then you could see for yourself why she and her fantabulous lifestyle should be of interest to every taxpayer in Ireland.Gwen, an American lady of a...

The Green Party were once thought to be too 'flakey' for government. Their insistence on principled stands on issues that mattered to them meant that prior to the rainbow government, no one would consider them as coalition partners.They ran in the recent election on a series of principled stands, and their leader vowed not to enter government with Fianna Fail after the election.As a result, they garnered many votes from Fine Gael and Labour voters who were intent on seeing Fianna Fail removed from office.But after ten days of negotiations, during which they were mightily screwed by the Fianna Fail negotiating team, the Greens settled to go into government with them.What's worse is that they sold out every one of their principled stands in order to gain access to government. What's worse...

Let's pass, for a moment, on the fact that I was watching the 'Late, Late Show' on a Friday night. I shouldn't have been, and I'm truly sorry. I am deeply penitent and can promise you that it will never happen again.Especially after tonight's episode of 'Pat the Plank Patronises the Plebs' transpired to be a Eurovision special.Yup, an entire two hours (that felt like two years) devoted to deciding what musical suicide note was going to be this year's official Irish entry to the continent's campest competition.(Sorry, Alternative Miss Ireland, but your contestants look like a load of marines on the march compared to the rarefied campness of the Eurovision Song Contest.)So, firstly some obscure trad band from Sligo who tend to sing in Irish had been appointed as this year's sacrificial...

Mary Harney, Europe's least healthy looking health minister, has really done it this time.Not content with presiding over the further erosion of the Irish health system and selling off what bits she can to her developer pals, she must now watch in free marketeer horror as BUPA pulls out of Ireland today.That's 300 jobs down the Swanee, half a million punters without health insurance and a big load of egg on the Minister's face, given her espousal of competition in the marketplace.Thanks to a bonkers ruling in court the other week that BUPA should give a million quid a week to the dominant force in the marketplace VHI, this result was inevitable. Expect Vivas to follow shortly.This health minister is a liability. Can someone please put her out to pasture......