Belfast Blogs.com

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...

I'm currently in Asia, reading about Africa. It's an interesting compare and contrast.I'm specifically reading Martin Meredith's 'The State of Africa', which chronicles how it all went wrong across Africa in the fifty years since most colonial powers pulled out and the various countries achieved independence.What a sorry litany of kleptocracy, famine, pointless war and endless tribal conflict it all adds up to.The irony is that many of those countries, whatever you care to think of the colonial legacy, were in pretty good financial shape when they were handed over to the indigenous 'Big Men' dictators who assumed control after independence.But after a few decades of nutters like Amin, Mobutu, Bongo and so on, the continent is in worse shape than it ever was.The contrast with Asia is...