All Politics is Corrupt

It's a bit scary. It's very sad.
But it is, unfortunately, a fact.
ALL politics is corrupt.
It has to be.
That's how they get elected.
Now, saying that all politics is corrupt, doesn't mean that all politicians are bad people, are immoral people.
Many of them firmly believe that the things they say and do are justified because they firmly believe they are the best people to do good for the masses.
But it rarely turns out so.

Is there a country on earth, for example, where politicians are paid a sum even vaguely close to the average wage in that country?
Is there a country on earth where politicians aren't chauffeured about the place like royalty?
Is there a country on earth where politicians don't look after themselves in relation to pay, expenses, perks, comfort and the trappings of their offices?
No. Not as far as I can tell.
Politicians promise what they know they can't deliver on the basis that a) everyone does it b )nobody expects delivery and c) sure that's how you get elected.
In power, they make decisions which are a)wrong but popular because it helps the re-election campaign - which begins the minute the last election is over.
In power, they cosy up to business because good business is good for the country. It's also good for forking out vast sums to political parties and brown envelopes to the most unscrupulous of the politicians.
And in power they attempt to do things they are utterly incapable of achieving and utterly unqualified to undertake.
The result is what we have now. Politicians worried about their economies - but as worried if not more worried about their own futures, worried about offending banks, worried about offending business.
Their world is a closed one, one in which nobody is more important than they, where nobody matters more than they.
One in which banks with bosses earning vast, unimaginable (for most) immoral sums are bailed out and the little man pays the price.
Who bails out those who were given loans irresponsibly by greedy banks? Nobody.
Why? Well, for the same reason nobody bails out the autistic, the elderly, the mentally ill, the drug addict, the homeless, the drink.
No votes in it,
So the corruption goes on.
And there's not a blessed thing, bar a revolution which isn't a good idea at all, than anyone can do about it.
Except maybe pray.

Read More......

It Wasn't A Celtic Tiger After All...

What do all of these animals have in common?
Unicorn, Yeti, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster.
Well, not everyone believes they exist or ever did.
There are some who swear they saw the Abominable Snowman or Yeti in the Himilayas.
But, even though we know what it’s supposed to look like, there’s no proof there ever was such a creature.
Bigfoot has actually been filmed in the United States. But detractors say it was just an elaborate hoax and there is no Bigfoot.
The Loch Ness Monster has long been the subject of debate. There is one photograph said to be of the monster. But sceptics say it’s just a log floating down the lake.
And the Unicorn, well, only little children reading fairy tales believe there was ever a Unicorn.
There is another creature which is the subject of debate too, these days.
Most people on this island say they’ve seen it.
But others, like me, believe those people only think they’ve seen it. They have been persuaded by slick political campaigns that they have seen it. They have been told over and over again, that this creature can be seen almost anywhere in Ireland.
What creature is this?
It’s the Celtic Tiger.

So what does it look like?
Well, it looks like a shiny, expensive new car. It looks like a satellite dish and a 37 inch LCD television. It looks like an apartment in Spain or Turkey or Bulgaria. It looks like a bag of goodies from Sachs of Fifth Avenue or Bloomingdales. It looks like a new house. It looks like a large kitchen extension. It looks like a computer in every child’s room.
At least, that’s what we’re told it looks like.
Because if you look a little harder, you’ll see that it also looks like filthy hospital A&E areas, with sick people lying on trolleys for days. It looks like long waiting lists. It looks like a rampant MRSA bug. It looks like schools, bulging at the seams and children unable to get places to begin their education. It looks like an infrastructure system that can’t even deliver a modern road between any two major towns in the country but can, for some reason, build four motorways through Co Meath. It looks like a dire public transport system. It looks like one in nine children in the country living in poverty. It looks like government ministers who give themselves almost 30 pay rises in ten years. It looks like billionaires. It looks like a Taoiseach who bums money off businessmen and who then tells lies about it and who says he didn’t know his own local cumann had given his then live-in partner a €30,000 loan. It looks like a government which prefers to fight the parents of autistic children in court (with our money) rather than educate those children. It looks like a government more determined to satisfy the needs of business than the needs of the people of the country.
We still have lousy hospitals. We still have overcrowded schools. We still have poor. We still have homeless. We still have a drug problem. We still have a crime problem.
But the statistics don’t lie, do they? We all have more money. That’s what they say.
Mind you, if you put me sitting at a table with Sean Quinn, we’re worth, on average, €2billion each.
Only I’m not.
You see, what happened here was that some people became very, very rich indeed.
And most didn’t.
But the average went up.
And we all thought we were rich because Fianna Fail politicians, in the main, kept telling us we were.
And it felt good.
So we all loved the animal we thought was a Celtic Tiger.
And it might have looked like a Celtic Tiger at first glance.
But, you see, it wasn’t a Celtic Tiger at all.
It was a Greedy Pig.

Read More......

Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) IV

YOU might get out on Monday, they said.
But I’m something of an old hand at this now.
And so I never believe the first date I’m given for my departure from hospital.
I reckoned on Tuesday.
But of course, I should have known.
My Tuesday is their Wednesday or Thursday.
It’s the way it is with doctors.
It’s like my nine o’clock in the morning is their midday.
It’s the way of things. Time is more or less meaningless for doctors. If it wasn’t, so busy are they in our over-administered health service, they’d go mad.
So I’m still in my hospital bed, and still on page 84 of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I’m enjoying it. But I keep falling asleep every time I try to read any more of it.
It must be the drugs.
Sodium benzoate, sodium bisulphate, ascorbic acid - and that’s just the Lucozade.
Fortunately, my lunch today was not served by the lady who informed me as she placed yesterday’s offering in front of me, that she ‘felt dreadful.’
Today it was the lady who had the good grace to put my lunch in front of me before she turned to leave the room, coughing and sneezing.
Believe me, suggesting that we divert money into providing sterile pods for the sick, for at least the really sick, is not an idea borne from the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs.
Talking of which, isn’t it a really brave move by Ireland’s pharmacists to pick on heroin addicts in order to advance their campaign for more money.
Yes, I know they work hard. But so too do those who have dedicated their lives to helping our unfortunate addicts who have now been abandoned by pharmacists not noted for their moderation when it comes to pricing their products.
“We were left with no alternative,” the pharmacists said. Apart from being utter tosh, that’s just a lie.
No alternatives? Why don’t they go on hunger strike or something that might actually test whether or not they have any support from their customers, addicted or otherwise?
My bet is they wouldn’t be thrown a single pea, let alone a sandwich.
Dammit, hospital leaves too much time for thinking.
Right now, I’m thinking how Ireland really could have won this rugby world cup were it not for all the things that are wrong in the camp and with Irish rugby in general - like the fact that very few people are playing it anymore and that it is still, in the main, a middle class game which is fiercely protected from invasion by, well, the middle classes who run it.
I’m thinking how our government has become utterly corrupt, generating sinecures for its supporters at public expense.’
I’m thinking how we have a health service run by people who think it’s ok to shut down front line services while they still have highly paid people in charge of the purchase of staple clips. Let’s see the administrative jobs going, boys.
I’m thinking how those who run our national airline have managed to turn it from a much loved institution to an organisation which is tolerated by some and loathed by others by loved by none.
I’m thinking how the entire Celtic Tiger business was, in the heel of the hunt, the greatest exercise in spin ever foisted on a population, a hoodwinking more successful even than that attempted by Blair and Bush in relation to Iraq.
We know know, there were not Weapons of Mass Destruction.
And we know now that there was no great wealth in the Celtic Tiger.
If there was, why do we still have poor?|
Why do we still have homeless?
Why do we still have some dirty hospitals?|
Why is our healthcare system - brilliant when you’re in it - so badly run?
Why are so many of our ‘minor’ roads (they’re major for the people who have to use them every day) so lousy?
Why don’t we have enough schools?
Why don’t we have enough gardai?
Why are we selling so many of our assets?
Why are we selling the tolling of so many of our roads to private enterprise?
Why do we need Public Private Partnerships in the first place, if we’re so rich?
Because we’re not.
Only politicians, with their 22 pay rises and their sinecures are.
And, it seems, only those of us with time to think. realise it.

Read More......

I Wonder

DID you ever wonder about the way we treat our politicians?
Did you ever wonder why we pay them so much?
Did you ever wonder why we allow our taxes to be used to pay for big cars and chauffeurs to drive them?
Did you ever wonder why politicians are, generally speaking, applauded when they walk into a room?
Did you ever wonder why we pay for their pr consultants, their style consultants and the consultants they consult to decide what consultants they need to consult next?
I wonder. I wonder all the time.
And I wonder why there are so many charitable organisations in rich countries.
Look at Ireland for example.
It is a wealthy country.
That’s what they tell us.

We’re the richest country in the world, some say.
Others put us third or fifth or eighth.
Few suggest we are outside the top ten.
I wonder why, then, that our telephone book contains pages and pages and pages of number for charitable organisations.
I wonder why it's something that doesn't seem to bother politicians.
I wonder why they think it's important they're seen at the opening of new buildings and roads and equally important that they're not seen near the homeless or the addicted or those in dire need of official help.
I wonder why so many people, so many of the disadvantaged, have to rely on charity to get by.
I wonder why politicians, who in Ireland gave themselves 22 pay rises in ten years, do nothing to help those who need help most.
I wonder why the St Vincent de Paul society has to run breakfast clubs for kids so that they get a decent breakfast every day.
I wonder why it has to provide resource centres in so many
Neighbourhoods.
I wonder why it has to provide education grants to those who cannot afford education, even at primary level.
I wonder why it has to provide holidays for poor children.
I wonder why it has to provide shelter for the homeless.
I wonder why those who look after children with Down Syndrome and Autism, have to beg the public for money to provide a service the government should provide.
I wonder why Americans allow George Bush to stay in the White House he having spent $800 billion killing Iraqis and the young men of America based on a lie.
I wonder why people buy products knowing they have been made by slave labour, sometimes even child labour.
I wonder why some people who are worth hundreds of millions want to be worth hundreds of millions more.
I wonder why African leaders applauded the despot Robert Mugabe a couple of weeks ago.
I wonder why, in the heel of the hunt, nobody is actually doing anything about Darfur.
I wonder why Muslim clerics don’t simply say that murder is wrong, that suicide bombing is wrong and that those who do such things offend Allah.
I wonder why doctors who swear to protect life, thing that killing fetuses, viable fetuses, is a good thing.
I wonder how the parents of whatever little boy it was who killed Rhys Jones in Liverpool, think they’re doing the right thing by not going to the police.
I wonder how governments, just about everywhere, can lecture about drug abuse, can pour millions into the frontline fight against heroin and cocaine and ecstasy and fail, utterly, to provide medical support for those addicts who want to stop.
I wonder why people hurt children.
I wonder why I never seen policemen on the streets anymore.
I wonder what politicians think when, as they sit in the back of their chauffeur driven cars, they see homeless people slipping under their cardboard sheets for the night.
I wonder why some wealthy people are generous and some are plain greedy.
I wonder why people throw litter on the street.
I wonder why gazillions of euro/pounds/dollars aren’t diverted from making things that kill people into discovering ways of keeping them alive.
I wonder.
I wonder.
I wonder.
But most of all, I wonder why, when you think of all the solvable problems there are in the world and in our countries, we treat our politicians the way we do, why we pay them so much, pay for their cars and applaud them when they walk into rooms.

Read More......