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

Sometimes, it makes a great deal of sense to put together in the one place people who are doing the same thing or who have a great deal in common.
It makes perfect sense, for example, for Catholics like myself who want to go to Mass to gather in the church together at Mass time.
It makes sense for followers of Manchester United or Leinster Rugby, like myself, who wish to attend matches to go to Old Trafford or, nowadays, the RDS, to watch the teams.
It makes a kind of sense for drinkers to gather in pubs, shoppers to go to shops and concert goers to go to concerts. It seems unlikely that Bruce Springsteen or the Kaiser Chiefs or Arcade Fire will put on individual performances.
And it just wouldn’t be acceptable, on any level, to start burying dead people willy-nilly, here and there.

It makes no sense at all, or very little, however, to gather sick people together in one spot.
I imagine whoever came up with the idea of hospitals in the first place, was a government administrator who reckoned, correctly as it happens, that it would make economic sense to put all the sick people in one place so that a smallish team of doctors and nurses and ancillary workers could see to their needs.
The idea of hospitals could not have come from anyone with the slightest medical qualification.
Think about it.
You’re sick. You need treatment. You need to be kept in an area that is as sterile as possible.
So what do they do?
They put you into a big building full of people who also need to be kept in an area that is as sterile as possible.
And then they let in cleaners and cooks and painters and hundreds of doctors and nurses and nurses’ assistants and, of course, thousands and thousands of visitors.
Little Jimmy with his snotty nose.
Lucy, who doesn’t know -yet - that she has measles.
Tommy who is just begining to feel a bit dodgy with humps.
Uncle Fred with the cold.
Great Aunt Maude who thinks she has a cold, but it’s actually the start of ‘flu.
And all the others with as yet undiagnosed illnesses.
They pile in one after one, behind the cleaner with the smokers’ cough and the lady who delivers dinner but who nobody knows never washes her hands after going to the loo.
The ideal way of dealing with sick people, is for each of them, every individual, to be put into his or her sterile pod where a dedicated doctor and nurse could attend to them and where anyone else who had to enter the pod, to deliver food, to visit - cleaners would barely be necessary - could be fully sterilised before entering.
For a start, in a kind of ‘Hey Presto!’ way, hospital superbugs wouldn’t exist because hospitals wouldn’t exist.
Naturally, these pods could be placed either close to a patient’s home or centrally, depending on the illness and so on.
They could be portable so that, sometimes, they could be parked in your garden.
They could be wheeled down to the pub! Well, doesn’t cheering people up do their health a power of good?
And the expertise would of course have to be largely centralised.
If you had sufficient doctors and nurses, this wouldn’t be a problem.
I am aware that, by now, you think I am indeed very unwell.
You think I am off my trolley, hospital or otherwise.
You are wondering what strange drug I am receiving here in hospital.
Because the idea as outlined above, would cost billions and billions and billions.
You’re right.
At least, you’re right about the cost, not about me being off my trolley.
Isn’t it odd how people might cringe when they hear that some medical scheme or other, some special school for autistic children, some plan to house the homeless or help to get addicts off drugs, may cost billions.
But nobody seems to bat much of an eyelid at the United States spending, what is it now, 80 billion dollars a year on their Iraqi adventure.
Nobody seems to be worried about our own public representatives costing vastly more than they are worth, what with their highly inflated salaries, ridiculous and largely dishonest expenses, free parking, free telephones, free post, free offices, subsidised restaurant, gym and God knows what else.
If money was spent sensibly, if business wasn’t given such influence, if public representatives represented the public, all sorts could be done.
We could have sterile pods for the sick.
And we could look after autistic children and others with learning difficulties.
We could look after the old and the young.
We could eliminate world hunger.
And we could eliminate the need for war.
We could be decent, kind generous Christian,Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist people. Whatever.
Crazy?
Yes, I suppose. Totally.
Must check what drugs they’re giving me again.

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The British Royal Family: Can Anybody See The Point?

I WAS lying awake in bed the other night.
I had something on my mind.
It wasn’t really something that concerns me an awful lot. It wasn’t something that impacts on my life one way or the other.
It was just a question that popped into my head.
And it was this.
What is the point of the Queen?
Seriously, what purpose does she serve? What use is Prince Charles? Why do people bow in front of Princess Anne? What do they all actually do, apart from wave at people?
And why do they dress up in daft outfits?
Why is Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg the Queen of England in the first place (The family name was changed to Windsor in 1917 because Saxe-Coburg didn’t seem to be an appropriate name for a family ruling a country which was at war with Germany.)

What is the point of any royal family come to that?
Liz Saxe-Coburg-Windsor is not only queen of England, people in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, are also expected to revere her as their monarch.
God knows how many castles and estates she has.
Balmoral, where the British royal family goes occasionally to shoot small and large animals, is an astonishing 250 square kilometres of private estate.
Of course, she can afford it. Some say she’s worth £10 billion. Others put it as low as £500 million.
Which begs the question as to why the British taxpayer stumps up more than £30 million a year in Civil List payments and other handouts.
She’s a big tourist attraction, people say.
So is the guy in the Mickey Mouse outfit at Disneyworld. And I think you’ll find that he doesn’t get £30 million a year, doesn’t own a 250 square kilometre estates, doesn’t get involved in seedy scandals and doesn’t expect people to bow when he enters a room.
It’s a desperate pity that people don’t research the history of their royal families.
With the possible exception of Monaco, they would find such histories dripping in the blood of ordinary people.
Royal families killed their peasants for pleasure over the centuries. (Nowadays, they limit their killing for pleasure to small animals like foxes and pheasant and large animals like deer.)
Royal families were, universally, cruel.
Generally speaking, royal families weren’t given their thrones by a grateful populace, they simply took them. Stole them. Killed people to get them.
What use are royal families today?
Well, you couldn’t for a minute suggest the British version sets anything like a good example. Affairs, divorces, drunken escapades, inappropriate comments (largely from the big Greek chap who is also paid vast sums to be a Big Greek chap) and all around bad behaviour.
Male British royals seem never to have been able to keep it in their trousers. Edward VII wasn’t the first to have a bevy of hookers - they probably called them something posh like ‘concubines’ back then - at his beck and call.
The females all seem just a little on the weird side of normal. What mother - other than Liz Saxe-Coburg-Windsor - would greet her children with a handshake, not having seen them for months, having been away looking at her peasants in other countries?
This is, of course, why Diana never fit it. She was so normal, she not only unsettled the Saxe-Coburg-Windsors and their Greek pal, her presence made it patently obvious that they were all, largely, off their collective trolleys.
All this was going through my mind as I lay there staring at the ceiling.
Their spongers, I thought to myself.
They’re al barmy, I said to myself.
They’re a complete waste of space, I told myself.
They are clowns. Expensive clowns.
Think what else could be done with the money they get? Think how many homeless people could be housed in Windsor Castle (from where they stole their name) or Clarence House or any of their other vast mansions.
So why doesn’t Britain just turf them out, give them one estate and a couple of mill, turn Buck House into Disneyland Britain and hire a guy to dress up in a Mickey Mouse outfit to entertain the tourists?
Why doesn’t Britain become fully democratic?
Sadly, I think I know the answer to that.
Democracy gives you the likes of Blair and Bush and Sarkozy and, in our case, Bertie Ahern who has a rare form of Alzheimer's which only makes him forget anything to do with large sums of money.
Still, it’s better than having Phil the Greek gobbling up all your tax bucks.

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