Blogging from the Bog

   Let the games begin!  Today Bertie Ahern announced the date for the upcoming Election.  In less than a month, Thursday the 24th of May, we will be asked to reward the present government for their vigilence in watching over us as the Celtic Tiger came rampaging through; or, charge the next government with guiding us through the Celtic Meltdown.

   Get your wellies ready, it will start getting thick and deep.

   It has been an unprecedented ten years of prosperity, no doubt about it, and would have happened with any party at the helm.  The question that begs answering is: Has the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat government given us value for money when it comes to their guardianship and investment, for us, of this great and temporary wealth?

   Vast quantities of money have been lavished on many areas of particular concern to the electorate, health, education, infrastructure, the Spire, and  E-Voting machines, to name a few.  Has our money been spent wisely and invested properly for us?  Could a better job have been done with ten years and billions of euros at the disposal of the present crowd?  Is the health care system working properly?  Are you happy with the state of the schools?  Has infrastructural planning been led by developers or those vested by us to lead Ireland into the future?

   Now that public monies have been squandered with no real progress made, are we to reward the present government with our Number One?  How about we give them a five year holiday from politics instead?  The success of the economy is the only leg Bertie has to stand on in this election.  Will we forget all the mis-management and lack of leadership in this once-off prosperous time?  So much could have, no should have, been done for the safety, security, and stability of our future.

   Expose yourself to the views of Harry McGee and Skin Flicks for the craic. 

   It was reported today, that on Easter Sunday, almost three weeks ago, a man in his thirties who had been declared deceased by the astute medical team, was diagnosed as "alive" by the mortuary staff at the Mater Hospital.  An "internal investigation" is underway according to Eithne Donellan of the Irish Times, and we all know what that means.  Good job yer man wasn’t holding an organ donors’ card! 

   Mary Harney, the top health authority in the nation, not about to take it on the chins so close to the election, has contacted the highest paid Doctors in the land, her spin doctors, who advised her to "Have a Cadbury and say nothing ’til ya hear more."

   Bertie Ahern, long waiting for a sign to help him decide an election date, is contemplating with some anguish, the 19th of May.  It coincides nicely with the Ascension after the original Resurrection, and he views it as a prophesy of his own ascension to the top of the heap again.  Unfortunately the 19th falls on a Saturday and so he struggles silently.

   Michael McDowell, one of the twelve, is frantically drafting new legislation to plug this loophole of a man, certified as deceased, who is alive and well and walking around, outside of any juristiction.

   The fact that a Death Certificate has to be signed by a Medical Doctor with date, time and cause of death should speed up the "internal investigation" don’t ya think?

   As the election draws near and auction politics reigns supreme, we can expect some changes and turnarounds on policy to sway our preferences and try our patience.  Instead of standing their ground on some, any, beliefs in sound government practices, we are entertained by an "anything, everything, please elect me!" up for grabs raffle of ideology.

   Brian Cowen, Minister of Finance, is warming up for a song and dance which he will have to perform on the Stamp Duty issue.  He has stated that the Fine Gael proposals are daft and "threaten jobs".  The biggest threat to jobs, exports, and tourism today Brian is inflation.  Try to get your head around that before Bertie pulls the rug out from under you on your stamp duty statements.

   If I am reading the Revenues’ limits on stamp duty obligations properly, it states that a first time buyer may purchase a new house valued at up to €317,500 without paying the duty.  Have we lost the run of ourselves to think that our first house has to be our "dream house"?  The days of only buying one home in a lifetime are long gone, better to get firmly on the corporate ladder before committing yourself to the property one!

   In Sundays’ Business Post, Vincent Brown brings our attention to some salient points on the issue.  One item that he mentioned was that the tax was by definition a burden on the wealthier and not the poorer players in the property game.  He did not mention however that Stamp Duty on house purchases also supplants any other property taxes for those of us who like it where we are, and who are not looking to expand our property portfolio!

   At the end of his article, entitled "Politicians are making no sense on Stamp Duty", Mr. Brown asks, "Tell me where I am wrong?"  I couldn’t resist this!  Well Vincent, for starters, I think you may be wrong in presupposing that politicians would be "making sense" during an election campaign!  The second would be where you say, "…sellers may increase prices…", crikeys they’re already chancing their arms at it now!  And lastly you asked the queston, "So what is it with the party and Stamp Duty?", when you could have asked the question, "What is it with house buyers purchasing over-valued properties and the banks allowing it?" 

   Some other blogs on this topic are: Joan, eastmeath, and Keith. 

   If there was any question of Nuclear Energy "leaking" onto the Irish national grid from it’s cross-border connections before, there is no doubts now.  Minister Noel Dempsey and his northern counterpart Minister for Enterprise Maria Eagle have recommitted to the Single Electricity Market (SEM) which will come on line 1 November 2007 in plenty of time to cook our Christmas goose with Nuclear generated electricity.

   Dempsey, who admits to a style of delegating (passing the buck) responsibility to his underlings and an ignorance of technology , has nothing on his website in relation to the agreements reported in the national papers.  A bit too close to the election?

   IBEC, a lobby group for business, and Forfas are both continually pushing the Nuclear Option debate to the forefront and are meeting resistance from the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) crowd who seem to think it is reasonable to purchase this power so long as they don’t see any generating plants on the Irish landscape.  Sure, don’t they prosecute people who buy child porn because it supports a horrid industry?  Buying Nuclear electricity is hypocritical to our policy is it not?

   Fianna Fail tried to build four nuclear stations at Carnsore Point in the late 1970’s.  Now they rant and rave over Sellafield all the time and just recently had their legal action thrown out of the EU court.  It appears that they see no reason not to go ahead and import that same electricity?  Fiona O’Malley of the PD’s said, "There is a certain hypocrisy in criticising another country for planning to build nuclear power stations, while turning a blind eye to the fact that we ourselves import nuclear-generated energy."  Gee, ya think?

   In the Green Party’s "Previous Generation" report on why nuclear energy doesn’t make sense for Ireland it lists an increasing need to generate additional energy; but, doesn’t seem to condemn buying it in.  Yet under the SEM Agreement the ESB will be required to decrease it’s energy output (to keep market prices high is my guess) which is in direct contrast to our strategic national energy interests.

   Ah sure, what’s the harm, we’ll all have a Nuclear Winter and a glowing Christmas dinner this year!

   The Minister for Health Mary Harney has recently criticized the INO and it’s nurses for "putting at risk" patients with the recent walkouts at some Hospitals and Psychiatric centres.  Not since Typhoid Mary has any other Mary been such a risk to the public health.

   Seemingly, unable to cope with or comprehend the delicate nature of Public Health Care, she has alienated all involved and feels she can bully her ill-thought-out concepts onto Doctors, Nurses, Administration, and Patients.  Confused that the money carelessly thrown into the system has had no effect, she now believes that closing the purse is somehow going to prove a better policy?

   In a quick analysis comparing Health care services in the UK and Ireland I came upon these interesting figures for 2006.  The UK has a health budget of £96 billion (that’s 9 zeros after the 96) ours is €12 billion.  The population the UK is servicing is 60 million with a healthcare staff of 1.3 million, we have 4.6 million people (not all patients mind you) with a staff of 100,000.

   Doing the sums for today’s exchange rate of £0.67 to €1.0 I came up with this assesment, any corrections are most welcome!

   Ireland spends €3,000 per capita and has one staff member for every 40 people in the population (possible patients).  The UK budgets €2,400 per capita and has one staff per 60 possible patients.  So we spend more and have more carers at the ready.  What’s the problem?  We have the financial and human resources to provide equal or better public health care than our neighbour yet we cannot.

   According to Mr. Alistair Davie of the UK Department of Health, 80% of the employees are front line staff, with a Nurse to Doctor ratio of 4 to 1.  That leaves the remaining 20% of the employees for administration and support staff.  Is our Minister of Health, with all the talk of Openness and Transparency, willing to submit any data to quantify the ratios in our HSE as freely as the UK has?

   Either we have way too many administrators and not enough hands on practitioners  or the vision has been lost at Ministerial level, both of these or some combination of the two are probable.

   The bog is low lying between hills and woodlands, over a mile long and a half mile wide, stretching as is does from East to West.  It has sparse vegetation, scars from years of cutting the turf for fuel, and a road running through it.  Calling this partly paved, mostly potholed, and always struggling to survive ribbon of misery a road, is poetic license.  There are only two houses off of this road and one of them is my home.

   Several years ago there was a fire in the bog and all the heathers, wild grasses, bog cotton and various low growing shrubs and trees were destroyed.  The wild birds, foxes, pheasants, and hares disappeared along with the flora, the surface was blackened.  The fire brigade was there when I got home from work that summer evening and among the volunteers was a friend of mine.  There was little they could do except monitor the progress of the flames and make sure none of the peat stayed smouldering after the fires passed.  If the fire had turned towards the woodlands they would have had a struggle to contain it.

   Apparently someone a half mile away had started to clear some dead gorse bushes and torched the pile which got out of control.  Accidental as it was it left its’ mark for years.  The grasses grew, the heathers sprung back and the animals slowly followed, not as many and varied as before, but they come to feed, nest, and hunt once more.

   The Bog Road is a popular short-cut for the locals to save a few miles when going from one town to another.  The bog is about halfway between Ballyghastly and Dunshaggin, which lie South and North of the bog.  And though this boreen saves them three or four miles of a journey, most try to do the Bog Mile in under a minute.  Any oncoming traffic must duck and dive to the sides into brambles and whitethorns to get out of the way as only one car can pass at a time.

   Three weeks of dry weather, sunshine, and frosty mornings have parched the exposed surface of the bog.  Her normally soft and supple outer skin has become cracked and blistered and resembles the back of an alligator.  But she will make a remarkable comeback, with a few showers of rain, as she has done again and again for thousands of years. 

   Hopefully, with the next rain, the bushes and trees on the verges of the boreen will sprout leaves and foliage and cover all the rubbish that has been left there over the years.  Good evidence that not everyone does the Bog Mile in under one minute.  In times gone by nothing was thrown away; but, since the advent of the Celtic Tiger we have become a throwaway society along with everyone else.

   There have been unusal things found preserved in bogs including people,  lumps of butter, tools, and clothes.  None of those items are on the fringes of my bog.  No, if the electric cookers, prams, bicycles, black bin bags, cans and bottles, and builders rubble remain for future inhabitants to find thrown into these precious wetlands, they will think we were pure eejits indeed.

   Don’t we just love ‘em!  Conspiracies, scandals, and unsubstantiated allegations are lapped up by us like milk from a dish put in front of hungry kittens.  Far be it from us to take our news cluttered with facts, truth, or common sense, give us outlandish inuendo, raunchy rumour, and invective harangues anyday!  Sure, we’ve enough on our minds now as it is, what with the price of the Pint, sport, reality shows, nosing and begrudging, celebrity worship, and finding an excuse not to go to work on Monday filling our heads, who needs facts bouncing off those brain cells too?

   With Bertie’s recent money from friends scandal the big question everyone wanted answered was, "Who leaked it to the Press?", not, "Was that appropriate behaviour for a Finance Minister?".  And what about Charlie Haughey’s shirts? and the mysterious woman in Liam Lawlor’s Merc when it crashed?  That’s the stuff we want to know about and that’s what sells papers!

   This morning I was listening to the radio while I was making the toast and porridge and heard a good bit of nonsense.  The son of an American Black Panther founder was rattling on how the dikes in New Orleans were blown up by the government during the Hurricanes, and that the city would have survived, if not for this plot to clear the area of the Black population.  Ooh! lap,lap,lap.  No facts to be seen for miles but I could believe this!  I want to believe this!  Bush bashers unite!

   The next guest was an investigative journalist in America, Noelle I think, who claimed there was a concerted effort by authorities to give guns to the ghetto kids so they could kill each other!  Ooh! lap,lap,lap  What other reason could there be for such a high rate of gun crime in the inner cities?  With a couple of off-hand quotes from some Irish cops who confided in her that it was their policy to let them kill each other to make the policemens’ jobs easier!  An Irish connection!  lap,lap,lap. 

   I was beginning to think this was a re-broadcast of an April Fool’s show when they segued into a panel that was convened to analyse Bill O’Reilly’s appearance in Dublin last week.  You know Bill, of Fox News fame and The O’Reilly Factor, "my, my this is going to be good", I grinned, and sat down to porridge with my ears begging for the cream! lap,lap,lap.  They played clips and analysed O’Reilly’s talk….something was amiss here I thought to myself…Bill was witty, honest and factual…his arguments and logic held water!  He made the audience laugh and applaud!  "Hey, what’s going on?", I pondered.  The assembled panel of experts were bewildered, they mumbled and stumbled around and couldn’t bash the Yank with any of the typical inanities, I was gobsmacked!  The kitty dish of milk taken right out from under their noses!  Finally, they all seemed to agree with the Yank, and broke for the news.

   I sipped at the tay and cleaned up the dishes.  What I heard next brought me right back to the idea that this was an April Fool’s broadcast.  The news reader announced that the ESB were going to charge each household €225 to install a smart-meter that will be more accurate in measuring electrical usage.  It can be read and monitored remotely and will make redundant the lads that come to read the meters!  Brilliant!  We can now a.) subsidize the ESB equipment so they can b.) save on payroll and they will expect us to c.) give the poor lads a generous golden handshake!   Do I have GOBSHITE written on my forehead or what?  I’m going for a walk in the bog to see if I can think of a good excuse to get out of work tomorrow.

   All the political parties are looking pretty green this time out when it comes to energy.  Not only is it hard to tell the policies apart; but, it seems they are trying to outdo each other with the percentages and the numbers game!

   The PD’s say they want 30% of the electricity generated from bio-fuels by 2015 and Labour claims their target is 50% by 2020.  One plus in the PD policy is a plan to make the ESB a non-profit organisation, I really like that one, and on a probability scale of 1-10 I’d say that one is floating no higher than a 2 (with a 3% margin of error), same as the PD’s popularity poll. 

   The Green’s, Labour, and the PD’s all seem intent on creating a new Department of the Environment which will only add to the bureaucracy, where do you think all the present employees of the Department will go?  Right back into the new one is my guess.

   Yes, Energy can be a hot topic and really extracts the promises out of the candidates.  The theory is nice, and that is mostly what you hear, the practicality of implementing these strategies is a whole different animal altogether.  And if you think anything is new in the Green Party’s statement, "Let’s spend our oil money in Carlow not Kuwait." then you were not around in 1995 when Sen. Cassidy said, "We could give our old age pensioners a £10 increase rather than giving that money to the oil barons of Iran or another country."  Twelve years later and still the same mind-set, spend the money before it’s even made (or saved), with no practical plan on the horizon.

   In an amazing document, from the files of the Seanad, which could have been recorded yesterday, these very issues were raised on the floor by a Senator Townsend.  The excitement and enthusiasm his proposals aroused, and the fervor with which they were accepted, nearly leap off those pages of history when you read them!  And there they sit, unacted upon these past 12 years.

   Fianna Fail doesn’t seem to have on their website an Energy Policy per se, you kind of have to read between the lines of their Environment and Natural Resources statements; but, they do boast of having the Greenest candidate of all!  Councillor Mary Fitzpatrick recounts her green homemaking skills with great alacrity, if she is half as good in government, FF has a winner.

   Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael party was in power at the time of the 1995 Seanad debate mentioned above and missed a great opportunity to capitalize on that Energy proposal.  He was the Minister for Tourism at the time and it seems everyone in the party, except himself, was embroiled in some kind of scandal or another.

   Political mileage will be made from Energy promises; but, who do you trust to drive?

   It is the obligation of every government to protect the citizens, sovereignty, and wealth of its’ nation for the benefit of all.  The wealth can be described as natural resources, indigenous commodities that are vested in the area we occupy.

   Today we automatically think of oil, natural gas, and gold as valuable natural resources because of their high demand; but, the wealth of nations is varied and randomly distributed from one to the next.

   In Ireland we can claim as our natural resources the coastline (ports and fishing), the land (agriculture and peatlands), our location (sea and air routes), a temperate climate, a few metals, and rain, wind, and waste!  Additionally we are blessed with tourism, hardy genes, and a proud heritage.

   Through mis-management in the past we have traded natural gas reserves and fishing rights, and have made agricultural compromises to fuel our present economy.  With rising inflationary budgets and government tax-happy legislation we are jeopordizing the tourism industry now as well.  Serious measures should be implemented to insure these mistakes are not re-visited and to minimize the damage already incurred.  Do not play politics with our irreplaceable resources so that they may be passed on to future generations, we have to work with what we have so let’s not squander it.

   Let’s talk about wind, rain, and waste as a natural resource.  At first glance none of them seem to be of much help, far from it, they are usually considered obstacles to be overcome; but, God bless us, we have plenty of all three, why not put them to good use?

   Fair play to the Green Party for proposing alternative energy measures, and to their credit have been for years, it is only recently the other parties have joined the conservation club.  They hope to bring in legislation that will create incentives for solar and wind investments on small scale levels.  What they have neglected to foresee is that until the National Grid is opened and available to small operators this venture will not be viable.  Of all the EU countries Ireland is the only one that has cost prohibitive access to the Grid and this issue is being pursued (for our benefit) only by the EU Parliament.

   With access to the Grid any excess electricity generated by these households and small operators would be fed back into the system on an already existing network of distribution and would not have to be stored in an expensive series of batteries.  This would reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and prevent purchasing electricity from the UK (which uses nuclear generating stations), in addition the ESB would have to pay us for the excess electricity we create, this is where the conflict lies I guess.

   The present Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, recently overheard saying, "Thanks be to Jaysus it happened in Galway first", is busying himself with pre-election tidying up in his own constituency of Wicklow, by funding millions into waste and water treatment facilities there, since Easter.  I wonder has he bothered to read the EPA report on the state of the nations’ drinking water?  The problem is everywhere Dick!

   Another kudo to the Green’s is that in their 2004 Election Policy they mentioned two other items of interest to this article, rainwater harvesting and anaerobic digestion.  Collecting rainwater for use in Ireland is not a novel idea; but, the potential for large scale collection and distribution into urban areas is something that needs to be looked into and not put on the long finger anymore.  Households need septic, water, electrical, and phone services why not a rainwater collection service for domestic use?

   In Germany there are 2,500 on farm anaerobic digester systems in place that process the animal faeces into heat and electricity with bio-mass and CHP technologies.  In Monaghan, Silver Hill Foods won a prestigious award in 2004 for turning 80,000 tonnes of duck shite into gold by the AD process.  The town of Tullamore, Co. Offaly installed an Anaeroebic Digester in 1986 to handle their Septic and Sewage Treatment, the first AD system in Ireland, why not more?  A recent attempt to utilize one of these systems by a company called Bioverda and its’ subsidiary Valeco was turned down in a community just north of Fermoy, Co. Cork by residents who claimed it would create noxious smells.  Oh well, we all have our own priorities, what are yours?

   It is time to re-asses the nature and value of our Natural Resources and to take positive steps in using and not abusing them.

   Are we getting de-sensitised to the almost daily news of traffic deaths on our roads?  In this small nation does the number of these tragedies sound out of the ordinary?  How is it that the attempts by the Government, the National Roads Authority, or the Gardai to quell this storm of misery continually fail to remove the "car" from carnage?

   Bertie Ahern said in the Dail that he was not responsible for the traffic congestion at the Port Tunnel recently because he was not driving the van that crashed and caused hours of delays.  That seems to set the tone for the governments political philosophy of Excusiology, and their distancing themselves from any responsibility for anything but the blossoming economy.

   With all the advisers and consultants they have on the payrolls, at our expense, you’d think one of them would have anticipated the bid for Aer Lingus by Ryan Air, the need for Emergency Services to shift vehicles to keep traffic flowing smoothly, or a system of Road Death prevention!

   Instead of revamping the Driver’s Licensing scandal, budgeting driver education in the classrooms, detailing some of the Garda force to patrol out on the streets, or giving local communities support to combat their own unique problem areas, Bertie passes the buck to Gay Byrne and turns his back on the issue!

   It is lack of political will and excusiology that prevents any pro-active initiative on the part of this government to tackle the very preventable slaughter on our roads. 

   To put it into perspective there are two examples I would like to place before you, one hypothetical, one fact.  The former being this:  How long would the present government allow the Irish Defence Forces to remain in a peace keeping mission if one soldier a day was being returned home in a body bag?  And for the fact:  More people have died on Ireland’s roads in the last 10 years on Bertie’s watch than died in 30 years of the "Troubles".  Yes, for the population of this country there are inordinately too many deaths on our roads.     The time for excuses, buck passing, and hand wringing is over, what we need is Leadership in government that can make decisions with fore-sight.

      Bertie Ahern, Excusiologist