Lessons In Budget Cuts From Harney; Lessons In Lisbon Warfare From France

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be", said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

By Charley Brady

There's only one thing worse than waking up with the hangover from Hell and that is waking up to discover that you have not only Hades' own hangover, but a laptop that has finally given up after the years of screaming abuse that you have put it through.

And if my publisher or editor - I'm not fussy - feel that this is a hint to buy me a new one then I shall expect a small package in the post tomorrow. Hopefully with a laptop in it and not a bomb.

So I regret that you gentle readers will have to indulge me in a slightly shorter column than usual (there really is a God-Editor) as I'm writing this in an Internet café.

Well, I thought that the day couldn't get any worse until I stopped into the The Coach House Hotel in Oranmore where they serve the best seafood chowder you've ever tasted, and flicked through the morning papers.

I apparently let a demented scream out of me before falling ass-over-teakettle from the bar stool, frothing at the mouth and screaming: "It can't be true! It can't be true!" at the top of my lungs.

Simon, the man in charge, helped me to my feet and gently explained that it was indeed true and that he had witnessed several other incidents like my own that awful morning.

While I blabbered that I had just seen a photograph of Health Minister Typhoid Mary Harney actually SMILING, Simon, true professional that he is, gently pointed out that I hadn't read the caption beneath the photo.

It said that she was photographed emerging from a restaurant.

Immediately sanity was restored and I could understand the smile. She had obviously eaten two of the waiters along with her lunch.

Certainly she wasn't smiling during the week. Hell, I know that the masters that she works for and endorses took an awful kicking in the elections and that Galway in particular gave more votes than was expected to Libertas founder Declan Ganley, but it comes to something when revenge against an entire community is in the form of savage cuts against hospitals that are struggling as is.

Death's Head Harney had attacked the excellent Galway University Hospital by slashing six million euros from their budget.

She is closing 60 beds on top of the 70 already wiped out; a seven-day ward is now a five-day one; two operating theatres are closed because of this maliciousness; an intensive care unit is closed completely; and reduced by a third is the admission of radiation cancer patients.

That'll show the bog-trotters that they're getting a bit uppity, won't it, Mary? It's only a few years since you sneeringly said that the electorate have notoriously short memories, but guess what, Mary: Here's a guy who has one hell of along memory and who carries a grudge forever.

Meanwhile we are, as Brian Nero Cowen says, "back to business as usual". In other words the Fianna Failures are determined to brazen it out to the end. They have a mandate, they argue.

Well, they don't, do they? Hell, we didn't even want King Canute Cowen in as leader of the party. The ONLY reason he's there at all after his disastrous role in Finance is because his ex-boss, "man of the people" Bertie Ahern was caught with a shed load of loot that he couldn't give a convincing explanation for. And no, "I won it on the horses" doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned.

Hell, sue me, not the newspaper. It's just my opinion and the opinion of about half the country. After all, you're on record as saying that you don't have a flutter. Tricky, ain't it?

Now I see that you are exempt from paying the new 200 euros car park tax. You and your cronies. This is despite the fact that you don't even have any official duties anymore, you old windbag. You are forgotten but not gone, still hanging around like that pungent smell of mothballs that I get when I take my one and only suit out of the closet every ten years in order to attend a wedding. (Not that I get invited to many, for some reason. Maybe people just don't get married these days. Or is it simply because paranoids like myself are just people who are in possession of the facts. Yeah, I think I'll go with that one.)

But as you and your big brother Maurice proved last week when you turned up at the premier of Ken Loach's movie "Looking for Eric" you simply HAVE NO SHAME. The director didn't want to see your self-serving asses dragging themselves in while you smirked about how much you loved "The Wind That Shakes The Barley." NOBODY, especially those who were about to vote against your party, wanted to be anywhere near you.

As for Fianna Fail's mandate, I can't put it any better than the excellent and fearless journalist Richard Waghorne:

"The truth is that this government never had a mandate in the first place. It has always been cobbled together on the back of secret deals, secret hush funds, and the unapologetic rubbishing of clear promises made to the electorate...

"Nobody voted for the coalition as currently constructed. It exists from one day to the next only because it is sustained by the abuse of public money. A general election this summer seems not to be on the cards. It ought to be - and the unprecedented sea - change in public opinion is justification enough for making an exception to the usual timetable...

"After all, a Government that can only keep going because of secret deals and special treatment never truly had the "mandate" [Cowen] speaks of in the first place."

And this just in! Even Cowen Canute must be cringing at this one. Just when I thought that "No to Lisbon" voters like myself were going to lose out on our undemocratically decided Lisbon 2 vote along comes Nicolas Short-Ass Sarkozy of France to stand up on his tippy- toes and offer to come to Ireland in order to lecture we poor ignorant peasants on how to "make the right choice this time."

Tell you what, Napoleon: instead of giving we hicks an unwanted lecture on how WE vote in a democratic country why don't you give us a history lesson on why World War II had only been in production for five minutes before you were all running around with your hands in the air.

It's been a mad week here, all right. Firstly, we make it as clear an azure blue sky that we are fed up to the back teeth with Cowen and his cohorts; then they refuse to go anyway; then I've had to listen to Fianna Failures saying to me, as if they were dripping jewels of wisdom from their forked tongues: " Ah, but where did Declan Ganley get his money from?"

This is coming from the FIANNA FAIL PARTY, the same party whose speeches are carefully studied by prisoners in Mountjoy Jail to see if they can get a few tips on how to steal a few more shekels from people when they're released. The party that was represented by la crème de la crème of crooks and conmen in the form of Charles J. Haughey.

Where one of their top guys, Frank Fahey, was actually given a column last week so that he could lecture Fianna Gael in the slipperiest manner imaginable. And this from a guy who was a schoolteacher until he joined the party and who now owns over 90 properties from Boston to Galway to South Africa and to Moscow. (Oh, sorry: the Moscow hair salon is in his wife's name.)

Yes, we're through the looking glass again, friends! And yes! We have no bananas!

Hope to be back on my new laptop next week and as always hope to see you all.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net