The Healthy Parasites Of Our Great Little Nation

"Look here. What have you got? A diseased kidney. But introduce a parasite into the body and what have you got? A perfectly healthy parasite."
- David Cronenberg's "Shivers"

By Charley Brady

I had been hoping, optimist as I am, that the absence of our beloved "Health" Minister Mary Harney, from our radar screens had meant that she was about to exit stage left.

I had thought that since she had taken another break at the taxpayer's expense - well, certainly no one had seen her in a while and God knows she's hard to miss - after her three-month paid for holiday that she might have had a few new ideas. That tells you how stupid I am.

Because she's back with a vengeance. Of course, and we are used to this with our bunch of spongers now, she has a new "plan": a paltry €800 million was all that she was originally going to further cut provisions to her so-called health service by.

That is now €1.2 billion.

By the hokeys, that is such a change of plan

I have gone beyond even TRYING to inject humour into what this dead-eyed, overpaid, under worked woman does.

We have cancer misdiagnoses and the continuing shutting down of treatment centres.

We have people lying on hospital trolleys because the overworked and excellent inside hospital staff have nowhere for them to go.

We have people dying for no other reason than that the big boys who are not in jail for sheer negligence have lived off the fat of Ireland for far too many years.

Let me say that again: we have people dying because of neglect and we have an alarming rate of suicide because there is simply no hope of getting any help.

I would like to physically drag every one of the rats that have travelled the world at our expense into some of the hospitals that I have seen.

In "Health" minister Harney's case that might need the help of a crane (or even a paid for helicopter) and when we get there she wouldn't be interested anyway.

Hell, let's just get on with taking the medical cards away from the poor and the elderly. Even better, let's get a few hundred vans to cart their useless bodies away.

They only built the country. They are only the people that we should be revering.

The general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation, Liam Doran, said that these savings - and how funny is that - will "simply render the public health service incapable of meeting the needs of the population."

He also added that in his opinion this would lead to the closing of a further 3,000 beds.

And Morticia Mary is talking of a blanket ban on sunbeds? If it wasn't so bloody serious I wouldn't be just perpetually angry, I'd be crying out of sheer frustration at this useless bunch of self-serving chancers that call themselves a government.

No wonder that the best selling mask coming up to Halloween is an eerily lifelike one of Brian Clown. I'm thinking of buying one myself in order to smuggle me into the corridors of power.

I couldn't possibly do a worse job than these idiots, not even if they removed my entire brain first.

Oh, by the way: she says that next year will be much worst. We will have to feel the pain and take even more cuts.

Jeez, they might just as well make the whole island a quarantine zone, because what she is doing to the hard-working hospital staff is going to lead to much more than the now ridiculously famous swine flu that they keep trucking out in order to make us forget the very real problems.

Here is the real problem: people like the completely incompetent buffoons like Rody Molloy, who spent, with his (yeah, you guessed it) unelected wife and the other executives - and would someone, before I really crack up explain to me what these characters were doing - spent shed loads of loot all over the world on our behalf were actually doing?

What our proud government is doing is topping up a useless, red-faced, smug dude like Molloy on his pension by €1.1 million because they thought that it was good way to get rid of the fool.

If you were running a company and you saw someone drive it into the ground wouldn't you think that "give him the sack" would be a more appropriate response?

But not here: here we pay incompetents for their utter mismanagement and instead divert the tax paying idiot's money to paying a bunch of venal, grasping, greedy imbeciles.

Let's be honest: these thicks that are walking out with shed loads of shekels that I hope they have no time to spend are laughing into their slimy sleeves all the way to the bank while we let them do it.

But what's the answer? Well, what we do here is to get Sir Robert Geldof (true Brit, true Grit) to fly over and give us some advise on how to save the economy.

His biggest contribution to this historic event which included another few tax exiles was to tell Tanaiste Mary Coughlan that he she a great pair of legs.

For once I have to defend Geldof. For crying out loud, he meant it as a compliment and yet with weary inevitably the usual bunch of feminazis were on to him.

Jeez, the day that I can't compliment a woman on her looks is the day that I will just give up my life-long expectation of meeting the divine Jessica Lange.

Continuing on from last week's piece on Irish so-called comedian Tommy Tiernan's hilarious jokes against the Jews - you know, how he would have killed double the people that died in the Holocaust - it has been fascinating to see the admittedly very few defenders of his rant paddling backwater at a rate that would make an Olympic swimmer dizzy.

It was taken out of context, apparently. In a pig's ear it was.

Here is what he put out on his website DAYS after: "As a private individual I am greatly upset by the thought that these comments caused hurt, this was never my intention. One of the duties of a performer is to be reckless and irresponsible..."

Give me a break. You're meant to be funny. You weren't. No more than when you talked about having sex with a Traveller and having to swat the flies from her head.

Or when you mocked Down's Syndrome children.

And I can't help but wondering if youre half-baked apology is because you are starting your American tour on the 14th of next month.

I'll be interested to see how you get on.

In other appalling news, Paddy Barry, the grandfather of illusionist Keith Barry was buried this week.

The 82-year-old was found unconscious after a burglary at his home in Waterford. A few thugs had broken in and ransacked the place.

He was an extremely well liked man and should not have had to spend his last hours in terror, God love him.

It might interest Americans to know that under our current laws, if we catch a burglar in our home we are expected to step away from him and if necessary only use minimal force.

If the intruder suffers harm then they have the right to sue us for harming them.

Well, let me make this perfectly clear: having been burgled once when I lived in Dublin at a time when I wasn't in the house, if it ever happens here in Oranmore then...

...I WILL KILL YOU.

Minimal force, my ass.

My favourite watering hole, Glynn's, has closed because the 84- year- old lady who owns and lives in it is just afraid now to be there on her own at night.

Scum always target the old and the isolated. It's just that pond life mentality; but it was never brought home to me so forcibly as yesterday when I read the whining statement of a thing - I can't describe it as anything else - when it said that in his defence of targeting the home of an 80-year-old woman: "She was just an oul' wan, she didn't matter to anybody. Why wouldn't I hurt her?"

Try targeting me when they let you out in a few months time.

I live in Riverdale, Oranmore, County Galway.

I''ll be very happy to have you calling. Bring a few friends.

Hope to see you again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net.