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"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."
- letter from H.P. Lovecraft

By Charley Brady

The latest season of Ireland's favourite situation comedy, "Fun With Fianna Fail", concluded its run (into the ground) last Tuesday. Don't worry though, laughter fans; another season of slapstick humour at our expense is starting already.

In the episode called "Dissolving the 30th Dail" we were left with our gobs hanging open as the Ceanne Comhairle, Seamus Kirk announced to a bemused audience: "It is understood that the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, wants to make an announcement."

Ye what? Jeez, we had only put a stake through his bloody heart outside Leinster House last week! Had the chancer been planning a comeback all along? But no, it was just a mistake on the worthy Seamus's part. He had in fact meant the outgoing Brian Cowen. Oh how we laughed at another merry jape that would make us feel: "Ah, bejeepers, they do be only human and under pressure like the rest of us, so they do be."

As for Brian, you could almost feel sorry for the poor sod. It was like the final kick in the ghoulies for him. Well, not that sorry. He is, after all and just like the rest of them, sailing off into the sunset with a hell of a severance packet as a reward for being completely feckin' useless these past years. What the hell, when did that little detail ever stop any of them?

So now he can imitate his predecessor. He can go off and write a witless autobiography that will sell a dozen copies -thereby outselling Bertie's masterpiece - and which will give him the chance to rewrite history; and then he can make another fortune by trailing after Bertie's coat-tails on the lecture circuit. Not a bad reward for being an unmitigated disaster, all things considered.

Brian must have thought that he would have a bit of a laugh before he went, though. One of the last things he pencilled in on our behalf was to give Northern Ireland €480 million so that they could build a road up there.

Now I don't have the big brains that Cowen and Lenihan have so somebody will have to explain to me in words of one syllable why we stuck our begging bowl into the faces of the British, accepted their kind loan of €7 billion from them - and if I was living in Britain I wouldn't have been over the moon at that - then turn around and give them a shed load of their own loot back so that they can build a road that they will subsequently take the revenue from.

You could almost try to find the humour in that but in this next act of utter contemptibility there simply is none to found: In December the Department of Health announced that it would be phasing out paying a wage AT ALL to fourth-year trainee nurses. They have said: "The Government made the decision as part of the budgetary process."

So Mary Harney may be gone from her position as Health Minister, unmourned and with a "good riddance" following in her considerable wake, but her legacy of indifference to ordinary people and to human suffering is destined to live on.

That's right, unbelievable as it sounds: for the fourth year of their training they will get nothing at all for their mandatory nine-month placement. As it is, they only get at the moment 80% of a staff nurse's salary. They have already had to take a pay cut of 14% this year with more cuts on the way, but to be paying them nothing at all by 2015 is quite staggering in its implications. As they will be working 37 hours a week I don't see how they can even get by on a part-time job. At the very least they will be putting their own health at risk as well as inevitably falling down in the kind of time and care that they devote to their patients.

For make no mistake: nursing is no ordinary job. Having spent a couple of stints in hospital over the decades I can absolutely swear to the competence, sensitivity and unswerving care that these extraordinary men and women give to their tasks. To think that our rotten-to-the-core government is now going to make their jobs harder, rather than easier by telling them that they are worth less to us than bankers and builders is enough to make the most optimistic, rose-tinted spectacle wearers throw their hands up in despair.

That is what the Health Department has made explicit: that this is being done in order to save the pathetic figure of €8.1 million, which will go towards the EU-IMF bailout. It just goes beyond thinking about; but DO think of that figure, and think of what a drop in the ocean it is, compared to the millions upon millions that have been squandered by those same bankers, builders and - yes - our politicians.

Of course in this open air mental hospital of a country we're not even entitled to know who authorised this: "Details of decisions around the Budget are subject to Cabinet confidentiality and cannot be made public."

Absolutely off-the-scale bloody incredible. They're supposed to be working for us but they are not bound to tell us how they come to their sleazy decisions?

Liam Doran, however, who is the Irish Nurses and Midwives' Organisation general secretary doesn't doubt that the decision was signed off on by Mary Harney. I'll just add to that by saying that I believe it was done just before she hit off for Thailand, to spend the last taxpayer's bundle she gets from us, on five-star luxury. Do you think that having just shafted a group of nurses that she has been in charge of would upset that woman's holiday? I bloody well don't.

"Any decision like this", said Doran, "in my view, would have to be approved by senior management and most importantly, by the minister."

SIPTU union nursing official Louise O'Reilly added: "Only people with families wealthy enough to support them will be able to do nursing... Many students work part-time to get through college, but you cannot do that as a student nurse in fourth year when you are expected to work 37 and a half hours a week in hospital wards for 36 weeks

"What the Government has decided to do is so petty and mean-minded."

Well, of course it is, although it's nice to see that they are going out on the same dirty waves that they have surfed on all these years. At least they're consistent. They have shown themselves to be utter bastards right to the end. And quite apart from the hard weeks' work the nurses put in I would imagine there is a hell of a lot of studying to be done in their "free" time.

No, there's nowhere that you can even attempt to inject even the blackest humour there. Nor with the terrible story of the death of Rachel Peavoy.

Rachel died needlessly in the second week of January, 2010, having frozen to death in her flat in the run-down Shangan tower block in Dublin. Her inquest makes for despairing reading. That this could happen to a young woman in 21st Century Ireland, all but recently one of the richest countries in Europe, is itself a sad commentary on Irish society and what we have become.

Rachel Peavoy and her boyfriend, Jason Douglas, a baker, celebrated the birth of their son Warren in 1998. Four years on, Leon came along and the family resided at a block of flats in Coultry Road. Ironically the one bedroom flat was deemed to be too small and she was moved to the Shangan high-rise. Herself and Jason by now having broken up, she lived the life of a single mother and all that that entails but she still visited with his mother and sisters.

A friend commented: "She didn't have to do that but she loved her kids and wanted them to see her grandmother. She remained close to Jason's mother. There wasn't a bad bone in her body. She didn't even drink. She would go out and drink lemonade."

Like many people these days, Rachel found herself struggling and it didn't help that the council, thinking that it was pointless to pour money into a by-now almost empty block of flats, turned off the communal heating. Needless to say, it didn't matter to Ireland's endless army of jobsworths that the January of 2010 was the coldest in 45 years. When there're a few greasy shekels to be saved among Ireland's loathsome bureaucrats, personal comfort and dignity doesn't get a look in.

Noel Ahern, her local TD at least tried to do something about it but ultimately got nowhere. Then on December 15 she went to her doctor in order to request a letter backing her up in asking for help with the heating costs. You see, she had a couple of little electric heaters, but as a friend said: "She was terrified of using them because she was so worried about paying her ESB bill."

There was more than one or even a thousand people in Ireland who, when hearing that, thought how much they could relate to it.

One of Rachel's neighbours - who had also complained about her freezing flat - was told by nameless (and hopefully they won't remain so) Council Officials that her place was "warm enough to live in." Something tells me that those particular jobsworths had a snug and cosy Christmas that year.

Dawn Sherry had the inspectors out but, rules being rules, they were only obliged to measure the one room in which a whole family was trying to keep warm.

"They were telling me there was heat in the flat when there wasn't. They said they could only test one room. Christmas was horrible. My brother and his two children ended up having to go home because it was too cold."

The day before a woman who was born in 1980 froze to death in 21st Century Ireland, she asked her elderly mother to mind the two children. She was found dead the next day, in her bedroom.

In a country where in the last few days we admit to ten suicides a week (and I personally believe it to be much higher) and that so many of them are money-related we hear the findings of an inquest into this young woman's death; and then we go on to hear about how Minister Mary Hanafin's mother got a whopping €62,000 in compensation from the Exchequer when she slipped and fractured her arm outside - where else? - Leinster House.

Actually these newly released documents make interesting reading but I've neither the time nor the inclination to go into them now. It's hard however not to comment on coughing up €510.30 to make sure that the Chief Whip's office has a water cooler in it; or that 12 cushions and covers that we'll never see cost US €870.00.

Or what about that proven chancer Ivor Callely? He has been rewarded with back pay for 20 days work that he missed during his suspension. €17,000 for 20 days work. If for no other reason this just emphasises why I would like to see an end to the useless Seanad and all who sail in her.

Callely, with his unique lack of self-awareness, reckons that his "good name" has been vindicated. He seems oblivious to the fact that nobody believes that he has one. No fear of anyone here dying of the cold at Christmas.

Just a few personal comments: Up until some two years ago I made a comfortable if far from lucrative living with freelancing, but those days are well gone for most of us. With the closure of "The Sunday Tribune" this week I don't see it getting any better for a while. So while not as badly off as some I do find it a struggle these days.

However, I didn't expect it to be an even harder struggle to pay money back! I'm not the only one who has to pay the absolutely necessary bills first, like electricity.

And so Eircom (our phone company) came 'way down in my priorities - at least until it dawned on me with a final demand from them that I would also lose my broadband. So this week saw me wasting time in trying to get through to the free number they print on such things in order to bring myself up to date over a couple of payments.

I'm back in the nine-to-five world now and so it's not easy to be kept on hold for half an hour at a time.

I wasted days on the mechanised number, listening to: If your query is... press number one, press number two, all the way up to five but none of it relating to me; and no way to get though to a human being. After more of this on Friday ("please continue to hold. Your call is important to us.") I was screaming, effing and blinding at a machine. Now maybe it's because I haven't been in this position before but I hadn't realised that this puts you on to an actual person. That person then put me through to a number that... guess what? Yep, it rang and rang while I listened to witless muzac and that hated voice telling me that my call is important to them, please hold. This was at 4.15 and at 4.50 I was chewing the carpet.

Back to the original recorded message and this time I began cursing into it immediately. It actually works. I was again put through to a human being and this time managed to yelp: "Don't transfer me for f***'s sake, there's nobody replying!" Hell, it's not the fault of the guys answering the 'phone but boy do I bet they get some abuse.

So this time he gives me a separate number that will be answered straight away. As you've probably guessed, by 5.20 I was having kittens and... well, you get the idea by now. Same procedure as above. Only this time the guy says: "Well, of course they wouldn't be there now. They finish at five."

"So why the hell tell me to stay on hold?" I'm screaming.

I'm apoplectic by this stage and want to know when I can 'phone over the weekend.

But you already know the answer to that one.

So after all that it came down to a letter and here's part of it:

DEAR WHOEVER:

I write this in utter frustration. Like many people, I have found work hard to come by in recent times. Now that I am catching up with lapsed bills here's my problem with Eircom.

I have been trying for days now to speak with a human being on the 1901 number. Yesterday, having managed to get through to three, I find that there is still no chance of talking to someone from the correct department. I have been passed from number to number with no one ever answering. Ever!!!

I am now working between 9 & 5, so don't have time to waste on being eternally put on hold; and since you DON'T HAVE A WEEKEND SERVICE HOW EXACTLY DO I STOP YOU FROM CUTTING ME OFF?

Is it just that you want the reconnection fee?

I have listed email and mobile number above. Why don't YOU phone ME? I promise I will not make you listen to hours of background crap about how "my call is important" to you.

REMEMBER: I'M TRYING TO PAY YOU BACK!!!

Somebody talk to me, please?

PS I'll photocopy this and look forward to your reply; remember your reply is important to me!

So, we'll see. I'm not exactly holding my breath, though. What did I say about bureaucracy?

It's nothing compared to the death of that young lady, but it's an insight into how this crazy country works. If there's no article next week you'll know my broadband has gone down the Swanee.

Finally, just to go back to that awful story for a moment: her family's barrister, Dr. Ciaran Craven asked for an enquiry into how "a young woman with no other system disorder died of hypothermia" in modern Ireland.

Well, I think we all know the answer to that one. Money.

It always comes back to money.

Of course, all this time later, Dublin City Council still refuse to comment.

I don't feel much like giving my customary sign off this week, so just take care of yourselves. It's a dog eat dog world out there; and it's not getting any better. C

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net