HEART BEATThose of us who thought a new Chief Elf would mean some kind of reform were, sadly, mistaken, writes Maurice Neligan
NOW CHILDREN you will remember that some time ago I told you about the advent of a new Chief Elf. Well, it's happened - exactly how I am not sure, but it needn't bother us unduly. It all seemed a bit muddled and appeared to have something to do with a battle on the River Boyne which happened in the recent past.
I thought maybe that the old Chief Elf Bertie might have been slain, but obviously not as there he was large as life at another battle the following day which originally happened in 1916 but seems to flare up every year for some folk.
Anyway it doesn't matter unduly to those of us condemned to live in the real world. The doings of these lofty folk, while they invariably impact on us lesser people, are beyond our comprehension. Indeed they are beyond any earthly comprehension.
Suffice it to say that we now have a new Chief Elf called Brian (he also has a nickname, but in these politically correct days it would be improper to mention it). When he got the big job, loads of little folk from his part of the country, all of whom share the same nickname, came to pay him homage. It was very touching and we Dubliners could easily see where the nickname originated. These rural customs are quite quaint.
Up on the lofty heights apparently, things are great. They are above the clouds you see. Down below the rest of us are being rained upon from a great height. (The Highest Authority made me amend the last sentence). We had hoped for some amelioration from the problems that we malcontents perceive as pressing upon us from all sides and that the new man would bring in a new shower of Senior Elves with new wands and fresh spells. Unfortunately he bottled it.
When he introduced his new "best friends", all we saw were the same old faces, albeit some of them wearing new hats. This was hardly greeted with whoops of joy. It seemed to propose that those who had squandered the good times were the very people needed to take us through the bad times.
Of course such elevated individuals don't see the things that worry us lesser mortals. They are impervious to worry about such things as negative equity and rising mortgage repayments. Don't forget they believed in a 1,000-year boom. Job losses are not going to affect them; in fact they're due a whopping great rise. By the way, tighten your belts you little people. You're only imagining we have difficulties within health and education services: open your eyes. On second thoughts, close them and you'll be told when to look again.
I am not going to list all the problems. The Irish Times - short-sightedly - would not hand over the paper to me for a month so that I could begin. One can only hope that the usual suspects - the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged - do not, as usual, bear the brunt of economic woe. In these times of "I'm all right Jack" the love-your-neighbour concept seems dated. Don't laugh out loud now at what GK Chesterton wrote: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." Sure that fella was never in the tent in Galway, what would he know about it?
On this faintly druidic occasion on the introduction of the Senior Elves, when the air is full of faint scents designed to make the populace believe that everything is well and that the management of the millennium is in safe hands, you realise how unwarranted your prejudice was that you wouldn't let some of these folk herd sheep. They've been herding sheep for the last 11 years and they pay little attention to the occasional bleating. In any case on this wondrous mystical occasion my own worst fears were realised when I saw amongst this gifted selection, the Minister for Trolleys wearing the same battered old hat. We are told that this is because the new Chief Elf is committed to her reform of the health services. This quite frankly beggars belief and puts a construction upon the word "reform" that is totally beyond my limited comprehension.
In the interim I would like any of you who are interested in the health services and what has been happening therein, particularly in the development of the "Black Hole" into which your money has been poured with no discernible improvement in service, to read a new book by Prof Liam Kirwan of Cork University Hospital and UCC. It is entitled Political Correctness and the Surgeon and puts the problems of those actually trying to deliver the service in a way that is stark and so very very real.
To my humble intellect and given my vocation, this is an excellent resume of the problems that beset us.
• Maurice Neilgan is a cardiac surgeon