HEART BEAT:The redundant sunbeds could be converted into trolleys for our A&E units, writes MAURICE NELIGAN
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach
KIPLING WAS writing about Sussex. He might well have been writing about us this year in Kerry. I cannot this morning see the water’s edge, only 60m away. We have not seen the sun for three days now. It was supposed to be sunny today.
I wondered if by any malign chance the Minister for Trolleys might have banished the sun by accident in her latest crusade against sunbeds.
These spells can be quite tricky. The sunbeds ban could be another world first along with plastic bags and smoking in pubs. We have genius at work here. We’ll lead the world again, as we do in the numbers of patients on trolleys. I suppose a Nobel Prize would be out of the question.
What are we going to do with all the redundant sunbeds? Might they be converted into trolleys for our A&E units as this would obviate the need for patients unable to obtain a trolley, sitting on chairs or on the floor?
If that doesn’t serve, maybe somebody in Government would know someone who could store them in a shed somewhere until they fall apart; a 50-year lease might be appropriate. You wouldn’t even need planning for the shed, it could be called a barn and be therefore exempt as an agricultural building.
Since there seem to be no ideas in Government as to how we get out of the mess it has helped to create, it behoves us all to come up with some creative plans. I modestly put forward a couple of suggestions.
Let’s have a tax on cats or at least a cat licence. To deal with the vexed question of ownership, particularly those designated as feral, the tax would be levied on the owners of premises on which the felines were present on the morning of April 1st, 2010.
I am sure we could set up an Office for Cat Control (OCC) to monitor the situation. It would be like the Office for Tobacco Control (OTC) with the same kind of powers. It could have agent provocateurs slipping the odd cat into premises and then staging a raid.
They’d be in the same league as the OTC and the Competition Authority. It would be a just tax, as cats are about the few moving creatures that aren’t taxed already.
How about a tax on golf balls? It would make many of the idle rich major contributors to the economy. It could bring in billions.
It might slow things up a bit on the course as people would spend longer looking for lost balls, but that would be only a minor inconvenience. We would also have the additional benefit that as golf balls are imported, this might help our balance of payments.
A down side would be that people might start to smuggle golf balls. I suppose an Office for Golf Ball Control (OGBC) might be a bit much in these straitened times. You never know for the future, however, when times are better.
These ideas might appeal to Government because if these new quangos were decentralised, they could be located in the constituencies of Government deputies (even ministers) who might be in a bit of trouble when the electorate finally gets its hands on them.
Those decentralised would need houses and shops and offices, and maybe even a private hospital as well. We would be back to boom time again.
Some cute bucks of Government supporters would get the nod to buy up land in the location at agricultural prices prior to it being rezoned. They in turn would contribute to the party, and so the merry-go-round continues.
Does any of this sound familiar? I have a feeling we’ve been here before. No matter; didn’t a prominent minister state that the public (us) doesn’t remember things for longer than three months?
I shall briefly revert to Nama. I am no clearer now than when I first wrote as to how this is going to work. I don’t think it will, and I am clearly not alone. A large group of academics and economists have raised similar doubts.
Those in favour of the concept seem to be largely, though not completely, from sources close to the powers that created the problem. Most other folk say we should pay no more for the assets than they are worth right now.
As for long-term economic value, let me quote the great economist John Maynard Keynes: “This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”
I see the great proponent of Nama in biblical terms. “And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, ‘Who is on my side? Who?’ And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs.” (Kings 2; 9:32)
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon