HEART BEAT: An economy based on snakes and ladders - and the mother of all serpents
HAPPY BUDGET day to all you masochists out there, lining up in delicious anticipation of a caning, and a special word to those of you who by voting for them were generous enough to ensure the rest of us got beaten also. You at least can grin fixedly and say, "Isn't this great, it's all in the national interest."
I suppose we've all played snakes and ladders in our time. It strikes me that our economy appears to be modelled on similar lines. We seem, however, to have loads more snakes than ladders and we have just fallen down the mother of all serpents, which I recollect ran from near the top of the board down to nearly the bottom and you had to start all over again.
This came to mind as I heard some financial instrument being advertised on radio; "the value of your investment may go down as well as up" and "this product is sanctioned by the financial regulator".
That really builds confidence; the highwaymen of old couldn't have put it any better.
It's going to be hard, extricating ourselves from this morass that appears to have trapped us. We blew our own bubble and believed our own lies. At least enough of us did to allow the uncritical continuance of a dream that is certain to metamorphose into a nightmare.
We mightn't have had too much exposure to sub-prime lending here, but I greatly fear that we have had considerable exposure to what I term "super prime" lending. Vast sums were lent at low interest rates to finance land banks and dubious developments. Some of our bankers and developers simply "lost the run of themselves" and to a degree not seen anywhere else.
There was a third participant in this equation of madness. The Ruling Elves, far from damping down this smouldering fire, actually fanned the flames into a conflagration that may yet incinerate us all.
By providing tax breaks for much of this development they enabled many of those involved to work away with little cost to themselves.
The fruits of their labours may be seen throughout the land in rows and rows of unoccupied houses and empty offices and commercial buildings. Our children were panicked into "getting on the property ladder" and are now saddled with negative equity and what will soon seem to be 1,000-year mortgages. Many have the additional worries of job security in these increasingly uncertain times.
I shall be interested to see if the surviving tax breaks for the building of so-called co-located hospitals survives the draconian budget promised to us all. If this socially divisive concept survives intact, it will be clear evidence that nothing has changed; there has been no Pauline conversion to justice and rectitude.
It will show that the culture of the Galway tent is alive and well.
But it's not all darkness. There is a glimmer of politically correct light. Minister John Gormley has introduced his long awaited Light Bulb Bill; honestly I'm not making this up. King Canute would have had nothing on this. We lead the world once again. Perhaps he needn't have worried: the way we are going, folk might not have been able to afford to turn on the light in any case.
Prof Brendan Drumm of the HSE (the outfit that has just paid a million to consultants to tell them where they should be going) has cast a few pearls before us recently. He tells us our average length of stay for many procedures exceeds that in a group of comparable countries.
He omitted to tell us the reasons for this are a) that many patients cannot be discharged because they have nowhere to go and b) that the infrastructure in the community to facilitate early discharge either does not exist or is totally inadequate.
We do not support the carers, we cut back on home helps and we do not have enough community nurses. This is the case right now and it is getting worse.
The good professor also told us doctors are central to the development of the services and that the new system of clinical directorships is a key element in developing this medical Shangri-La. What an insight!
I had suffered from some mad delusion that doctors had always run the service until such time as layers of managerial bureaucracy were imposed upon it and a particularly malevolent form of medical political correctness took hold, impervious to the needs of the patients, but mindful of their own requirements.
Come on folks, be fair: aren't they good value for their €1.4 million in bonuses? After all these are the geniuses who supervise the application of the wrecking ball to what used to be a reasonable and caring service.
But now the doctors are to return, carefully supervised of course, and our illustrious forebears Stokes, Adams, Corrigan and Colles can sleep easily once more in the illusion that the darkness has passed.
The good professor has it in hand and we are to lead once more. I was beginning to get worried.
• Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon