Ireland 2007. Fáilte.

This, you could say, has not been a great week for the HSE. It is not turning out to be much of a week for Bertie Ahearn and Mary Harney either. The scandal of the misdiagnosed breast cancers in Port Laoise is, I suspect, weighing heavily on everyone concerned but, worry not, there is still almost five years to the next election so I'm sure they can all recover in time.

All of us outraged citizens who this week and next will make irate phone calls to Joe Duffy or write strongly worded letters to the Irish Tmes should ask themselves one very important question.

Is this what we really deserve?

We should also cast our minds back to May of this year and remember who we voted for in the election. While we are at it we should think back five more years and remember who we voted for in 2002 and five years earlier in 1997.

We have now had ten years of this FF/PD alliance and another five more to come and this writer would not be staking the Lawlor homestead on them not making it 20 years of FF led government in 2012.

In 1997 the FG led rainbow coalition went to the country as one of the most popular governments of modern times, sailing on the crest of the emerging Celtic tiger wave with falling unemployment, rising tax revenue and economic predictions of good times ahead. Nobody was betting against the government in '97 and yet along came Bertie, all smiles and anoraks, and told us that, if elected, FF would cut taxes, putting more money into the pockets of Joe and Josephine public - election over.

Move forward five years and replay the tape. FG say FF are mismanaging the economy, FF say that they will cut taxes again - FG are routed at the polls.

I could outline '07, but why bother.

At each of these elections the electorate were told by politicians and media commentators that it was not possible to provide a high level of public service on a low tax base. Naturally the electorate worried about this. No doubt we who voted FF again and again spent many sleepless nights tossing and turning. I'm sure the plight of our public health service, our public transport service and our schools were fighting tooth and nail with the desire to have more money in our pockets as we agonised over which way to cast our vote. And then we realised that the extra FF money would pay for VHI and a nice comfortable BMW to cruise to work in and hell you're nobody if your kids aren't in private education.

So we voted with our collective pockets instead of our consience, not once, not twice but three times. We, as a nation, voted for 00 reg cars (remember that rush?), we voted for 27 inch wide screen TVs, we voted for skiing, we voted for paid for child care and then we voted for overseas property, (taxi drivers, electricians, civil servants with holiday villas and apartments in the sun!!), we voted for 42 inch plasma screens, newer, bigger cars, three holidays a year, endless weekend city breaks to Prague and Budapest and private schooling with grinds for the kids and ponies and piano lessons.............

......and then we got sick.

So what. Now we've got VHI or Bupa and the doors of private clinics swing open to us and if the private ward is full well then someone just moves over in the public system and we get world class health care.

We don't care about the Laois cancer women. We don't care about people like Susie Long or the lost generations of Moyross. Taxes are not going up and that is what we voted for.

Belgium has a pretty good public health service. In fact, many people travel from France and Germany and Holland to avail of Belgian public health, such is the over capacity in the system.

How can the Belgians do it?

They pay 12% employees social insurance while empoloyers pay 30%. Can you see FF running that one by the electorate in 2012?

If we want european levels of public service we cannot do it without european levels of taxation.

So, before you crank up the laptop to fire off a stern letter to Madam in Tara St. Before cracking the knuckles on that dialling finger, remember, this is the Ireland we voted for. This is Ireland 2007. We don't give a shit if people without private health insurance die unnecessarily of cancer or whatever.

Do I care?

I've got Bupa. A nice house, nice car, two wide screen TVs.

I'm doin' okay.

Are you?

Are we?

If you skid in space nobody can hear you screech.

Just came in from the back garden.

I live out in the country where there is no light pollution so on a night like this it is hard not to look up at the stars. Get out in the country, you city slickers, the view is fantastic on a clear night.

As I was star gazing a jet flew overhead. One flashing red light on the underside, one static light on the starboard wing-tip and a flashing light on the port wing-tip.

It then occurred to me that this sight has often been mistaken for a UFO by some drunken oaf stumbling home along the roads of rural Ireland or Alabama or wherever.

Now, think about all of the vehicles we here on Earth have sent into space. Were any of them equipped with flashing anti collision lights? Did the Apollo rockets have flashing lights to avoid colliding with a stray Sputnik? Does the Space Shuttle crew worry about rear ending the international space station?

Space is huge. The hugeness of space cannot be comprehended by humans - never mind adequately explained using oranges and basketballs at the opposite end of the room from each other.

Why would an alien civilisation, vastly more intelligent than us, who have developed technology that enables them to travel light-years across the universe, worry about crashing into something?

So, then, why is it that the vast majority of UFO sightings are of extra terrestrial vehicles with lots of flashing lights?

Wild tigers and good wine

Ok, major gripe here. ( Or maybe a major grape!)

Lidl are pretty good. My good lady and I shop there about twice a month. Aldi I know nothing about as I've never been there but Lidl offers some exceptional value on the basics like cleaning products, rice, cooking oils, really good biscuits among others.

Lidl also do a good range of wines. Whether they do a range of good wines is debatable. I tried their wine a couple of times last year and was very unimpressed.

A couple of months ago my brother in law and his family borrowed my wife's car to travel to France and as a thank you brought us back a few bottles of wine among which was a bottle of TARRAGONA BATURRICA RESERVA 2000 from Spain.

It was very nice.

Last week the good lady and I went to Lidl in Mullingar and there it was, TARRAGONA BATURRICA RESERVA, only this time a 2001 vintage priced at €6.99.

As I was savouring the last of my glass this evening I did a google search on it which led me to a Belgian wine site which had reviewed the Tarragona, pronounced it pretty good. They quoted a price as of Nov 1 2007 of €2.39 in Lidl!

That's almost three times more expensive from the same retailer here in Ireland. Even allowing for the governments €2.00 per bottle tax it is still €2.60 more expensive here.

Isn't it a great little country.

Having said all that I must confess my rampant capitalist belief that the price (as opposed to the value) of any good is what someone is willing to pay for it. The Tarragona is good value at €6.99.


Another gripe.

Last Sunday four of us, (wife, me and two kids aged four and eight) stayed for one night at the Hotel Kilkenny in (you guessed it) Kilkenny.

After checking in at about 3.30pm we decided to take the kids down to the pool for a while. Before leaving the room I rang reception to book a table for dinner at 8.00pm.

'How many people, sir?'
'Four.'
'All adults?'
'No, two adults and two children.'
'I'm sorry, sir, but we do not allow children in the restaurant after 8.00pm.'

After which followed a conversation during which I was told that we could eat in the bar, with our children up to 9.30pm, that she (the lady at reception) did not make the rules and that a kids club was provided where we could deposit our kids while we had dinner without them.

Any time I have taken my kids to a restaurant in Spain or France the welcome afforded them has been superb. A team of waiters descended on us in Fuertaventura a couple of years back and folded the buggy, produced lollipops and, without being asked, appeared with a baby chair which was clamped to the table so that my son (then just 10 months old) could sit at the table with us.

The Hotel Kilkenny reacted as if we wanted to bring a couple of untamed tigers into their eatery.

We did eat in the restaurant. We were accompanied by our kids who were impeccably behaved and we did enjoy a rather fine meal (final bill €137.00). As I checked out next morning I told the manager that I would not be returning.

I can only wonder what European tourists must think of the anti-family ideals at our four star**** hotels!

Are you an alcoholic? Then maybe the priesthood is not for you.

So, Fr trendy himself is worried about getting nicked for drinking and driving.

In yesterday's Irish Times Fr. Brian Darcy was expressing his concern about Catholic priests over indulging in wine during the eucharist, therefore putting themselves over the blood alcohol limit before getting into their cars and driving on to the next parish to continue God's work.

Only here in Ireland and only with the Roman Catholic Church could such a story arise.

First, a couple of facts.

Fr. Darcy is a pioneer. For those of you not completely au fait with mid to late twentieth century Irish history, this does not mean that he headed west in a covered wagon, running the gauntlet of marauding bands of savage natives to establish a civilised society west of the river Shannon. No, it simply means that he is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinance Society. In short - he does not take alcohol. In fact he has taken a solemn vow to abstain from alcohol for life.

In the real world this would mean that Fr. Brian Darcy does not drink.

Howwever, Darcy does not live in the real world. He lives in an alternate reality created by the Catholic Church where not everything is as it seems. In Darcy's world he can swig away on all the wine he likes, and as long as he prays over it and says that it is the blood of a prophet who died two thousand years ago he is not actually drinking alcohol.
Scientific measurements taken at the roadside here in the real world might show that Darcy or any other Catholic priest is over the limit for driving. However, Darcy can then, in all seriousness, claim that he has not been drinking.

This is a man who claims that he does not drink alcohol and yet as part of his job he is required to drink wine every day.

How would this play out in court, I wonder. I would love to see the first test case.

Something which had escaped my attention until yesterday is the fact that Catholic priests are forbidden from using non-alcoholic wine to celebrate the eucharist. Even a priest who might be an alcoholic is told that if he wants to continue to be a priest he must continue to drink alcohol every time he celebrates a mass. This, as Fr. Darcy pointed out, could be as much as three or four times a day.

Is that just mad or what?

Is there, however, something more sinister buried in this story? Is Fr. Darcy dropping a large hint to the Gardai that maybe they should turn a blind eye when a priest is found to be drunk behind the wheel? After all he is only doing God's work and the rules do not allow him to do that work without taking alcohol. The more of God's work he does the more pissed he may be behind the wheel. So let him on his way and if he mows down a small child or two on his way, well maybe that's all part of God's great plan.

He does work in mysterious ways, you know.