Johnny Keogh wrote:

Aragon wrote:

As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary.

Probably the best minister for Health in 50 years. Certainly the only one to have made some inroads into reforming it.
You would'nt be a member of the illustrious consultants cartel, by any chance????

Harney has done some things that sorely needed doing - made some steps towards modern and rational standards of cancer care in centres of good practice, for one.
Unfortunately in my view that is marred by her dedication to creating wasteful duplication of services in the interests of private profit. This is not an ideology that most people in Ireland subscribe to, and I don't see why we would consider for one moment sending her to the Commission, where she could presumably continue to do this kind of damage on a much grander scale.

cactus flower wrote:

Harney has done some things that sorely needed doing - made some steps towards modern and rational standards of cancer care in centres of good practice, for one.
Unfortunately in my view that is marred by her dedication to creating wasteful duplication of services in the interests of private profit. This is not an ideology that most people in Ireland subscribe to, and I don't see why we would consider for one moment sending her to the Commission, where she could presumably continue to do this kind of damage on a much grander scale.

She wont go, in my opinion.

The job is not yet complete in health and wont be for another 2 years at least. She wants that job finished or near complete and then she will retire from politics.
She has been in it since her mid twenties. She will not get re-elected because she has no party machine left.
Health is her last job. Either she retires or she is fired.
Its one or the other.

cactus flower wrote:

Johnny Keogh wrote:

Aragon wrote:

As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary.

Probably the best minister for Health in 50 years. Certainly the only one to have made some inroads into reforming it.
You would'nt be a member of the illustrious consultants cartel, by any chance????

Harney has done some things that sorely needed doing - made some steps towards modern and rational standards of cancer care in centres of good practice, for one.
Unfortunately in my view that is marred by her dedication to creating wasteful duplication of services in the interests of private profit. This is not an ideology that most people in Ireland subscribe to, and I don't see why we would consider for one moment sending her to the Commission, where she could presumably continue to do this kind of damage on a much grander scale.

Sending her to Europe, cactus, would simply be a case of same snout, different trough. After suffering McCreevy for the last 4+ years, our European colleagues would not appreciate another economically semi-literate, neo-liberalist gobshite in the shape of Harney to deal with for the next few years. On the other hand, knowing her form, they could start ignoring her from the word go.

cactus flower wrote:

Johnny Keogh wrote:

Aragon wrote:

As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary.

Probably the best minister for Health in 50 years. Certainly the only one to have made some inroads into reforming it.
You would'nt be a member of the illustrious consultants cartel, by any chance????

Harney has done some things that sorely needed doing - made some steps towards modern and rational standards of cancer care in centres of good practice, for one.
Unfortunately in my view that is marred by her dedication to creating wasteful duplication of services in the interests of private profit. This is not an ideology that most people in Ireland subscribe to, and I don't see why we would consider for one moment sending her to the Commission, where she could presumably continue to do this kind of damage on a much grander scale.

I'm rubbing my eyes at that post Cactus. Cancer care in Ireland is diabolical in many instances - from fatal delays in diagnosis to delays in having what are often outdated treatments. Cancer care has been one atrocious scandal after another wherein Harney has repeatedly been shown to have failed in every objective she self-avowedly set herself. The reason being that she was so busy, as you rightly point out, wasting billions on funding for the private health care sector. Geoghegan's MRPA Kinman is practically running HIQA! We have civil servants and politicians who are supposed to be doing the job but she has bypassed the lot, at huge expense, just to gratify her virulent ideology - and at no small personal advantage either.

I'm not sure why Aragon. I am not disagreeing with anything you say, but the prolonged nonsense of spreading cancer care across grossly inadequate local hospitals for parish politics reasons has cost many people their lives, and is finally now being ended.

Aragon wrote:

tonys wrote:

How very apt that would be, a party for and of the champagne socialists. I still say be careful what you wish for, the leap from whinging to doing, is one almighty jump.

For God's sake Tonys, is that really the best you can do? What a lot of dreary old cliches. As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary. Geoghegan obviously had dollar signs in his eyes when he saw her coming down the road - and what a cash cow she has turned out to be for him. He must love her very dearly, I'm sure. That's one major scandal that needs a good public airing. The two of them must be dining on champagne and caviar every night by the looks of things - when they are not enjoying publicly funded private jet trips to visit relations in Florida or travelling on other US junkets to their joint clients.

Hear hear.
Remember Susie Long.

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=12367
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84817

That's the fire-in-the-belly stuff you need when dealing with scum like Harney.

Lets not forget this is the Health minister that packed the HSE with her corporate pals, and introduced the for-profit colocation scam which will cost us billions.

What annoys me most about Harney, is the easy ride she constantly gets in our media.

This should be unsurprising given the media dynamics of a corporate and state media. However when the peer-reviewed research clearly shows* the in-efficiencies and worse care from provision using for-profit health care, (to an even more of an extent than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer) it simply beggars belief when she is allowed to suggest, -unquestioned,- that we could save money by paying more for worse care!


*

IT letter by Dr Gerry Burke who is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist

Politics of hospital co-location
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2008/0829/1219875239402.html

Quote :

...
Mr Cullen says there are many studies that discount my claims that for-profit providers, like himself, provide a poorer care at greater cost and with higher mortality.

I have been unable to find any such material in the medical literature.

Among the material I have submitted to the Competition Authority are papers from first-rate peer-review medical journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In high quality studies and meticulously performed meta-analyses involving very large numbers of patients and hospitals, it has been shown that mortality is 2 per cent higher in for-profit hospitals (a study involving some 36 million patients); that mortality is over 8 per cent higher in for-profit dialysis units - an excess of some 2,500 annual deaths in the US; that payments to for-profit hospitals are 19 per cent higher (350,000 patients); that Medicare payments are higher in areas of the US served by for-profit hospitals; that five different measures of quality of care for three acute medical conditions were consistently worse in for-profit hospitals (a study involving some 4,000 hospitals); and that for-profit hospitals spend less on nurses and more on managers.

Thanks to its reliance on for-profit hospitals, the US is now spending 17 per cent of its GDP on health and getting consistently mediocre results. This expenditure is expected to rise to a bankrupting 20 per cent in the near future. But very great fortunes are being made by CEOs and investors in this massive industry.....

also an IT article by Dr Gerry Burke and Prof Pierce Grace a consultant vascular surgeon.

Which road do we choose for health's future?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2008/0805/1217628544418.html

( published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and from the Department of Medicine, Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass.)

The high costs of for-profit care
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/170/12/1814

(similar analysis but highlighting the folly of introducing a US for-profit (or not) healthcare market into the NHS and published in the British Medical Journal)

Competition in a publicly funded healthcare system
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7630/1126

Quote :

....Is private really better?

Other US experiments in using public money to buy care from private firms have also disappointed. Costs for the private insurance that government purchases for public employees have risen even faster than Medicare's.12 According to comprehensive meta-analyses, investor owned renal dialysis centres (funded almost entirely by the special Medicare programme that covers everyone needing long term dialysis) have 9% higher mortality than non-profit centres despite equivalent costs13; and investor owned hospitals—which receive most of their funding from public coffers—have 2% higher death rates and 19% higher costs than non-profit hospitals.14 15 Despite spending less on nurses and other clinical staff, investor owned hospitals spend more on managers.16

If the failings of private contracting in the US are underappreciated, so is the major success story of recent US health policy: the Veterans Health Administration system. This network of hospitals and clinics owned and operated by government was long derided as a US example of failed Soviet-style central planning. Yet it has recently emerged as a widely recognised leader in quality improvement and information technology. At present, the Veterans Health Administration offers more equitable care, of higher quality, at comparable or lower cost than private sector alternatives.17....

Aragon, are you suggesting that the deeply felt love that this husband feels for his beautifull wife should be tested in the more challenging environment of ptivate sector employment

I think Harney would be the perfect choice for the Commission, well after Ray Burke, but I don't think he is in the running.

Aragon wrote:

tonys wrote:

How very apt that would be, a party for and of the champagne socialists. I still say be careful what you wish for, the leap from whinging to doing, is one almighty jump.

For God's sake Tonys, is that really the best you can do? What a lot of dreary old cliches. As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary. Geoghegan obviously had dollar signs in his eyes when he saw her coming down the road - and what a cash cow she has turned out to be for him. He must love her very dearly, I'm sure. That's one major scandal that needs a good public airing. The two of them must be dining on champagne and caviar every night by the looks of things - when they are not enjoying publicly funded private jet trips to visit relations in Florida or travelling on other US junkets to their joint clients.

In fairness to clichés, they usually have some basis in fact, unlike the long list of bile directed against Harney in your post, which is based on nothing more than your own opinion. It would really make you wonder why she attracts so much personal, vile shite from the left, unless of course it’s because she’s the only one who has taken on the real vested interests in the health service, namely the employees of the same service.

She has dragged each group of health service employees, up to and including, the consultants, to the point where they are almost ready to accept that the service is there to serve the people and not their careers. If she did nothing else over the last five years and she has done a lot more, that alone would make her the best minister of health we have ever had.

In so far as co-location is concerned, I’d be willing to bet that if it delivers a better service and it can hardly do worse, the vast majority of people won’t give a tinkers damn whether that service is privately or publicly delivered.

It's long past time we left the old ideologies behind, we can’t afford them any more.

Whether she wants the job or not is immaterial.

Firstly, unless Lisbon is passed Ireland probably won't have a commissioner at all. Nice requires a reduction in the size of the commission. The number is not specified, other than it is must be less than 1 per country. So the new commission can have 26 members at most, and we are first in the queue to be off it. Lisbon requires an 18 member commission but the European Council can (and plans to) increase the number immediately back to 27.

Secondly, the long expected death of Tony Gregory probably ends the chance of any TD being appointed. FF knows it has no chance now of holding Seamus Brennan's seat. Tony's will be difficult for FF to win, but a bad result in Bertie's home turf would be humiliating. With the scale of the cuts coming down the line the government needs another by-election in 2009 like a hole in the head. It already faces two by-elections, a locals, a European and a referendum. Harney's seat if she was nominated would be a certain win for the opposition. The government is already relying on an elderly independent in his 80s and the Greens. It simply will not risk another by-election. So, if there is a commissioner at all it will probably be a former minister (maybe Madeline Taylor Quinn), the Attorney General, a senator or someone, but absolutely not a TD.

tonys wrote:

Aragon wrote:

tonys wrote:

How very apt that would be, a party for and of the champagne socialists. I still say be careful what you wish for, the leap from whinging to doing, is one almighty jump.

For God's sake Tonys, is that really the best you can do? What a lot of dreary old cliches. As for 'doing' things, Harney is doing the health service and the Irish population over pretty darned well for her husband and his clients. She is the most vile and loathsome politician we have at present - a vicious, cold-eyed, selfish **** where public policy is concerned. A vomit-making spectacle to see this vastly over-paid corporate prostitute savaging the health interests of the people who pay her filthily greedy salary. Geoghegan obviously had dollar signs in his eyes when he saw her coming down the road - and what a cash cow she has turned out to be for him. He must love her very dearly, I'm sure. That's one major scandal that needs a good public airing. The two of them must be dining on champagne and caviar every night by the looks of things - when they are not enjoying publicly funded private jet trips to visit relations in Florida or travelling on other US junkets to their joint clients.

In fairness to clichés, they usually have some basis in fact, unlike the long list of bile directed against Harney in your post, which is based on nothing more than your own opinion. It would really make you wonder why she attracts so much personal, vile shite from the left, unless of course it’s because she’s the only one who has taken on the real vested interests in the health service, namely the employees of the same service.

She has dragged each group of health service employees, up to and including, the consultants, to the point where they are almost ready to accept that the service is there to serve the people and not their careers. If she did nothing else over the last five years and she has done a lot more, that alone would make her the best minister of health we have ever had.

In so far as co-location is concerned, I’d be willing to bet that if it delivers a better service and it can hardly do worse, the vast majority of people won’t give a tinkers damn whether that service is privately or publicly delivered.

It's long past time we left the old ideologies behind, we can’t afford them any more.

Look, we all know it is your job to defend FF, Harney and the status quo regardless. Waiting times are significantly worse, there are more people on trolleys in A&E than ever, cancer care is a disaster in many instances and all the while Harney has been chucking billions at private health care companies - many of whom have atrocious records in the US with court judgments against them for fraud and such like. We can't base a health service on what people like you are 'willing to bet'. Especially not when we have all the evidence we need of the disaster of the US health care model which Harney so idolises to see the oncoming car crash. She won't give a damn though. She'll be home and dry

The one thing that the government could have done to improve ALL of our public services, not just health, would have been to implement a rigorous ethos of accountability for performance. This would not have cost us the billions Harney has wasted but, aside from pissing off the commercial vested interests, it would have made the government unpopular so they didn't bother. Unfortunately, our civil and public services are stuffed with FF and FG grace-and-favour placemen in critical management positions - as are the quangos - who don't like to be told they need to be reasonably competent at what they do.

It amazes me that even as the dismal failure of neocon policies is making itself felt all around the world, there are those who are so transfixed by it that they still cant see the carnage. Harney and her ilk have been shown up for the ill-thought-out and dangerous ideologues they are. Time to face up to it.

tonys wrote:

In fairness to clichés, they usually have some basis in fact, unlike the long list of bile directed against Harney in your post, which is based on nothing more than your own opinion. It would really make you wonder why she attracts so much personal, vile shite from the left, unless of course it’s because she’s the only one who has taken on the real vested interests in the health service, namely the employees of the same service.

She has dragged each group of health service employees, up to and including, the consultants, to the point where they are almost ready to accept that the service is there to serve the people and not their careers. If she did nothing else over the last five years and she has done a lot more, that alone would make her the best minister of health we have ever had.

Was Charlie Haughey not resposible for negotiating the existing consultants contracts? Would that make him, by your reasoning, the worst minister for health we ever had?

tonys wrote:

In so far as co-location is concerned, I’d be willing to bet that if it delivers a better service and it can hardly do worse, the vast majority of people won’t give a tinkers damn whether that service is privately or publicly delivered.

It's long past time we left the old ideologies behind, we can’t afford them any more.

Is that an enormous 'if' in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

If 2008 has taught us anything, surely it is that 'free' markets, deregulation and privatisation are not the answer to every problem. Remind me, who exactly is it you think is clinging to old ideologies?

Indeed. The neo-liberalist economic ideology, so beloved of McCreevy and Harney, has been shown up to be a crock of crap and the main reason we are in the shit we're in. This ideology is bankrupt nonsense and all practitioners and advocates of it should be put out to pasture immediately. They are way, way past their sell-by date. Primary among these are the afore-mentioned Harney and McCreevy. The have alsolutely nothing to contribute and are a considerable burden on society, especially at a time when we need to eliminate waste.

coc wrote:

Was Charlie Haughey not resposible for negotiating the existing consultants contracts? Would that make him, by your reasoning, the worst minister for health we ever had?

It was Brian Cowan who was responsable for the last contract.

Slim Buddha wrote:

Indeed. The neo-liberalist economic ideology, so beloved of McCreevy and Harney, has been shown up to be a crock of crap and the main reason we are in the shit we're in. This ideology is bankrupt nonsense and all practitioners and advocates of it should be put out to pasture immediately. They are way, way past their sell-by date. Primary among these are the afore-mentioned Harney and McCreevy. The have alsolutely nothing to contribute and are a considerable burden on society, especially at a time when we need to eliminate waste.

My best mate and hiking buddy is also a long-time member of the Labour Party and an active Socialist Party supporter too.
He's been lashing me with this line for about 4 months now.

I was too to distraught to offer any resistance but you know, I'm begining to get a pain in me hole with it now.

The reason this "neo-liberal crock of crap" was voted in in the first place was because of the complete cock-up socialists made of the economy thru the 70's and 80's.

There are no saints here.

Its as obvious as hell that the "Left" way failed and that the "right" way failed.
One system strangled entrepreneurs to death and the other turned them into raving lunatics.

The answer is in the mix. It has to be.

tonys wrote:

Aragon wrote:

Look, we all know it is your job to defend FF, Harney and the status quo regardless. Waiting times are significantly worse, there are more people on trolleys in A&E than ever, cancer care is a disaster in many instances and all the while Harney has been chucking billions at private health care companies - many of whom have atrocious records in the US with court judgments against them for fraud and such like. We can't base a health service on what people like you are 'willing to bet'. Especially not when we have all the evidence we need of the disaster of the US health care model which Harney so idolises to see the oncoming car crash. She won't give a damn though. She'll be home and dry

The one thing that the government could have done to improve ALL of our public services, not just health, would have been to implement a rigorous ethos of accountability for performance. This would not have cost us the billions Harney has wasted but, aside from pissing off the commercial vested interests, it would have made the government unpopular so they didn't bother. Unfortunately, our civil and public services are stuffed with FF and FG grace-and-favour placemen in critical management positions - as are the quangos - who don't like to be told they need to be reasonably competent at what they do.

It amazes me that even as the dismal failure of neocon policies is making itself felt all around the world, there are those who are so transfixed by it that they still cant see the carnage. Harney and her ilk have been shown up for the ill-thought-out and dangerous ideologues they are. Time to face up to it.

a) “my job” is to make money for myself, which I do, in my own little way. I post here because I enjoy it, for no other reason.
It is interesting that you should think it must be “my job” to defend FF or Harney, for why else would anyone do it, given that as you see it, God & right are so obviously on your side, what other reason could there be.

B) Waiting times are way down, under almost every heading, thanks to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, put in place by the dastardly FF Government, purely for electoral purposes you understand. www.ntpf.ie

c) Nationwide, numbers & waiting times on trolleys are down, the nurses union would have you believe otherwise, but that is the case. There is still a problem in Dublin Hospitals, but elsewhere the problem has been largely sorted.

From yesterdays tribune
“the HSE said that it monitored emergency departments daily and the number of patients awaiting treatment in the emergency departments of acute hospitals had seen a reduction in the last two years.
However, it acknowledged there had been an increase in waiting times in the last quarter of 2008, concentrated in a small number of hospitals. This was due to increases in attendances and in delayed discharges, along with more elective surgeries taking place.”

d) Cancer treatment services have already improved over the last number of years, but the final step to top class services with improved outcomes will only happen with the centres of excellence.
www.irishhealth.com

e) I need details of the “billions” given to private health care companies, I’m not aware of any instance where this is the case.

As with what you think “my job” is, if you divest yourself of your long held preconceptions and look at the facts, you might be surprised with what you find.

*hugz*

Tonys, you seem to have assumed the role of defender of the PD faith no matter how the facts stack up against it As I said before, look around you friend, the evidence of the catastrophe they and their gurus have created is everywhere. The billions that I refer to include the obscenely generous 8 billion handed over for R&D over the last few years - and that excludes the tax concessions, subsidies and grants given to those setting up shop here to fleece 'customers' (that'd be patients to normal people) out of as much money as they can while providing as little service as possible. The logic of it is clear: by entering the need to make a profit into the equation, money is taken out of the pool that would otherwise be directly invested in services.

Luv you too Cookie. Nice to see you back here.

In other words, you have no answer to facts as presented, just more guff.
Is there any point in having a debate with you at all if you just ignore facts that prove you wrong and carry on regardless?

Each point you made in your reply to me was wrong and you have nothing to say about that at all, just more baseless blather.

If this was a court of law, Harney has just been found not guilty with your case flat on it's face.

Aragon wrote:

Tonys, you seem to have assumed the role of defender of the PD faith no matter how the facts stack up against it

He's defender of FF and the PDs? He'll be busy. As for the facts, they seems to be very flexible in both directions depending on who is stating what.

Quote :

As I said before, look around you friend, the evidence of the catastrophe they and their gurus have created is everywhere.

We don't have a world class healthcare system, for sure. But I don't agree that it's a castarophe and I do think it has improved vastly. But there are a hell of a lot more problems in the irish health system than Harney and pals.

Quote :

The billions that I refer to include the obscenely generous 8 billion handed over for R&D over the last few years -

Where did this figure come from? I don't doubt you, I'd just like to know. Also, did we get anything for this money, research or development?

Quote :

and that excludes the tax concessions, subsidies and grants given to those setting up shop here to fleece 'customers' (that'd be patients to normal people) out of as much money as they can while providing as little service as possible.

well money is a factor in either a public or private sphere. And it seems to me that there was carelessness on both sides.

Quote :

The logic of it is clear: by entering the need to make a profit into the equation, money is taken out of the pool that would otherwise be directly invested in services.

I don't think that is either logical or clear. The flipside being that with no real budget and the belief that one is drawing from a bottomless pit of cash that there is no need to spend wisely which is, in my view, just as bad.

Quote :

Luv you too Cookie. Nice to see you back here.

I wouldn't get too used to having me here.

the only problem is, if they win Lisbon, they are also going to have to look like they are taking Europe seriously. Which means they'll have to appoint someone of stature. The one advantage of giving Harney the job is that it means someone a little more left wing (almost everyone) might get Health. Meanwhile, I'd love, from an evil point of view, to see what happens if she tried to take chunks out of the french and german health care systems at the EU level. Stalemate!!

expat girl wrote:

the only problem is, if they win Lisbon, they are also going to have to look like they are taking Europe seriously. Which means they'll have to appoint someone of stature. The one advantage of giving Harney the job is that it means someone a little more left wing (almost everyone) might get Health. Meanwhile, I'd love, from an evil point of view, to see what happens if she tried to take chunks out of the french and german health care systems at the EU level. Stalemate!!

The problem there, expat girl, is that by appointing Harney, we are again demonstrating our contempt for Europe and our allies in the European project. McCreevy was embarrassing enough. Sending his political soulmate, another economically illiterate time-serving gobshite, would underline how little we regard Europe and the extent to which we hold Europe in utter contempt. Harney deserves to be put out to grass. (In my opinion she deserves an awful lot worse (jail, for example)but her retirement is something that would prevent me from becoming violent).

cookiemonster wrote:

Aragon wrote:

Tonys, you seem to have assumed the role of defender of the PD faith no matter how the facts stack up against it

He's defender of FF and the PDs? He'll be busy. As for the facts, they seems to be very flexible in both directions depending on who is stating what.

Quote :

As I said before, look around you friend, the evidence of the catastrophe they and their gurus have created is everywhere.

We don't have a world class healthcare system, for sure. But I don't agree that it's a castarophe and I do think it has improved vastly. But there are a hell of a lot more problems in the irish health system than Harney and pals.

Quote :

The billions that I refer to include the obscenely generous 8 billion handed over for R&D over the last few years -

Where did this figure come from? I don't doubt you, I'd just like to know. Also, did we get anything for this money, research or development?

Quote :

and that excludes the tax concessions, subsidies and grants given to those setting up shop here to fleece 'customers' (that'd be patients to normal people) out of as much money as they can while providing as little service as possible.

well money is a factor in either a public or private sphere. And it seems to me that there was carelessness on both sides.

Quote :

The logic of it is clear: by entering the need to make a profit into the equation, money is taken out of the pool that would otherwise be directly invested in services.

I don't think that is either logical or clear. The flipside being that with no real budget and the belief that one is drawing from a bottomless pit of cash that there is no need to spend wisely which is, in my view, just as bad.

Quote :

Luv you too Cookie. Nice to see you back here.

I wouldn't get too used to having me here.

I know. You think we are all leftists just because we describe Harney as the political prostitute she is. We are not all leftists (I certainly am not!) but despising the politics of a mendacious, hypocritical liar is no shame. And I will condemn Harney until she dies or I do, whichever comes first. She is the worst nightmare to befall our political system since independence. And that includes Haughey (who she very cleverly kept out of jail).

Slim Buddha wrote:

... (who she very cleverly kept out of jail).

Well noted. I'm surprised she doesn't suffer more for this 'faux pas'. The truest thing she ever said may well have been that Irish voters have short memories. There's no circle of hell hot enough for that **** *****.

So what about the alternative offer - John Bruton?