What a brilliant idea! The Green Party made an agreement with Bertie Ahern in 2007 to rotate their seats at the cabinet table.
With a total of six TDs this means that everyone would get a chance to sit in the back of a government Merc over the life of the current Dail. A TD has to serve only two years as minister to qualify for a pension, so the magnificent half dozen would also qualify for a ministerial pension before getting turfed out at the next election. Even Fianna Fail under Haughey didn’t have the brass neck to come up with such a scheme.
The reasoning is, according to the Greens, that too long in ministerial office can be bad for any individual and that too long in power can be corrupting. The cynical view is that they’re not going to be in office for too long, so everyone should have a go behind a big desk and qualify for a pension at the same time.
I’m sure other business and organisations must be looking at the rotation idea and wondering could it be implemented. Ryanair could swap around the pilots with cabin staff and while the stewardess is flying the plane the pilot could go around selling scratch cards and over-priced sandwiches.I experienced a very hard landing on a Ryanair flight recently, so maybe they’ve already got the boys and girls in blue landing the planes.
The idea could help solve some of the problems in the health service also. To use the Green argument, that spending too much time in office is bad for the individual, surely the same applies to our hospitals? It’s time to get the surgeons and consultants out into the wards and driving ambulances and the nurses and ambulance drivers in to do the heart surgery and deliver the babies.
I wonder what would happen to our chances of five-in-row if Brian Cody adopted the Green policy. We could end up with PJ Ryan on the half forward line, Henry Shefflin in goal and, maybe, Brian himself at midfield. If it works for the Greens, surely it would help deliver the coveted fifth title?
Yes I know it sounds daft, but it isn’t any dafter than the Greens thinking that they are equally competent at any job in government.
It’s a green day for the Irish
While the Green version of musical chairs continues up in Dublin, it seems the only one staying true to the party’s roots and principles is the Mayor, Malcolm Noonan. We’re having a ‘Green Theme’ for the St Patrick’s Day Parade, with participants encouraged to “Try to power your float with people power.” That means, presumably, that there’s no place for trucks with a couple of balloons attached belting out diesel fumes like in the old days.
The parade will feature floats with climate change, recycling, renewable energy, biodiversity and sustainable transport (cycling and walking ) as the subject matter. It should make for a good day out and I think we’re still allowed to drown the shamrock, but I’d better check with the mayor.
Going on a diet
We’ve had the Atkins, South Beach, Grapefruit, Cabbage Soup and dozens of other diets advertised over the years. I’ve only tried one which consisted of drinking pear juice, rice crackers and not much else. It wasn’t for weight loss but to try to identify an allergy that had caused a rash. It didn’t work and my expensive consultant in the Blackrock Clinic eventually gave me his prognosis, which was that “You could be allergic to yourself.” I wasn’t sure how that could be cured, but the rash disappeared eventually without any further treatment.
I’ve been sceptical of diets since, but I finally spotted one last week that could be worth trying. A new report found that women who like a glass of wine after work are likely to gain less weight than those who stick to mineral water. Some 19,220 American women aged 39 or older were surveyed over a number of years and it was found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.
There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain. I don’t know why there were no men in the survey, but I’m presuming that the same results would be found in the male population. So it’s a glass or two a day from now on, purely for medicinal and weight loss purposes, of course.
No Oscar this year
It would have been some achievement for Cartoon Saloon to pull off an Oscar win against all the big guns in the animation industry. Our own national broadcaster, RTE, chose to virtually ignore the Cartooners. They managed to interview representatives from all the other (Dublin-based ) nominations on Monday morning, but barely a mention for ‘The Secret Of Kells.’ We should march on the Dail and withhold our licence fee.
