Things are rosy here in Ireland.

We have a "health service" where it appears to be normal that four or five hundred hospital patients have to sleep on trollies because there are no beds for them.  We had a nice case today of an 81 year old woman being sent home to starve to death because our "health service" didn't bother telling her GP what was going on.

Then we have a very small problem with homelessness.  The best part of 4,000 are homeless at the moment and the figure is constantly growing.  These are mainly people whose homes have been repossessed or who have been evicted because they can't afford rent increases.  They are currently being crammed into hotels [at the taxpayers’ expense] where they are apparently treated like lepers by the hotel owners.

But everything is rosy.

Dame Enda keeps gloating over the huge and unexpected tax take and how we are rolling in money.  We are told that they have taken in more tax, more VAT and more corporation tax than they expected and we are positively awash with the stuff.  This of course has sweet fuck all to do with an election in the next month or two.  Sheer coincidence.

They have so much money that our "health service" is lashing out five and a half million to make us exercise more. 

One wonders how many homeless could be housed for five and a half million?  How many extra beds could be produced in Emergency Departments in our hospitals?  However that wouldn't buy votes, would it?

They want half a million of us to get out on the streets and run around or clutter the roads with our bicycles.  I'm not sure what all those millions are going to be spent on though.  More cycle lanes that no one uses?  More nagging advertisements on televisions?  Maybe they are going to give everyone in the country a free bicycle?  Who knows?

Seven out of 10 adults are too inactive and failing to get the necessary 30 minutes a day of moderate activity five days a week which is recommended for 18- to 64-year-olds.

So it is necessary to have 30 minutes of exercise?  29 minutes and you're a fat slob?  31 minutes and you are overdoing it?  Once again, someone has come up with a "recommendation" that we have to adhere to like the amount of sleep we get, the number of drinks we are "allowed" or the amount of salt we put on out chips?  The only positive thing is that at least they have excluded me.  Apparently us 65+ year olds can slob around as much as we like.

Being healthy starts with personal responsibility, but the Government also has a role to play.

Oops!  That's surely an error?  I thought they had abolished personal responsibility and everything was in the hands of the gubmint these days?

They would want to watch themselves in our "health" department.  What with all this giving up smoking, eating, drinking and salt and then getting us to exercise all the time there will soon be no illness left.  We will all be healthy strapping muscular thirty year olds with ne'er a sniffle nor an ache.

They'll all be out of a job.