Maybe I’m getting old and grumpy (yes, yes, all right I am old and grumpy) but surely if you deliberately commit a crime you are forfeiting many of your rights as a citizen. I think it’s reasonable to say that the rights you are giving up vary with crime: not having a TV licence doesn’t mean that you are fair game for police marksmen, for example.

Breaking into a motorcycle shop is unlikely to be an accident. Stealing the motorcycles and driving away on them, even less so. We all know that riding motorcycles is a risky business but if you choose to do it then you must accept the consequences. If you are chased by the police because you are riding away on a bike that you have just stolen, and you have an accident, well TOUGH LUCK. Maybe you shouldn’t have broken in to the shop. Maybe you shouldn’t have removed the vehicle, got on it, started it and ridden away. It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. I see no justification for the state allowing you to get away with it, just because otherwise you might hurt yourself.

I’m not criticising the police, the fault is with the policymakers and the courts that award damages to criminals who hurt themselves in the pursuit of their illegal activities.

Just sayin’.

Here in Mayo we should be grateful, however, as some parts of Ireland have been far wetter, with nearly 4 times the seasonal average falling at Johnstown Castle in July, and 2.5 times the mean at Valencia in August.

Interestingly, the temperature and sunshine figures for Belmullet have been slightly above average, 6% & 7% respectively. The summary, then, is warmer and wetter, which happens to be just what the climate change model is predicting.

As I understand it, President Obama wants to make it possible for everyone to receive medical care regardless of their means. A noble ideal, but someone still has to pay for it. In other words, taxes. This has caused a bit of a ruckus in the US, with the loud voices at either end of the political spectrum grabbing the headlines: down with taxes/don’t kill my baby; you know the sort of thing. Naturally there are also the (somewhat more subtle) corporates, lobbyists, pressure groups and so on, feeding money and (mis)information to those doing the shouting.

Daring Fireball has a couple of amusing (kind of) anecdotes:

From an Investor’s Business Daily editorial ¹ arguing against the current U.S. health care reform proposals:

“The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.”

“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

Stephen Hawking was born and has lived his entire life in the U.K.

and

Anti-health-care-reform activist, reportedly injured in a fight at a town hall meeting last week, is collecting donations to pay his medical bills because he was recently laid off and lost his health insurance. [more]

I read both of these with a sense of wonder and despair. The inaccuracy and hypocrisy shown is astonishing and made me wonder if many US citizens are taken in by this stuff. I suppose there must be quite a few, or it wouldn’t be worth publishing. And yes, I have seen Fox News.

Society, community, nation: surely these terms imply some kind of structure of care, of support for those who (hopefully temporarily) cannot support themselves? It would be easy to believe that those who have the resources are simply unwilling to share and that the flip side of ‘land of opportunity’ is ‘tough luck if you don’t succeed’. Systems such as those in Britain and Ireland may be far from perfect but they at least attempt to be humane.

I started to think about The American Ideal (or my understanding of it); how it has been corrupted and where, ultimately, it will take the USA. Immediately my mind conjured up images of anarchy; a sort of ‘Mad Max’ post-apocalyptic scenario where it’s every person for themselves and the only law comes from the barrel of a gun.

I can only hope I am very wrong, and as I said I am only seeing this through the eyes of the media.

1. since edited, removing refernces to Stephen Hawking ↑

The report, a massive work that has taken nine years to compile, documents the enormous scale of the abuses – every type imaginable – inflicted on both boys and girls by the, supposedly Christian, people responsible for their education and welfare. It documents the awareness of the abuses, some might say collusion, of both the Irish State and the Catholic Church. What the report does not document, thanks to a High Court ruling in 2004, is the names of the guilty parties.

Much has been written and broadcast about the report, by people far more qualified to comment than I am. Indeed, the abuses are not really news. These appalling abuses have been widely recognised for some considerable time, but the report brings together many of the stories of the victims and highlights the scale of the tragedy. It is important for all of us to be aware of what happened, in the hope that a blind eye is never again turned towards such dreadful crimes.

Read more about the abuses committed by the Catholic Church in Ireland by clicking this link.

11:47 AM Mar 10th from Tweetie
…or gallbladder problem. Feel a bit high but still some pain.

11:52 AM Mar 10th from web
@filce: My God. Hope you get a speed diagnosis, resolution and recovery. My best wishes to you.

11:55 AM Mar 10th from web
@ray888: all the best – get well soon

12:11 PM Mar 10th from Tweetie
@filce @ray888 thanks very much, means a lot. Just about to arrive at A&E. More later…

1:44 PM Mar 10th from Tweetie
Blood & urine taken. Am on trolley in A&E waiting for test results. Excellent service so far, no complaints.

4:24 PM Mar 10th from Tweetie
Just arrived Ward B, my home for tonight. ECG ok, blood & urine ok, blood pressure a bit high. Currently gallbladder and stomach suspected.

4:26 PM Mar 10th from twhirl
@cbkerndter: what happened?

4:32 PM Mar 10th from Tweetie
@cbkerndter woke up last night with bad stomach pain – I mean really bad. Dr this morning, morphine & straight to A&E. More tests tomorrow.

4:33 PM Mar 10th from twhirl
@cbkerndter: outch wish you well

4:44 PM Mar 10th from web
@filce: Well your day has sure changed. I think, given events, you are in the best place. Hopefully they’ll be news soon.

4:45 PM Mar 10th from web
@filce: ‘blood pressure a bit high’ – lol – why would that be?

6:29 PM Mar 10th from TweetDeck
@finkeegan: Sorry to hear you had such a painful experience!

7:49 PM Mar 10th from Tweetie
V. excited, just had another shot of morphine: I relish the blissful release heading my way. Thanks, all, for your messages.

8:08 PM Mar 10th from web
@Andiepowpow: Sorry to hear you’re ill Al. Hope you feel better soon. Hope that Morphine doesnt make your nose too itchy x

11:30 AM Mar 11th from Tweetie
Still in hospital awaiting ultrasound scan. Better night last night, thanks to intravenous drugs, but still plenty of pain.

11:57 AM Mar 11th from twhirl
@jellyjumper: hopefully you will be better soon. greetings from Achill

4:08 PM Mar 11th from Tweetie
Ultrasound says…twins! But seriously, I have gallstones. Don’t know what happens now – hopefully it involves food & water.

4:10 PM Mar 11th from web
@sineadailillhi: my dad had gallstones last year, got them out with simple keyhole surgery, was home the next day and is great now

4:28 PM Mar 11th from web
@filce: Glad it’s gallstones and nothing more sinister. Been thinking about how you’re doing on and off all day. Must of been scary.

4:45 PM Mar 11th from TweetDeck
@finkeegan: Well, pain aside, at least they are benign and removable. So that is good news, right? *googles “how avoid gallstones”*

4:57 PM Mar 11th from web
@ray888: hopefully the passing of gallstones, will be a lot less painfull than a man giving birth to twins

11:52 AM Mar 12th from Tweetie
Still in hosp, awaiting ‘official’ diagnosis. Thanks for all your kind and supportive messages. Will reply individually when I get home.

4:43 PM Mar 12th from TwitterBerry
@Yuyis: hope you get well soon……. Take good care…. )

2:34 PM Mar 13th from web
@filce: How are you doing today? Did you get a proper diagnosis in the end? Hope you’re comfortable and all that.

4:43 PM Mar 13th from Tweetie
Diagnosis official (gallstones). Am allowed to eat now – w00t! Might be released Sunday. Feeling much better, and promise to eat my 5-a-day!

10:54 AM Mar 14th from Tweetie
“I’m coming home, I’ve done my time…” paroled early for good behaviour! Feeling so much better. Will miss the hospital food, of course.

11:35 AM Mar 14th from TweetDeck
@Lifelists: Alistair Steger-Lewis……You have been evicted, I’m coming to get you!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that it’s all ‘official’ (rather than just decided?) I suppose we can all comment on it. The newspapers are, briefly, full of smiley, posey pictures; all the politicians and aspiring politicians crawl out of the slime to either congratulate the government on another brilliant scheme or berate them for wasting money on another half-baked idea.

As far as the national picture is concerned, looking at the positives, it’s great that the government is prepared to step in and fund the provision of broadband for everybody. On the negative side, the government have surely set the bar too low, in that: less than 2MB cannot really be considered broadband in the 21st century (forget the moans about bandwidth reducing when there are lots of users – all broadband is contended); the target of ‘covering the whole country’ is imprecise – in the UK they are specifying the supply of broadband ‘to every household’, which is quite different.

To illustrate the second criticism, consider Achill. The island, as far as the NBS is concerned, is split into two parts: one is on the ‘planned’ list, the other is on the ‘not included’ list. Why does one part of the island miss out? Well, there is already a 3 mast which, notionally, covers this part of the island. The reality, as anyone with the slightest experience of cellphone signals will realise, is that in some spots there is a great signal but move around the corner and there is none. Achill is not flat; hills get in the way, leaving ’shadows’ where there is no signal. Then there are walls: most broadband users do not want to sit in the garden surfing the net, at least not in Ireland. So again, some houses and offices are fine, others get nothing. There is no reason to believe that the ‘planned’ part of Achill will fare any better.

Achill is not a special case: this picture will be repeated all over the country. Hence to say that the whole country will be covered by broadband, one way or another, is meaningless. You’ll find the usual ‘haves and have-nots’ thing between wired and wireless areas, and between good and bad signal areas. Let’s not pretend, either, that the proposed satellite coverage for areas where a cellular signal is impractical is the answer. As a satellite ‘broadband’ user for several years, I can attest to the deeply unsatisfactory nature of this ’solution’.

I have no doubt that, if I am one of the lucky ones, I will appreciate the improvements of cellular broadband over satellite broadband, but I will continue to look with envy at those a few miles up the road with their DSL lines.