Enda Kenny on the Late Late (15/01/10)

oppenheimer1

jmayo wrote: »

Shure it's never a minister fault for anything. :rolleyes:
What fu**** policy, hire huge amount of admin staff, cut down on front line staff, allow duplication of admin facilities, give bonuses to executives of non performing organisation, fail to give possible life saving vaccines to our kids.
Do you want me to go on ?
Perhaps after you have sat in f**** A&E for 12 hours with broken bnone you might not be such a sanctimonous ffer or perhaps when you see a parent die in hospital after they have gotten MRSA you might change your tune.

I will come back and deal with the rest of your points, but its this one which stuck out the most. No the minister cannot be held responsible for someone dieing of MRSA, what she is in charge of is ensuring policy of hygiene is adopetd by all institutions under her remit, and enforcing of such policy. I would only hold her responsible if a problem was brought to her attention and deliberately overlooked. Since MRSA became an issue there is a hygiene audit taken of every hospital, showing standards improving. Saying she should resign because someones granny died after contracting MRSA isn't on, if everyone quit after a setback there would be no one left to run the show.

You criticise her over the cervical cancer vaccine too. Well the original cost of that was €16m and the government rightly refused. Although it was unpopular, they knew they were being overcharged by the pharmaceutical company. The vaccine has been renegotiated to cost only €3m now, and I can bet the pharma company isn't making a loss on it. I applaud her for standing up for value for money. Too often with health we throw money at the problem without being objective as it is such an emotive issue.

As for waiting 12 hours in A&E, no i haven't had that experience, though I have been with others. If someone is in bad enough shape they will be seen to immediately, they won't be left to die in the corridors as you make it out. A major problem with A&E is that people don't actually know what its for, and will turn up with all sorts of aliments that could be better treated by a GP. Worse still the system is choked with drunks at the weekend. Maybe as a nation we need to cop on, or face up that we need to pay more for health if we are unwilling to change.

As for the problems with admin, well you have to put it in context. She is trying to reform a system with every vested interest pulling against her. You can't change anything without some group threatening strike action and holding the whole system to ransom. A few years ago, the nurses went out on strike looking for better pay and conditions. The government at the time said no, but public opinion was on the nurses/health staff side. People have been quick to change their tune now that times are tighter.

hulioseducer

this thread has gone so far off topic it should be closed!!!!

jmayo

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I will come back and deal with the rest of your points, but its this one which stuck out the most. No the minister cannot be held responsible for someone dieing of MRSA, what she is in charge of is ensuring policy of hygiene is adopetd by all institutions under her remit, and enforcing of such policy. I would only hold her responsible if a problem was brought to her attention and deliberately overlooked. Since MRSA became an issue there is a hygiene audit taken of every hospital, showing standards improving. Saying she should resign because someones granny died after contracting MRSA isn't on, if everyone quit after a setback there would be no one left to run the show.

You criticise her over the cervical cancer vaccine too. Well the original cost of that was €16m and the government rightly refused. Although it was unpopular, they knew they were being overcharged by the pharmaceutical company. The vaccine has been renegotiated to cost only €3m now, and I can bet the pharma company isn't making a loss on it. I applaud her for standing up for value for money. Too often with health we throw money at the problem without being objective as it is such an emotive issue.

As for waiting 12 hours in A&E, no i haven't had that experience, though I have been with others. If someone is in bad enough shape they will be seen to immediately, they won't be left to die in the corridors as you make it out. A major problem with A&E is that people don't actually know what its for, and will turn up with all sorts of aliments that could be better treated by a GP. Worse still the system is choked with drunks at the weekend. Maybe as a nation we need to cop on, or face up that we need to pay more for health if we are unwilling to change.

As for the problems with admin, well you have to put it in context. She is trying to reform a system with every vested interest pulling against her. You can't change anything without some group threatening strike action and holding the whole system to ransom. A few years ago, the nurses went out on strike looking for better pay and conditions. The government at the time said no, but public opinion was on the nurses/health staff side. People have been quick to change their tune now that times are tighter.

Ehh I don't hold her responsible for every individual case, but I do hold her responssible for the organisation and it's failure to adequately provide a decent standard of healthcare to the public.
There have been a damm lot of individaul cases.
She took on the consultant vested interest groups and lo and behold they appear to have come out with nice pay rise.
She helped create the HSE, which is a convenient quangoe to distance the health minister and indeed dept of health/government from responsibility.
If she was a cheif executive in most companies (well maybe bar an Irish bank or regualtory authority) she would be fired for the incompetence and wastage of the organisation.

BTW my list did not even include failure to diagnose cancer sufferers, people dying because ongoing consultant dispute in hospital, old left to die in private nursing homes (part of harney's grand plan of tax right offs for private healthcare institutions) because of gross failure by health authorites to police the care provided in these facilities (without first warning owners they are going to visit - better oversight of slaughter houses than private nursing homes it appeared).
Oh wait they set up another quangoe to oversee the quality of care handed out.
God knows who is responsible or supposedly responsible for that.

Years ago the minister of health was ultimately responsible for dept of health and public health system.
Now seen as she is paid even more than any of her predecessors she is responsible for shag all it appears.
Well then why the f*** do we pay her ?
She is trying to reform the system for how long ?
What great strides have they made, oh yeah they have more admin staff, less front line staff and private hospitals that are either not built or nearly bankrupt.

What do you mean put the admin problem in context.
Here is one, there is duplication between HSE areas even though they created another layer on top at HSE HQ in Naas, oops sorry Drumm refused to travel to Naas so they had to setup further office at St James AFAIK.
Ask anyone that deals with HSE admin how numbers mushroomed post 1997, quel surprise when bertie the great arrived in government.

Does the buck ever stop at the top in ff governments or does it just miraculously disappear down some supporters pocket.

Yes this has gone off topic, but it strikes me as being a bit rich for ffers/PDs to be mouthing off about Kenny & FG front bench spokespeople lack of leadership or experience, when their own have been proven time and again to be about as useful as a g string on a teething baby's bottom :rolleyes:

Liam Byrne

jmayo wrote: »

Yes this has gone off topic, but it strikes me as being a bit rich for ffers/PDs to be mouthing off about Kenny & FG front bench spokespeople lack of leadership or experience, when their own have been proven time and again to be about as useful as a g string on a teething baby's bottom :rolleyes:

Pretty apt analogy, considering the amount of you-know-what FF have landed us in!

FF have adopted American-style politics, slinging as much muck as possible in the hope that some will stick.

And while most of us can see through this crap, and can objectively compare actual, relevant credentials, track record, and ethical stance (including acceptability and possible areas for improvement), FFers seem to be adamant that "he's a plank" is enough to put a voter off, while somehow getting "he's f**ked up X times, wasted cash, has dodgy finances, has bailed out banks, etc, etc" to appear irrelevant.

Yes, Kenny is not as good as one would like to have as a leader, but there's no denying that he's the best we have.

Or, to put it in FF-speak*, Kenny is what FF think NAMA is; definitely not 100% palatable, but "the only show in town if we are to get out of this mess".

*I don't agree on either front, but it worked for FF

hulioseducer

there are plenty of threads available to discuss this point though please use them for the point your making and this one for your opinion on endas interview in which no matter what party you follow i'm sure you can admit he preformed poorly. who cares if you thought his questions were tougher than cowens he stumbled across his answers and said things he shouldn't have said. HE IS NO MORE A LEADER THAN COWEN

Liam Byrne

hulioseducer wrote: »

there are plenty of threads available to discuss this point though please use them for the point your making and this one for your opinion on endas interview in which no matter what party you follow i'm sure you can admit he preformed poorly. who cares if you thought his questions were tougher than cowens he stumbled across his answers and said things he shouldn't have said. HE IS NO MORE A LEADER THAN COWEN

The thread is about "Enda Kenny on the Late Late", so it's perfectly valid to point out the fact that at least some of the "poor performance" is down to biased and partial treatment by the FF-lackey host of The Late Late.

Even if all of it wasn't down to the bias - and there's no denying that a better interviewee (not necessarily equating to a better leader) could have put Tubridy in his place without coming across as arrogant - there's no denying that Tubridy did not treat like with like in terms of Ahern, Cowen and Kenny, and one has to wonder why.

Kenny stumbles or avoids answering a question - he's interrupted.
Ahern avoids answering a question and laughs it off - Tubridy laughs along.

Red_Marauder

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Kenny stumbles or avoids answering a question - he's interrupted.
Ahern avoids answering a question and laughs it off - Tubridy laughs along.

If Ahern were a candidate for Taoiseach, that would be a fair comparison. Ahern is a retired Taoiseach and author with no significant influence over the future of this country (one would hope).
It is pretty sensible that political interviewees who are appearing in order to market themselves be subject to tougher questioning than political has-beens.

Liam Byrne

Red_Marauder wrote: »

If Ahern were a candidate for Taoiseach, that would be a fair comparison. Ahern is a retired Taoiseach and author with no significant influence over the future of this country (one would hope).
It is pretty sensible that political interviewees who are appearing in order to market themselves be subject to tougher questioning than political has-beens.

Fair point, but we're still paying both their wages, and expenses, and Ahern's merc, and his tax break, and paying for all the damage that he caused; in fact, and the main reason we probably need a stronger leader than Kenny is because of our current suffering because of Ahern's actions.

Here's another comparison for you; Tubridy grilled three priests about things that happened in the church YEARS AGO, but only came to light now. Those three had NOTHING to do with the sickening events. A question or two was inevitable, but he grilled them.

If he'd had a bishop or priest or whoever from back then on, he would definitely have been within his rights to grill them, because we only NOW know about THEIR actions and the damage that it has done.

The same applies to Ahern, but he got a free pass to plug his book. If I had been one of the priests, I'd have said to Tubridy - "Y'know, it's gas - you harass us about past atrocities that we had nothing to do with, and criticise our membership of an organisation that admittedly did despicable things, and yet you didn't bother quizzing a former Taoiseach who was DIRECTLY involved in all sorts......why is that, Ryan ? And you're happy to remain a member of HIS organisation, despite what IT and IT'S LEADERS did to the country ? And why are you still happy with THAT organisation, even though it left the same criminals that you're talking about in the church off the hook and left the taxpayer foot the bill ?".

So any critique of Kenny's performance HAS TO factor in the fact that Tubridy is incapable of a relevant, solid interview, and is incapable of not being biased as hell when it comes to FF.

"Enda Kenny on the Late Late" involved 3 aspects : Kenny, Tubridy and the audience, and all 3 are relevant.

LookBehindYou

Who could take Tubridy serious as an interviewer anyway ?? He does not have what it takes. He sounds like a robot who is an autopilot reading out a list of questions without even listening to a reply to follow up the questions on.

As for Mr Kenny, i dont care what he looks like, But i do care about if he can do the job proper.At least he seems to be above corruption.

Michael Noonan seemed to be the ideal person at the time for party leader of FG, he was very good in opposition, but was like a sheep in charge of FG.(was he gagged or something)

Alan Dukes was a good leader who put the country before the party, but what happened him ? he was shoved aside by the party.

Is there any party who would think of putting the good of the country first, before the party ????

What about a new party with Mr Mc Dowell in charge (ex pd, even though i did not like the pd,s) be any good ? or maybe its time for a new party to appear on the scene, containing HONEST people who are not in the pockets of vested interests.

Mental Mickey

LookBehindYou wrote: »

Who could take Tubridy serious as an interviewer anyway ?? He does not have what it takes. He sounds like a robot who is an autopilot reading out a list of questions without even listening to a reply to follow up the questions on.

As for Mr Kenny, i dont care what he looks like, But i do care about if he can do the job proper.At least he seems to be above corruption.

Michael Noonan seemed to be the ideal person at the time for party leader of FG, he was very good in opposition, but was like a sheep in charge of FG.(was he gagged or something)

Alan Dukes was a good leader who put the country before the party, but what happened him ? he was shoved aside by the party.

Is there any party who would think of putting the good of the country first, before the party ????

What about a new party with Mr Mc Dowell in charge (ex pd, even though i did not like the pd,s) be any good ? or maybe its time for a new party to appear on the scene, containing HONEST people who are not in the pockets of vested interests.

Same as Pat Kenny.