Let them eat cake...

A young Fianna Fail counsellor asked me yesterday;
Why they are hated so much now?
What did they do?
Don't people want the new bus?
Why is everyone blaming Fianna Fail?
He questions seemed earnest and his concern real, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I tried to explain it to him as best I could. I tried to describe how this empty gesture appeared from our point of view or more importantly a patients, he couldnt or maybe didnt want to understand.
If Im honest, I couldnt see it from his point of view either, no matter how hard I tried.
This went back and forth for 20 minutes or so, we debated the issue and the debate was friendly but it turned out to be utterly pointless. Thankfully it turned to smalltalk, then we both left with a handshake, a bad joke and little else. Its strange but I know this man, I know his friends and Im sure he's a good guy but outside of that I actually dont know this man. I dont understand him, I don't understand the blind allegiance that I see in these people or where it comes from. How is loyalty to a party more important than a persons life? How can you privately profess that you support something but everything you say or do in public screams the opposite? They cannot all be liars, I know that much but if anyone has a better answer, please tell me.

We're campaigning for patients rights, their rights of equal access to health care, their human rights, the very things our constitution speaks of. We are trying to stop our government and minister for health closing down our health services based on statistics from the end of the last century.
We want to make sure that people who are already scared, already suffering and in some cases dying dont have to be seperated needlessly from their loved ones. That they wont have to endure any unnecessary pain and discomfort, that they have the choice of treatment other irish people have. That they are not herded like livestock onto a bus day after day, week after week for treatment that could, treatment that should be freely available to them.

And what is the governments response? the Fianna Fail response?
A new bus....... and yet he doesn't understand