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One Kills Whilst the Other Saves

13/07/08

One kills whilst the other saves…

Such was the ‘dilemma’ facing those at the heart of the Six-County Assembly.

Whilst allocating tax payers’ money, the hard earned yet easily squandered, apparently one option on the table was to either fund something that kills or something that saves.

For most there would quite simply be no ‘dilemma’. Yet, it appears that those at the very core of the Six-County administration cannot be trusted to take the right decisions when faced with such moral no-brainers.

For it was there that the decision was taken to lavish scarce resources upon something that kills, namely the visit of war criminals Bush and Brown, instead of funding something that saves, in this instance the Ambulance Service.

It has been revealed that this grotesque and unwelcome visit cost the tax payer £306,000, in ‘security’ costs alone. This represents only a fraction of the actual financial cost whilst the moral cost of glad handing such people is, of course, unquantifiable.

Yet, at the very same time, it has been revealed that the Ambulance Service in the Six-Counties is facing cuts to its budget of over £1.2 million.

While the minister in charge of robbing resources from such essential services refers to these cuts as ‘efficiency savings’, the fact remains that they will result in the reduction of front line services.

The Ambulance Service is an essential service, of that there is no doubt. However, it is not a drain on the public purse. Even though the service transported over 350,000 patients last year, which is approximately one fifth of the total population of the Six-Counties, it still only accounts for 2% of the total public funding allocated to health.

Apparently, this is not good enough. Michael McGimpsey, the minister responsible for health [sic], tasked the service with reducing its expenditure by 3%, which will result in a reduction of ambulance hours and in some ambulances being taken off the roads entirely.

It has been said that no-one will suffer as a result of these cuts, that there will be an increase in Rapid Response Vehicles, which cannot transport patients to hospital, that there will be a pilot scheme whereby doctors will advise patients as to what actions to take from the obscurity of a control room. Whilst not quite as insulting as the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s advice to families struggling with poverty that their salvation was to be found in eating more leftovers, it is infinitely more dangerous.

While it is known that Bush and Brown are directly responsible for over 1 million dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, what has yet to become clear is how many lives will be lost through the squandering of public funds on their visit.

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