I tired this morning of Lyric FM's ultra soothing strains of 'Queen for orchestras' laced with Prozac or whatever it was. As I was weaving through the traffic, I had a mental picture of Nurse Rachett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, her steel blue eyes sharpening as she calls for medication time. Cajoling the inmates of Ireland Mental Hospital into consciousness, I flicked over to the news, which was it's own peculiar medication time, with some very bitter pills to swallow: Take one lost Lisbon treaty (which was eminently winnable for any competent government) followed by the bitterest pill of them all. Sammy bloody Wilson is Norn Iron's environment minister. God help us all, the chief lunatic has the running of the asylum!Apart form the fact that I bet he can't even spell the word 'environment', it seems that our boy Sammy has a novel idea for Norn Iron's econonmy - let's take in nuclear waste from around the UK in exchange for what he calls 'high paid, high tech jobs'. Very environmental. The jobs in question, it obviously never occurred to him, mount up to the same as being high risk, high paid rubbish dump attendants. Not only will the waste be pretty rank, but it won't stop being fatally toxic ... ever. So unbelievably dangerous and bad is radioactive waste, that when Rapture comes, the Almighty himself will come down with a bad case of radiation poisoning, and the Apocalypse will have to be postponed until his recovery.
Hang on a sec - maybe he's on to something...
...No, on reflection, he's not. He's out of his bloody mind.
It's not surprising that a government official in Ireland comes to a position he neither has an aptitude for nor interest in. Ireland has a great tradition of putting unsuitable people into unsuitable positions of power, particularly in environment and heritage. This is where ministers for years have taken a nickels and dimes attitude to things they should be more mature about, e.g. Tara, the Luas, Wood Quay back in the 70's - the mac daddy of all environmental policy disasters to face our capital.
What is clear is this. With Sammy Wilson's particular brand of madcap policy initiatives, if a China Syndrome doesn't kill us all first, then at least he'll be synchronising the North's policy making idiocy with that of the South - Irish unity is on the way. Thanks to the D.U.P!!
