IT OCCURS TO ME: When a picture says it all . . .

The photograph of 90-year old Ann Talty bent over in pain as she waited on a trolley for 48 hours in University Hospital, Limerick, must surely have had an effect on voters in the four by-elections last Friday.
I know the turnout was very low but no government was going to benefit from yet another reminder that the health service itself is seriously unwell.
Ann’s photo was a major topic of conversation throughout the country and should we witness even more of the same before a general election, Leo, Simon Harris and co will have reason to be worried about a countrywide backlash.

WHY THE COUNTRY’S HAVING A ‘FIT’!
Ah memories, memories! I’m sure many of you remember Bertie Ahern saying that Ireland would become a “laughing stock” unless we stopped using pencil and paper to record our votes.
Well, we did...and not because of pencil and paper, but because our mad mandarins spent $54 million on e-voting machines and sold them for scrap for €70,000 in 2012 to a scrap metal outfit in Offaly.
Well, well, we’ve managed to become the laughing stock in earnest this time, and although it ain’t €50m plus, it’s an amount that Hugh Quinn, the Chair of the Friends of Lifford Hospital, told Highland Radio that could have gone a long way towards providing a new building for Lifford Community Hospital.
He questioned how the Government can find funding to cover the cost of buying and installing a new printer in Leinster House, but can’t secure the future of Donegal’s community hospitals. The group says they have been left frustrated and disgusted over the printer controversy. God, what a bloody debacle!
If there are any unemployed forklift drivers reading this, the Oireachtas is looking for you to load paper into the printer which has now cost the taxpayer €1.8 million. You couldn’t make it up!
I blame Mary Mitchell O’Connor for starting the ‘It Doesn’t Fit’ trend in the Dail. Remember back in 2011 when poor Mary couldn’t manoeuvre her campaign motor through the normal entrance and headed for fame and social media legendary status.
The newly-elected TD drove down the steps of the plinth in front of the Dáil, in front of a group of reporters and cameramen.
At the time, she said had been distracted by a horde of media types outside the main gates of Leinster House.
“"As I came to the first step I saw the media all running,” she said.
“I thought there was someone famous behind me… next thing I knew - bang, bang, bang - there was me coming down the steps.”
She started a trend...I also remember a hapless Mercedes parked on a ramp that rises up from the ground outside the Dail...all it lacked was wings and it might have taken off.
It would all be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious...we are a laughing stock, Bertie, and it’s born out of contempt for the voters...who by the way, have no machines to work with.
Ah well sure, as long as the oul printer lashes out hundreds of thousands of Christmas cards, that’ll keep the peasants happy!

NO SOFT OPTIONS FOR DRUGS PROBLEM
I heard a gulpen on the wireless last week advocating the legalisation of cocaine. This is the kind of ill-thought out brainlessness that when read between the lines, means: “Ah sure, we can’t enforce the law so let them at it!”
That kind of abject surrender really gets up my nose (forgive the pun!) and we’ve gone from the legalise cannabis lobby to this nonsense. As the Irish Times reported a few months ago: “Cannabis use by young significantly increases mental health risks.”
“The cannabis of 2019 is not the cannabis of the Woodstock era...About one in five Irish 15-16-year-olds report using cannabis. That means one in five adolescents are using a drug that can have a multitude of demonstrably negative effects on their short- and long-term mental health at a time when their brains are at the peak of their development.”
Micheal Martin recently reminded the Dail that the latest Europol report which found that Ireland was a significant part of the €30bn per year EU drugs trade was no surprise, and that the curse of drugs moving beyond big population centres was also happening here.
“Provincial towns are now considered most attractive,” he said and added that the Europol report showed that intimidation in communities and against families was a prevalent feature of the drugs scourge.
I knew two habitual marijuana users in a small town some years ago...to put it mildly, their heads were fried. I’m out of touch now and I often wonder how they’re coping...one of them, a young woman, spent all of her waking day wondering where she might source ‘a smoke’.
About twelve years ago, I watched as some blatant and bizarre activity went on in a house opposite a friend’s dwelling. She, like her neighbours were alarmed but afraid to interfere. I contacted a friend in the Drugs Squad who within weeks had gathered enough evidence to mount a raid.
My friend subsequent told me of the excitement very early one morning when the door opposite was ‘Enforced’ and the protagonists were arrested.
Far too many people arch their eyebrows and moan: “Ah, what’s the point...the Guards have enough on their plate.”
Yes, they have but to quote John F. Kennedy in a 1961 speech (attributed to Edmund Burke but it was actually John Stuart Mill) “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Let’s not give in...either to the criminal pushers or the ridiculous ‘legalise’ snowflakes.
Exactly one year ago, the veteran anti-drugs campaigner, P.J. Blake cited the drug related deaths of 16 young people in the county in the last decade and a half. Claiming that families were still “suffering and grieving” over their respective losses, he maintained: “I’ve been at some of these funerals and I’ve seen the grief of these poor people.
“ I’ve also seen the crocodile tears shed by some other people at these funerals.
“ A week later these scum are out selling the drugs on the streets again - that’s how much they care.”
PJ has ploughed a lonely furrow on occasions...good on him for never giving in to the softer options!

Frank's column was published in the Donegal Democrat on Thursday. The following day, PJ Blake passed away at Letterkenny University Hospital after a recent illness. May he rest in peace.