HEART BEAT:The new Chief Elf must seclude himself while he ponders weighty matters, writes Maurice Nelligan.
NOW CHILDREN, I haven't written to you for a while because what the ruling elves were doing was so complicated and obscure that nobody among us lesser beings had a hope of understanding any of it.
Now try to pay attention; those of you little ones who are not riding about in stolen cars, wearing bullet-proof vests and firing machine guns at each other.
The Chief Elf has resigned. Apparently he had enough of ungrateful people not understanding how much he had done for them and failing to show due appreciation.
Basically he said "a plague on all your houses, lads I'm out of here". Many are very sad about this, some less so, but basically the show must go on. The platitudes are flying, "no one person is greater than the nation", etc, etc.
In my personal opinion, as elves go, he was a very decent man.
Now as you know, there are the Ruling Elves and the rest of us. The first mentioned think that we are one and the same and that they speak for us all.
In fact, the First Chief Elf felt that he had only to look into his heart to know what the Irish people wanted. This delusion persists to this day. If it's good for the elves, it's good for us unfortunates too.
In any case, we needed a new Chief Elf and we are duly getting one. He is another decent man and we will watch with interest as to how he copes with the challenging times that are upon us now.
The other ruling elves chose him by acclamation. Indeed I had the experience of hearing a backwoods (should that be backbench?) elf quite transported by the experience. He apparently felt that he was in the best room in the world, among the best people in the world, choosing the best man in the world as our Chief Elf. Apparently he did not think of looking out the window.
This is really my point, children. It's the Emperor's clothes all over again. Because looking out the window, nothing has changed and apart from dyed-in-the-wool card-carrying elves, lesser folk think things are getting worse.
Now there are certain rituals to be observed by the Chief Elf apparent. He must seclude himself while he ponders weighty matters. Chief among these is selecting the elves who will constitute his Bucket (or is it Cabinet?).
This is very important, because only when he has rolled the bones and perused the entrails, will us inferior beings get any idea about whether things will merely remain bad, or become worse.
You might think it should be a time of new beginnings, fresh starts and different thinking. Don't hold your breath.
You might think it would be a time for the New Man to express a vision for change, particularly in the areas where the dogs in the street know the systems are failing.
I told you not to hold your breath, you're turning blue. You might think; well actually it doesn't matter a damn what you think as they'll do it their way anyhow, seemingly oblivious as to whether it works or not.
Right now in so many ways it is obvious to the non blinkered that we are in trouble and that we need leadership and inspiration from on high.
If we are presented with the same old Bucket as before, then clearly little will change. If we are given new faces and new ideas, we might get lucky.
It is a truism that if you don't listen, you'll never learn. Nowhere is this more evident than in our health system where practitioners at all levels have been ignored in favour of some Pol Pot type solution proposed by people with no understanding of the needs of the sick.
We have those responsible for delivery of care, talking of clients and customers rather than patients and catering happily, as a wise friend put it to me, for "the needs of the greedy, rather than the needy".
This for me and the majority of the caring professions, for patients, carers and ordinary decent folk, is the litmus test of the new Chief Elf. Has he the courage to say that in health we need to look after people, not merely numbers?
And so to bed, children, and don't hold your breath. Things just might be better in the morning.
Dr Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon