Continental Drift

It feels as if i am drifting. Just trying to catch the next bus and waiting, wondering what i'll do next. I know on a day to day basis what i'll do next, but in terms of the next few months, years, nada. Maybe this is is. Maybe there is no grand plan. Maybe i've come to a juddering halt. Or a graceful halt, i dunno.

The elections are going to usher in a new age for this part of the world. It looks like a very narrow Tory victory, or a hung parliament. I don't feel sorry for Gordon Brown or the Labour party. They had the time they had and they used it to fuck over people. Gordon Brown especially. The corrupt, conniving lot in Westminster have made society more selfish and more unequal. And if you saw the infrastructure here... i was in Dundonald Hospital on Saturday night and had a real good look at the place.

For starters, the place was filthy. People had left empty plastic bottles and discarded cups of coffee and crisp packets all over the place. There had been spills which weren't mopped up. In the kids' play area there was sweet drinks split all over the play surface and no one had come along to mop it up. I spent a bit of my time there throwing away all the stuff i could throw away into a landfill site bin bag, there was no recycling available. I couldn't and didn't pick up the tissue papers that dotted the place. Nor did i do anything about the bits of gauze which had been pressed to god knows which parts of what bodies during the course of the night.

The chairs were all torn up and flaking. The noticeboards had outdated notices that were stuck on crazily. I took off the outdated signs and binned them. I thought it would be too much if i started tidying up the signs. 

Meanwhile it took three hours for the A&E doctor to see us. Why it took them 3 hours i will make a guess. We arrived at midnight, and nothing moved in the room for an hour. All the doctors i guess had gone for their midnight break. Why they didn't have someone on the floor as relief, i do not know. So the waiting room got more and more crowded. Then when the doctor finally did see us, it took almost two hours to see two children. Yes, there was a special children's doctor. By this time, my patience had run out and i told Peter that we should go home. This is ridiculous. Peter then said we should wait and went to the receptionist to say we had been waiting for three hours. Ghin was ready to sleep and Oisin was already sleeping in the car.

It then took five minutes, and the doctor appeared. Coincidence? i think not. And they say the health service is free. It is not free. We pay a quarter of our salary to it. Doctors are paid massive amounts of money and hospitals take up the biggest part of the budget. And the service is crap. I dread going to the hospital. Don't get me wrong, i think that the people themselves are great. And i am unfailing polite and sweet to them when i do encounter them, but the health service as a whole is on the verge, if not already in the verge.

Outside, people were smoking. This being a non smoking hospital, there were no provision made for cigarette butts. So people kept putting their lights out on top of bins and posts. It was awful. So awful. If you are not going to enforce the smoking ban, then please feckin provide some place for people to put out their lights. Do one or the other, but for godssake do not ignore the problem.

It was like being in some broken down crazy place. I tried to think to my hospital visits of childhood. I think when i was about 10 and used to go to Pegu Road, or to this place near Serangoon, i remember a really dishevelled, tumble down place too, but you would be hard pressed to find anything so incompetent and shambolic in Singapore today. I'm sorry i cannot help comparing it.

And so this is what the Labour government have given us.

And you know what, i don't think the Tories are going to do any better. I honestly don't. I'd be impressed if they would. Because the culture here is a culture of dependancy, blame and whinge. And whine. It is not about make do and get done. And you can see it during the ash cloud. People just moaned and moaned and moaned. Please. It's a freaking volcano that has just erupted, surely to god you can understand that. Surely you can understand that it is no one's fault. Surely you understand that you are part of a wider world that has to get on with what it has to get on with and you are not a three year old? Just make provisions for yourself and get on with it. Or do you need a slap around the head, just for good measure? It's terrible how lazy and complacent people have become.

So people just spend their time moaning and people in charge spend their time hiding the mess and raking in what they can rake in. It's cruel, but about right. Hmmm. just heard a weird sound.

I wonder what Gordon Brown is going to do when he leaves politics. He looks like he might top himself. All his life he has only done politics. I don't think he has ever done anything else. I do not feel sorry for him one bit. He couldn't see that he was a backroom man and had to become the star, the centre. Gordon, you are not to fly with the eagles. Your lot was with the larks and there isn't anything wrong with that.

So in two days time, we will know. In two days time. It's going to be a long wait.