Nothing worse than toothache

I am writing this on the PDA at the emergency relief dental clinic in Belfast City Hospital. After the politics show I was unable to ignore the agony and surrendered to the skeleton service available through the NHS. I arrived 20 minutes early two hours ago and am still waiting to be seen. Dentists have been exiting the NHS in their droves leaving very many with no option but to turn up at the emergency clinic for a patch up job before taking out the cheque book and a loan to pay for a proper private treatment. A sorry state of affairs and a crying shame on the state.

News has just reached my Blackberry of the plans to nationalise Northern Bank. I am not convinced this is the solution and am even less happy with the fact that it sends the worst possible signal to financial institutions who are not on top of their affairs. This particular episode has done the bank of England’s reputation damage too.

The Prime Minister accepts today that Scotland should be given more powers over its own affairs including on tax matters. Given our Celtic cousins already have the power to add three pence in the pound to income tax we can only assume they will now want to look seriously at varying business taxes, something we continue to fight for the right to do in Northen Ireland. Which brings me back to the debate on the politics show earlier. I have no problem paying politicians a good wage to work for us. At the end of the day you get the representation you pay for. Instead of tripping over each other to oppose a salary hike they should be telling us what they could do to justify it. A serious campaign to give the Assembly tax varying powers and some action on the NHS dental service would be a decent start.

Back to waiting!