Back on the register
It gives me great pleasure to say that my name and that of my father have been re-entered on the electoral register, therefore allowing us both to participate in the forthcoming presidential elections by means of our postal votes. I want to offer my deep and sincere gratitude to Ms Annas Cartlin of Cavan County Council for helping to bring this about and for putting to an end a truly absurd situation which was not of her doing.
The farcical situation by which our postal votes were removed was brought about by the entire3ly unreasonable actions of the Department of the Environment. In 2010 they issued new regulations requiring that those who had postal votes must re-apply for them, together with a medical certificate testifying to their disability or infirmity. It is quite possible that some overpaid and demented mandarin actually believed that there were people who had postal votes on the grounds of disability who were as fit as fiddles, maybe dancing jigs at crossroads or auditioning for the Irish version of Nnja Warrior. Miracles may happen but the sad fact is that once you get some condition that limits your mobility you’re stuck with it, the only way is down, and it’s up to you to come to terms with it. So the idea that you had to then prove you were a cripple to a group of lazy bureaucrats who get stressed out if they have to walk too far down to the underground car park below their plush offices, is rather insulting, not to say insensitive.
I sometimes wonder why these civil servants in the ministries are so misanthropic, Are they born like that and only recruited once they are able to offer signed testimony of pulling off butterflies’ wings or torturing kittens? Or do they undergo a special period of “training” where they are brainwashed into seeing that “The General Public” as “the enemy”, to be frustrated at all costs? This might include subliminal psychological manipulation, where each time the simple greeting “Hallo” or “Good Morning” is uttered in their direction they receive an electric shock. I think the answer may be simpler. Most of the senior civil servants’ arses are ravaged by chronic piles, the sad though inevitable result of sitting on their derrieres for decades. Now we are talking about mega haemorrhoids which reflect their status within their departments. They are there for life and no amount of Preparation H, Tucks, or sitting over steaming colanders of boiling salt water can help. Their daily existences are filled with excruciating agony which can only be assuaged by issuing silly directives targeting imagined enemies and fraudsters. Now I may seem to be talking the piss here, but I know what I’m talking about. Trust me, I’m a doctor! Senior civil servants don’t like coming out of the shadows, but occasionally some pesky Dail committee requires their presence; next time you see a secretary general watch and observe how he sits stock still. Any movement, to left or right would only set off old Nobby.
It is rumoured that members of some of those kinky right-wing Catholic lay organisations with Latin names are behind a recent decision of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of Rites to name St Norbert of Xanten as the patron saint of Irish Civil Servants.
