NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE
It’s a sign of the political hypocrisy of the times that in Tynwald (the Manx parliament) the concept of establishing a Manx cancer fund to provide the equivalent of the cancer drugs fund in England was considered prohibitively expensive when it was discussed this week.
The cancer fund would cost it was said about £350,000 and as the Health Minister, Howard Quayle, put it using the ‘double-speak’ prepared by his civil servants:
“the number of patients presenting with cancers that haveprogressed beyond the routinely commissioned pathways is very low and due toour low overall population size, the number of such patients will fluctuatewildly year to year, simply due to statistical change”.
Later on he said that heart disease was the biggest cause ofmortality so perhaps the money would be better spent there.
It appears therefore that in the new fiscal realities thatin Mann health care is becoming something of a lottery!
Later in the week as the Tynwald business continued howeverthe chamber approved the establishment of a multi-million pound economicdevelopment fund (EDF).
The champagne corks must have been popping down at the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE when they heard that Tynwald, almost unanimously, hadapproved a £50 million give-away to their members and any other businesses thatqualify.
This money is being taken from the governments reserves and of course there were the usual bland assurances that it would be recovered withinterest.
However as we said when this initiative was announced even the Chief Minister believed that a percentage of the investment (anything up to£17 million) could be money down the drain given the experience of similar EDFsin Ireland.
BERNARD MOFFATT
Issued by: The Celtic News
21/10/15
THE CELTIC LEAGUE INFORMATION SERVICE.
The Celtic League established in 1961 has branches in the six Celtic Countries.It promotes cooperation between the countries and campaigns on a range of political,cultural and environmental matters. It highlights human rights abuse, militaryactivity and socio-economic issues
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