Business systems in the Vatican

Interested to see a picture of something called an ordinary consistory in the Guardian yesterday. Which appeared to consist of a large number of cardinals sitting in an open horseshoe, dressed in fancy red robes plus their red hats and their natty little white aprons, holding their papers, with the Pope and his chaps in the opening of the horseshoe. What struck me was that one could not do any real business in such a fashion; there were too many people and a table or board is generally considered a useful accessory. Not least to hold ash trays, coke bottles and such like. Parenthetic wonder: is the Vatican a smoke free working environment? Do the inhabitants have to leave the Holy City for a quick drag?

Maybe the real business is done in extraordinary consistories, run on more conventional lines.

Somewhere else in the Guardian there was a lament for all those people who might have to pay for their own care when they get old. Yet another usually sensible organ which loses its marbles when it comes to national arithmetic: the governors cannot spend what the governed will not give them in tax. Printing or borrowing money does not get around this basic difficulty.

I wonder about a fair mechanism for providing for people who do not have the money to pay for their care. Common decency says that one should make provision from central funds, but what about sturdy beggars? What about people who quite deliberately get rid of all their money - at the betting shop or elsewhere - before their time for care comes, to make sure that someone else gets to pick up the tab?

A simple answer is two tiers of care. The affordable tier gets just basic care, while the posh tier gets the sort of thing one would probably want for oneself. Anyone being funded from central funds gets the affordable tier. No choice of meals. No toe nail clipping on Tuesdays. No perms. on Thursdays. All that sort of thing; a sort of higher grade workhouse. This provides some incentive for people to keep back enough money to pay their own way, but does not deal with the problem of people who cannot pay their own way for no fault of their own. What about, for example, all those people who are disabled?

And then, I am only broke because my bad upbringing by a violent single mother left me a psychotic gamblaholic. Is that my fault? Why should I suffer at the end of my life because of my dodgy parents?