Drogheda’s unemployment statistics are right on course to go above 10,000 by the end of this year.
Official live register statistics for Drogheda show a doubling of the numbers “signing on” since January of last year (2008) to the present. In January 2008 the official local jobless figures rose sharply to 3,468, and in the 15 months since have doubled to around 7,000. If this rate of increase continues, and all the economic forecasts are that it will, there will be at least 10,000 people on the dole in Drogheda this Christmas. The welfare and interests of these local “forgotten people” and their families have seemingly become an in-convenient embarrasment, with little or no attention or publicity being given to their situation
The response from the local and national Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour “political elite”, on this issue alone, has simply been pathetic. Their “logic” and reasoning dictates that between 80-90 billion euro worth of “life-support” must be given over to the country’s banking system because it is crucial to the country’ s economy and the welfare and well-being of thousands of local human beings and their dependents smust therefore come second.
Nobody disputes how vitally important a functioning banking system is as regards the country’s economic well-being, but given their importance, why then are our banks not directly owned, run and regulated by the state, i.e. a fully nationalised Irish banking system?
Drogheda’s shocking unemployment statistics are now well and truly beyond the ability of the local, largely privatised, capatilist free-market economy to put right. Similarly, the national unemployment figures are now simply beyond the capacity of the country’s ne0-liberal economic model to ever cope with. FF’S Brian Lenihan, FG’s Enda Kenny, Labour’s Eamonn Gilmore, IBEC, and the ICTU leadership, all seemingly have difficulty grasping this, or more precisely simply lack the intelligence and imagination to grasp it.
The blind allegience to free-market economics that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael has always subscribed to, and which was adopted by Labour nearly two decades ago now (“New Labour”) has now inevitably proved itself to be anti-people, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-community, and consequently anti-society.
The unemployed must immediately get organised and and act collectively to ”take charge of their own salvation”. The seriousness of their plight, and that of their of their families and dependents, can no longer be left in the hands of self-serving local and national “career politicians” and compromised trade union bosses.
Politically, the upcoming Local and European Elections affords the public a chance to once and for all explode the myth that “greed and self-interest is good”. I respectfully seek your No. 1 vote as the Socialist Party ’s local Election candidate in the Drogheda North Ward.
