FOR A GENERAL STRIKE ON 24/11

The political representatives of big business have united with IBEC, and the millionaire-owned media, to declare all-out war on ordinary public and private sector workers, their families and their communities.

The Socialist Party welcomed ICTU’s decision to organise mass protests in eight centres right around Ireland on Friday last November 6th. which could be a significant start to smashing the government plan to butcher 4 billion euro worth of jobs, public services and social welfare supports out of Irish society in 2010.

Earlier this year ICTU and the trade union bosses caved in and retreated from the fight to defend jobs, wages and public services when new ”social partnership” talks were dangled in front of their faces by government. The outcome of these talks was ICTU slavishly supporting the government , IBEC, and the  Fine Gael-Labour “official” (phoney) parliamentery opposition’s united Lisbon “YES”  campaign as well as supporting “in principle” Colm McCarthy’s Bord Snip Nua in slashing and burning  jobs, health, education and social welfare services, mass wage cuts and the pension levy, in an intensification of the national “RACE TO THE BOTTOM”.

Before last Friday’s National Day of Protest even began ,ICTU leaders Peter McLoone (IMPACT) and Blair Horan (CPSU) began selling their own members down the river by openly advocating throwing civil and public service workers on the dole. Clearly their comments reveal that they greatly value their personal public status of  being “social partners” with IBEC and government much more than the jobs of the people (their members) who fork out 5 or six euro every week from wage packets as low as 300 /400 euro, to fund their 200k plus salaries, benefits and pension packages.

It’s ironic that this is all happening this year (2009), the centenery year of the foundation of what is now Siptu (formerly the ITGWU). It’s as if the Jack O’Connors, Peter McAloons and Blair Horans of the “modern” Irish trade union movement are  in unison with government and IBEC, in dragging the ideals and idealism of the late Big Jim Larkin into the gutter of the neo-liberal, free market, post celtic tiger Ireland.

Begin the fightback on November 24th with a 24-hour GENERAL STRIKE.

BACON – a selfish “ham”

Economist Peter Bacon’s call for the statutory minimum wage to be cut reveals his  inhuman and viciously callous attitude towards  the poorest of the poor of the country’s workforce.

The self-styled “respected economic expert” never has a difficulty himself, charging obscene fees for his services of economic forecasting, writing and compiling various economic development plans and reports and doling out “expert” economic analysis and advice (much of it for local and national government) that guarantees him easy money from public purse. 

Like Colm McCarthy the other freeloaders and parasites that comprise An Bord Snip Nua and called for dole payments to be cut, all these individuals truly have necks as hard as the proverbial “jockey’s bollocks”. They belong to a class that has absolutely no problem living the “high life” funded by the State (i.e. the taxpayer) from the various economic quangos they routinely manage to get themselves co-opted onto.

Where was Bacon and his ilk when the residential property lobby (the land speculators, developers, the banks and the auctioneering fraternity) were racketeering and profiteering the national pension reserve fund out of existance? No calls for cuts to the profiteering or a stop to the racketeering there. In fact Bacon was publicly and brazenly dismissing the handful of genuinely respectable individuals who DID, forewarn of the consequenses of the so-called property boom. 

The damage done to the lives of ordinary working people (and Irish society generally) by those who inflated the residential property bubble, and those complicit in it’s inflation through their deafening silence, will be deeper and more widespread than the misery inflicted on the country and society by the drug barons and organised crime gangs.

Some “respected” economist, indeed, is Mr Bacon! – more like a free-loading, parasitic and selfish HAM.

THE NORTHSIDE RAILWAY STATION CON

The politically fashionable demand for a second (north) Drogheda railway station would, if it was conceded, add massively to peak rush-hour vehicular traffic on either the Newfoundwell or Ballymakenny Roads – depending where the mooted railhead was located.

LISBON – threat and treaty, nothing new

In the very first “exercise in democracy” in the newly established Irish Free State, the people of Ireland went to the polls to vote in the 1923 General Election, crystal clear in the knowledge that if W.T. Cosgrave’s “pro-Treaty” Cumann Na Gael failed to get elected as the new government, Britain would unleash it’s military might on the country, in what Downing Street solemnly promised would be a “terrible war”.

Lisbon Treaty is now a dead letter

The Sunday Times Red C poll (published yesterday July 27th) confirms what the Socialist Party has been saying since the June referendum, that is that a re-run of the the poll on the so-called Lisbon Treaty would result in an even greater majority of the public voting against.

Bin Taxes – Drogheda’s political users & abusers

The more clued-in sections of the public were sickened by the hypocritical chorus of condemnation from Drogheda’s local Fianna Fail and Fine Gael political representatives following the announcement by the Panda private refuse collection company that they were to “do away with” their tag charging system, thereby increasing significantly (by stealth) refuse charges to a significant section of their customer base.

Increasing Bin Taxes – the real culprits

LMFM radio’s “Loosetalk” programme today (Friday) devoted much air time to the understandable public anger at the decision by the Panda private waste collection company to do away with their “Tag” system and consequently, by stealth, massively increase their bin collection charges.

Recession – when was there an economic boom???

This week’s “official confirmation” from the ESRI that Ireland’s economy was now in recession stands common sense and ordinary intelligence on it’s head. Talk of Ireland going into recession pre- assumes that, up to now, everything was “apple pie” with the country’s free-market capatilist economy which clearly was never the case.