Workers Solidarity Movement

The richest 300 people in Ireland are now worth 57 billion, almost as much as the entire IMF /ECB bailout. What's more, when the rest of us saw our take home pay fall massively in the last year they got 13% or 6.7 billion euro richer. Which hasn't stopped them demanding pay cuts for the rest of us.

Despite appalling weather conditions, members of the 1% Network gathered outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street on Thursday evening (10^th March) to highlight the fact that, despite the change in government the wealthy 1% still “pull the strings”.

The evening’s events began with a symbolic sealing off of the Central Bank with crime scene tape.  This was done to highlight the fact that it is “a symbol of no-regulation capitalism and unbridled greed,” said Brian Leeson, 1% Network spokesperson. 

The heads of government from around Europe are meeting today to agree a further program of attacks on the wages and conditions of workers across Europe in order to pay for the international capitalist crisis. In a process driven by the core economies of France and Germany under the title of a 'Competitiveness Pact' wages are to be 'restrained' and pension ages are to be raised across Europe.

After the neo-liberal economic model/fantasy hit some black ice on the motorway of progress, and went hurtling over the crash barrier, there have been all sorts of attempts to get working people to pay cash to get this baby back on the road.   Therefore various jam jars of money are being raided to re-invigorate the beast. In the UK, the attention of Lord Hutton, the former Labour pension’s secretary has been focused on Public sector pensions. 

The 1% Network has announced plans for a Street Theatre and Music event and an Open Meeting during which the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street will be cordoned off as a crime scene. 

It has been revealed that the decade long resistance of the people of Erris to Shell's experimental gas pipeline has now wiped out Shell's projected profits from the project. Brian O’Cathain, the Managing Director of Enterprise Energy Ireland let the cat out of the bag at a debate at the IFI on the 4th December. Instead of the 650 million dollars the project was intended to cost, Shell & partners have now spent over 3 billion dollars.

Today German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, politely rebuffed any chance of re-negotiation of the interest rates we are paying on our substantial loan from the ECB/IMF, saying that we knew what we were getting into when we took the loan. It is time to reflect on the difference that loan is making to the lives of those affected.

One picture or story can tell us all we need to know and it should bring comfort to each tax-payer now labouring under the additional losses suffered in their pay packet due to the universal social charge to see such a story.

Picture this, the story of the Kelly family.

Workers Solidarity spoke to Dave Higgins of the recently formed Cork Social Welfare Defenders.

WS Who’s in the group, what’s your reason for organising?

Members of Ireland’s wealthy elite have announced plans to meet outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street on Thursday 10^th March at 6p.m. to celebrate the fact that it’s “business as usual now that the election is out of the way”.

Oh the last day of his brief spell in power the replacement Minister of Energy Pat Carey signed the consents on the final stage of Shell's experimental gas pipeline in Erris despite continued opposition from the local community and people all over the island concerned with both safety and the Great Oil & Gas Giveaway.  It is increasingly clear that the haste on pushing the project thorough is because the Bellanaboy refinery is intended to take not just the relatively small deposits of the Corrib field but also the hundreds of billions of oil and gas found off the atlantic coast.