January 2019

Was winning the Repeal referendum inevitable?

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The vote to remove the ban on abortion from the Irish constitution in May 2018 was overwhelmingly carried, with almost 2 out of every 3 voters voting Yes remove the ban. The margin of victory was such that some post-referendum polemics made the mistake of arguing that victory was always inevitable, that the campaign didn’t matter. Such arguments tended to be made by opinion writers who never liked the Repeal campaign and in some cases published pieces during the campaign arguing that unless whatever aspect they disliked was dropped the referendum would be lost.

The Next Global Crash? On China and the 21st Century Crisis

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Today, China is the driving engine of global economic growth. A major crisis of the Chinese economy will almost certainly drag the global economy into the next recession in the 2020s. This may turn out to be far more damaging than the Great Recession of 2008.

Minqi Li is a political economist at the University of Utah and an advocate of China’s Maoist New Left [1]. His most recent book, ‘China and the 21st Century Crisis’, outlines capitalism’s next looming crisis. Regardless of the proximate cause, this coming crisis will be economic, political, and ecological. It will also be global.

Nurses strike to defend health system & demand pay parity begins

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This morning saw pickets being placed on hospitals all over the country as nurses and midwives strike against low pay. Pay now so low relative to rent and house prices that its impossible for many to find decent accommodation in the major cities on what they take home.
 
In that sense the strike has a direct importance to all workers. The Nurses strike is also essential to countering the right wing ideology that low corporate tax rates are more essential than good public services & housing. That ideology has ruled us for decades with all parties in power imposing it and is unchallenged in the media.