Joe Higgins

Joe Higgins After seven years of war and occupation, what is the real situation in Iraq?

A radical review of mortages is an absolute necessity

Joe Higgins Three new videos from the International trade meetings this week on the trade agreements with Turkey, Canada & Columbia/Peru

www.youtube.com

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

The recent report by the ESRI on negative equity in the Irish housing market exposes the black hole that Irish householders were lead into by the speculators and the banks. The ESRI estimates that up to one third of mortgage holders, nearly 200,000 householders, could ...be trapped with mortgages vastly exceeding the value of their homes by the end of 2010. And even this is based on a conservative estimate of the drop in house price levels. This is nothing short of a major theft of billions of euro from ordinary workers and their families and particularly from the generation of young people cajoled into 35 and 40 year mortgages. Some of this generation will not see the value of their homes rise above their mortgages for another 12 years. Coupled with the phenomenal increase in unemployment and the rising numbers of mortgage holders experiencing repayment problems, this is a major crisis in the making. And while the banks will see their bad debts taken on by the taxpayer, there is no NAMA solution for home owners. Not a single cent should be given to bailout the banks who made billions off the backs of workers and householders and not a single house should be repossessed. These banks should be immediately taken into public ownership, under democratic control and the principal of mortgages immediately reassessed and reduced to affordable levels in line with the true value of the home.

Joe Higgins A radical review of mortgages is an absolute necessity

GUE/NGL Press Release – Colombia’s human rights record demands investigation of GSP+ status

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

GUE/NGL MEPs Joe Higgins and Helmut Scholz welcomed yesterday’s passing of a resolution on the GSP+ (General System of Preferences plus) trade scheme in the European Parliament. The ongoing violation of human rights in Colombia and in particular the murder of trade uni...onists, indigenous people and other civilians requires increased attention from the international community. Furthermore an EU investigation is needed with regard to future EU-Colombia relations. The GSP+ status grants favourable trade terms with the EU, but it is linked to the respect of 27 international Conventions, and many of them have been habitually violated by the Colombian Government for years. “Colombia is a killing field for trade unionists. According to Amnesty International Colombia is still the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. I call for the voices of the workers and the trade unionists in Colombia to be heard by the Commission. The Commission must tear up the trade deal with this viciously anti-worker regime. In the light of the possible conclusion of a free trade agreement between Colombia and the EU in the near future, human rights defenders and trade unionists have a responsibility to closely watch the development of workers rights and indigenous peoples’ rights on the ground” said Joe Higgins. Helmut Scholz commented that “the latest revelation of a mass grave in the Macarena region in Colombia is a sad new example of the violation of human rights. This is intolerable and puts into question the compliance with GSP+ rules. Therefore the Commission should stick to its obligation to initiate a thorough investigation.” Also passed in the resolution was a call on the Commission to closely monitor the situation in Sri Lanka and for the Sri Lankan government to normalise the situation before GSP+ is restored. Speaking about the situation in Sri Lanka, Joe Higgins stated that: “The Rajapaksa government is responsible for some of the most brutal war crimes and violations of human rights against the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. The GSP+ status for Sri Lanka must not be restored to this regime.

Joe Higgins Press Release - Survery of primary care exposes HSE's "perverted method" of financing capital

Bring the resources of the Hedge Funds into public ownership!

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

Joe Higgins MEP explains his abstention on today’s vote on the Financial Transactions Tax resolution and calls instead for the hedge funds to be taken into public ownership and their resources invested into society for the benefit of all. He criticises the Commission fo...r conspiring with the speculators in their attacks on the Euro and on Greece by calling for Greek workers to take the pain to pay off the debts owed to same speculators.

Joe Higgins MEP condemns use of preferential trade agreements to dominate developing countries

Joe Higgins

www.youtube.com

At a plenary session, Joe Higgins MEP questions Karel du Gucht, EU Trade Commissioner, on the impact that preferential trade agreements have on developing countries around the world as well as the awarding ...

Joe Higgins Three members of Socialist Resistance, our sister party in Kazakhstan beaten up and arrested by police - please send protest letters!

Joe Higgins New article - "Removal of trees from M50 is an act of wanton vandalism"

Solidarity with action by taxi drivers

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

It is absolutely despicable that once again, taxi drivers have been forced to take action to highlight the plight that workers in the industry face. I support the actions of the taxi drivers in occupying the Regulator’s office and those taxi drivers who have withdrawn t...heir service in solidarity. As a result of deregulation, we have an incredible situation where the number of licenses is increasing while the number of passengers is declining. The circumstances in which drivers are forced to work more and more hours, often more than is safe, just to provide a minimum income for themselves and their family, cannot go on. A wholesale review of the industry involving the taxi drivers themselves and taxi users is absolutely necessary to implement a plan where drivers receive a reasonable wage for working reasonable hours. The aim of this review should be to have a taxi service that is sufficient to meet the needs of society while guaranteeing a living wage to taxi drivers for a working week of reasonable duration. It is imperative that a moratorium on the issuing of new licenses is called immediately and that Minister Dempsey meets with the Irish Taxi Council.

GUE/NGL Press Release – Relentless EU dismantling of postal services will hit both workers and customers

March 9 at 10:18pm via Social RSS · Comment · Like · View Feedback (6)Hide Feedback (6) · Share

Mick, Nigel, Peter and 2 others like this.

Fergal Rowan

Joe....ask yourself a question...why are they're so many taxi drivers?? Reason...the union agenda has forced so many private companies out of the country...leaving a glut of untrained, uneducated monkeys with a few bob from redundancy....they ask themselves what alternatives are there for me.....easy answer is...i can drive a car....no skill ... See Morerequired, i can eat dognuts all day and not have to physically exert myself....if the unions didn't weild such power then there wouldn't be the need for the masses to join the life long losers doing the job.....another q....have u ever been in dub city centre at midnight on a sat night before deregulation.....more taxi's were needed to break up the monopoly of the few who were creaming at our expense....there are more people in this country than just the lower tier working class....do we not deserve representation too??? If they can't make a living at it....get off yout ass....train....work (not drive a car around and subject paying passengers to the torture of their uninformed vox pop....)....most people don't know what is good for them, and as a nation we've become lazy and dependant on handouts....if we want to sustain our country lets do it by innovation and graft....not subisiding lose making relics than only serve to keep the hand held out thinking the world ows tem a living....payed for by the ever dimishiing real work force.....Are you for the good of the few of the survival of the many??? It can't work both ways, but I don't expect you to answer....institutionalised stubborn people unwilling to listen to reason and common sense seldom do....

March 13 at 9:25pm

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

Opening today’s GUE/NGL group conference on the liberalisation of postal services, Irish MEP Joe Higgins said citizens were being hit hard by the Commission’s ongoing drive to privatise Europe’s postal services. “This relentless process of liberalisation totally ignore...s the impact on workers and customers as well as the social functions of public postal services. The EU postal sector is a worth €94 billion and should be kept in full state ownership as a valuable public resource. Democratic control, worker and customer consultation are the answers if reform is needed in such a sector” he said. Calling postal liberalisation a good example of market failure, Dutch MEP Dennis de Jong said “there’s no point having three competing companies delivering post three times a day” and spoke of the myth of the shrinking postal services market. “The propaganda effort being mounted by the Commission only reflects the opinions of multinationals, not customers or workers”. Concluding the main points German MEP Sabine Wils emphasised the group’s solidarity with Greek workers in their fight against the destruction of the public sector. “The GUE/NGL will keep working to gain broader support to protect public services both within and outside the European Parliament” she said “extra-parliamentary forces are extremely important, and we will maintain our support for organisations and trade unions in their fight against deregulation”.

Workers must resist attempts to increase retirement age

Joe Higgins

New story from Joe Higgins.eu

There is a growing clamour to force upwards the retirement age for workers. Today the Government is scheduled to publish new proposals for future pension arrangements in Ireland. Minister for Social and Family Affairs Hanafin has already hinted that the age at which peo...ple first receive the State pension should be raised. Bank of Ireland is currently floating the idea that its staff would not qualify for their full pension until they are 68. The Spanish government is attempting to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 and the British government has already decreed that the retirement age will be 68, albeit in 2044. This is another by product of the international financial crash and the current crisis in capitalism. It is another stage in the neoliberal onslaught that wants to squeeze more and more from working people in the interest of maintaining corporate profit. The push to force workers to continue working until they are nearly 70 is socially regressive, and reactionary in the extreme. Should construction workers be still dragging concrete shuttering around building sites as they are approaching 70 years of age? Should women of a similar age be forced from their beds at 4am to clean offices in order to survive? Who believes that it is appropriate that teachers should be trying to manage classes of 35 four year olds at 67 years of age or nurses of that age be required to manage hospital wards with very heavy work loads. It should also be remembered in this debate that , given how the present system works, forcing older workers to stay on means blocking openings for young people trying to move into employment. While workers themselves are happy to continue working after normal retirement age either in the public or private sectors, and are fit to do so, that should normally be accommodated. But saying that is entirely different from a general compulsion on all workers to work long beyond current retirement age. And doing so is only ‘necessary’ and ‘inevitable’ in the context of the present system. As the development of new technology gathered pace in the 1960s and early ’70s there was much speculation as to what this would mean for society and for the lives of working people. Commentators frequently predicted that with more labour saving devices and growing productivity one of the biggest problems into the future would be how we would spend all the extra leisure time we would have. The reality of today of course is that very many workers are under greater pressure than ever in their working lives. So what went wrong? As greater wealth was being produced in society inequalities grew accordingly. Powerful private corporations arrogated more control over national economies and more wealth to themselves. Then there was the orgy of speculation that developed in the world’s financial markets. Junk bond merchants along with many of the world’s most ‘prestigious’ banking and financial institutions became parasites on society rather than wealth creators. The sub prime mortgage racket that developed in the United States leading to the phenomenon of massive ‘toxic debts’ by financial institutions epitomised that trend. That billions of Euro and dollars of workers pension funds should be riding on the whims of junk bond merchants and various other speculators gambling on international markets shows just how crazy the current system of providing for workers retirement is. Not just crazy but criminal in fact, when those who laboured a life time and rightly looked forward to living their later years in reasonable comfort found their dreams broken on the rocks of the financial crash and the economic crisis that inevitably followed. Virtually all right wing economists and most of the media support the demands for a higher retirement age. In recent weeks, as the financial crisis developed in Greece, they declared that the Greek public sector workers just didn’t ‘get it’ when they defended the right to retire at 61 while workers in other countries had to work many years longer. It never occurred to them to pose the question as to why workers in the other countries were forced to stay on much longer while the Greeks up to now could retire much earlier. In a really civilised society it should be possible for all workers to retire at a relatively early age and enjoy a significant number of years post work. Even with growing numbers of people living longer it is entirely possible to create sufficient wealth in society overall to meet the needs of all. However this would necessitate democratic control over that wealth which means prising it from the grasp of the major financial and industrial conglomerates which currently control it and utilising it for the benefit of the all.