Joe Higgins
Joe Higgins' site, click:
http://www.JoeHiggins.eu

Socialist Party site, click:
http://www.SocialistParty.net
Information
Country:
Ireland

Current Office

Office:
MEP
District:
Dublin
Party:
Socialist Party
Fans

6 of 2,266 fansSee All

Patrick
Patrick
Amanda
Amanda
My Flickr

Flickr pictures by Joe Higgins.eu | Showing 16 photos

Most Recent

Meeting with campaign in ItalyMeeting with campaign in Italy 2Flag of the campaignForum of the CampaignJoe speaking at Forum of the CampaignJoe at UK Socialism 2009Joe at UK Socialism 2009Broad Left Anti-Lisbon Launch 1Broad Left Anti-Lisbon Launch 1Joe Higgins at CWI International Socialist Summer School 3Joe Higgins at CWI International Socialist Summer School 2Joe Higgins at CWI International Socialist Summer School 1Joe in EU ParliamentJoe settles in his temporary officeJoe at the windowJoe walking through the corridors
| Edit Pictures
Social RSS
Joe | SP | 

Report this feed

You are about to report that this RSS feed has violated the RSS-Connect Terms of Service, the Facebook Terms of Use, the Facebook Code of Conduct or the Facebook Copyright Policy.

All reports are strictly confidential.

Reason:
(Required)
 
Feed icon Joe Higgins.eu | Subscribe | Report
Privatisation of services under the EU-Canada trade agreement
19 Mar 2010, 1:14 pm
Why I’ll be voting against the EU-Peru-Columbia trade agreement
19 Mar 2010, 1:11 pm
What will the EU-Turkey trade agreement mean for Turkish workers’ rights?
19 Mar 2010, 1:07 pm
Report from European postal workers’ meeting organised by GUE/NGL
19 Mar 2010, 9:31 am
Lack of resources is to blame for Tallaght Hospital X-Ray scandal
18 Mar 2010, 10:34 am
Find out about Social RSS
Events

11 past eventsSee All

 
Joe Higgins

Joe Higgins http://www.joehiggins.eu has been nominated as a finalist in the "Best blog of a politican" in this years Irish Blog awards. Thanks to all our readers!

Read more at http://awards.ie/blogawards

www.joehiggins.eu
13 hours ago · Comment ·
Joe Higgins

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

www.joehiggins.eu
13 hours ago · Comment ·
Gerard Horgan
Gerard Horgan
@ Johnny Elliott - spot on
2 hours ago
Joe Higgins

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

www.youtube.com
Yesterday at 7:08am · Comment ·
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.
See More
March 16 at 4:08pm via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Joe Higgins

Joe Higgins A radical review of mortgages is an absolute necessity

www.joehiggins.eu
March 16 at 11:54am · Comment ·
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.
See More
March 12 at 10:57am via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Joe Higgins

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

www.joehiggins.eu
March 11 at 7:06am · Comment ·
Fred Mc Eleavey
Fred Mc Eleavey
well said Joe, tell it like it is, the problem in Tallaght hospital is the output of our system, the guilty party here are the ones in power. I'm sure the same situation exists in other areas with a low population of GP's.
March 11 at 7:17am
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.
See More
March 11 at 4:06am via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Miky López De Sagredo
Miky López De Sagredo
Like I said once, Joe has the highest rate of truths-per-minute in both the dail and EU parlament!
March 11 at 12:48pm
Dylan Payne
March 11 at 2:03pm
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 ...
March 10 at 7:12am · Comment ·
Joe Higgins

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

www.joehiggins.eu
March 10 at 4:50am · Comment ·
Citizen A N Other
Citizen A N Other
Please send letters of protest to Matt Waine the Moderator and mouthpiece of Joe on this page, for his Fascist comments in dealing with a member more concerned with national issues as a priority; you may be looking at censorship for your actions but if you do one worthwhile thing in your life and have to suffer the Dictators wrath at least you will rest with the fact that you stood up to the tyranny.
March 14 at 8:11pm
Joe Higgins

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

www.joehiggins.eu
March 10 at 4:24am · Comment ·
Miky López De Sagredo
Miky López De Sagredo
Things like that are so commonplace in Spain we barely notice anymore...
March 11 at 12:12am
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.
See More
March 9 at 10:18pm via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Fergal Rowan
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”.
See More
March 5 at 10:27pm via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Miky López De Sagredo
Miky López De Sagredo
Just when I have sent something important to Ireland. No matter if it's urgent, certified and outrageously expensive.If it's not profitable to have someone check if it gets to its destination, it never will. To my knowledge, no privatised service has worked better than the public one, not in Spain, the UK or Ireland.
March 6 at 7:14am
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.
See More
March 4 at 4:42pm via Social RSS · Comment · · Share
Joe Higgins

Joe Higgins Upcoming event in Dublin next Monday to celebrate International Women's Day

socialistparty.net
March 3 at 3:23pm · Comment ·