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Bring the resources of the Hedge Funds into public ownership!
10 Mar 2010, 3:05 pm |
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Three members of Socialist Resistance (Socialist Party in Kazakhstan) beaten and arrested – send protest letters
10 Mar 2010, 12:47 pm |
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Joe Higgins MEP condemns the use of preferential trade agreements to dominate developing countries
10 Mar 2010, 12:21 pm |
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Solidarity with action by taxi drivers
9 Mar 2010, 6:08 pm |
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Removal of trees from M50 is an act of wanton vandalism
9 Mar 2010, 5:52 pm |
Events
11 past eventsSee All
- LIMERICK - Budget '09, the Soc...
Upstairs, Magners Bar, Roches St.,...
Wednesday, December 9 at 8:00pm - Forum for Young People: How Ca...
Central Hotel,
Tuesday, November 3 at 7:00pm - Limerick Lisbon Debate
Pery's Best Western Hotel
Monday, September 21 at 7:45pm - Cork Lisbon Debate
Metropole Hotel.
Friday, September 18 at 7:30pm - Limerick Lisbon Debate
Pery's Best Western Hotel
Wednesday, September 16 at 4:00pm - Vote for Joe Higgins
Your local polling station
Friday, June 5 at 8:00am - Don Baker and Dermot Byrne Fun...
O’Sheas Hotel on 19 Talbot Street
Sunday, May 31 at 4:30pm - Forum For Young People - On El...
Cental Hotel, Exchequer Street (jus...
Saturday, May 30 at 3:30pm - Joe Higgins Live Q&A Session
www.joehiggins.eu & the IFI
Sunday, May 24 at 5:00pm - Dingle Trad Night
The Hilgrove
Friday, May 8 at 9:30pm
Joe Higgins Press Release - Survery of primary care exposes HSE's "perverted method" of financing capital
www.joehiggins.eu
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.
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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!
www.joehiggins.eu
Joe Higgins New article - "Removal of trees from M50 is an act of wanton vandalism"
www.joehiggins.eu
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.
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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”.
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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.
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Joe Higgins Upcoming event in Dublin next Monday to celebrate International Women's Day
socialistparty.net
New story from Joe Higgins.eu
The publication of the proposals for a new Dublin Mayor shows Minister Gormley to be delusional in thinking that this is a serious reform of local government. The new Mayor would have no independent budget, no extra funding for services and virtually no independent powe...rs. The position, however, would carry a bloated ministerial salary and significant office costs.
It is ironic that, just when there is a debate about the abolition of one ceremonial talking shop – the Seanad – the Minister for the Environment is proposing to establish another meaningless institution.
The key to the delivery of top class local services – including transport and water services – is adequate investment. But these services have been starved of sufficient funding for decades. The provision of such funding along with the democratic participation of local communities and elected local representatives would mean the potential for a real transformation of towns, villages and cities.
Foisting another establishment politician with a new title on the heads of the citizens of Dublin is a cynical charade. The proposal should be aborted now.
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New story from Joe Higgins.eu
The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai is just one more murder in a succession of extra-judicial executions perpetrated by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. These tactics, as well as so-called “extraordinary renditions” have been used time and time aga...in in the brutal repression of the Palestinian people and against those that are perceived to be a threat to Israel, such as nuclear whistle blower, Mordechai Vanunu.
While leaders across the European Union have raised the issue of security concerns for those travelling on EU passports, they have refused to name Israel as the state responsible for these killings, when the dogs in the street know that Mossad was responsible. Israel’s use of passports of European countries to assassinate their opponents must be absolutely condemned.
In addition, the Israeli government’s attacks on the peoples of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian authorities’ harassment of Palestine Solidarity activists at the behest of the Israeli state must be condemned. While myself and my colleagues in the Socialist Party’s sister organisation in Israel/Palestine, the Socialist Struggle Movement, offer no support to Hamas, a right-wing, reactionary organisation or their tactics of suicide bombings and rocket attacks, we condemn the ongoing use of “targeted” assassinations and repression by the Israeli government, which can only fan the flames of conflict. We stand for a peaceful socialist solution to the conflict in the Middle East based on unity between Israeli and Palestinian workers.
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New story from Joe Higgins.eu
I am gravely concerned for the welfare of the Green Isle workers who have been on strike since last August. The fact that the dispute has lasted this long and that the company are brazenly ignoring the findings of unfair dismissal indicates to me that more organised pre...ssure needs to be brought to bear on that company who steadfastly refuse to deal with the TEEU representatives of the workers.
The only language the company bosses will heed is that of the firm’s bottom line. Therefore I say the resources of the trade union movement need to be deployed. Given that an ICTU all out picket has been obtained, I call on MANDATE and SIPTU who organise workers in the retail and distribution sectors to instruct their members to black Green Isle goods so that they do not even reach the supermarket shelves. This industrial action should be backed up by a publicity offensive against Green Isle to encourage a mass consumer boycott of their products.
Any action short of this runs the risk of prolonging the dispute and endangering the workers who engaging in the hunger strike. I also call on people to attend the Justice for Green Isle workers protest march at 12pm on Saturday the 27th February in Naas beginning at the Cinema car park.
Justice for Green Isle workers protest
Saturday, February 27th at 12pm
Meet at the Cinema carpark in Naas
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Joe Higgins Watch & Share this video of footage from the 1990s struggle against water charges - we beat it then, we'll beat it again!
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A short video clip covering the campaign against the water charges that took place during the mid-1990s. The clip was shown at the Water Charges forum hosted by Joe Higgins MEP. (13-02-10)
