Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
With the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the United States beginning to get behind Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” policy, it brings a sharp focus to how this sort of policy is financed. That such a policy could be gaining traction in the United States, especially in its current […]
A number of proposed solutions have been put forward for the manufactured housing crisis. So let us analyse their suitability and see who they benefit: the citizens and society as a whole or landlords and profiteers. Limited-equity affordable housing, also known as the cost-purchase ownership model, is one whereby the […]
Join us on Thursday 8 March at 8 p.m. in the Liquor Rooms, Wellington Quay, Dublin, for our celebration of International Working Women’s Day. On 8 March, a day established to honour the accomplishments, the lives and the struggles of working women, we wish to mark the courage of women—women […]
Jointly hosted by the Trade Union Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment (TUCR8A) and the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth, this public meeting dealt with article 40.3.3 as a work-place, class, equality and human rights issue. Like most trade union meetings, Repeal the 8th: The Role of Trade Unions started […]
It is constantly repeated in the pro-boss media that the Irish economy is in recovery, and that this is in full swing throughout the European Union. One has to ask the serious question: A recovery for whom, and at what price? They repeat the mantra that unemployment levels are coming […]
Speculators no longer know where to go with their money. The German share index DAX stands at more than 13,000 points; on the eve of the financial crisis, in July 2007, it was 8,000. Property prices shoot up; art becomes almost priceless. For $450 million Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi […]
It’s almost eight months since Emmanuel Macron took up residence in the Élysée Palace after a second-round “victory” over Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale. This “victory” was accompanied by a historic vote for Le Pen, dwarfing that of her father’s in 2002 against Chirac. Macron did not have the support […]
Patrick Pearse is an often misunderstood revolutionary leader. He is seen more as a romantic nationalist when compared with James Connolly. Indeed even today some on the left criticise Connolly for making an alliance with Pearse and the Irish Volunteers in 1916. The problem with this simplistic view is that […]
Gabriel Rosenstock introduces and translates another poem from the Indian subcontinent, a poem that sings of man’s hope and despair and the never-ending disparity between the privileged and the poor. [one_half padding=”0 4px 0 4px”] Abdul Sotalach Rahul Rai Samhlaigh le do thoil sotal Abdul bhoicht: Arsa Abdul bocht: “Bead […]
In the early 1950s American companies wanted to invest in Ireland so that they could expand into the European market; and Irish corporation tax policy was adapted for them. In 1956 export profits tax relief was introduced. Exports of manufactured goods were zero-rated (no tax); so American companies that exported […]
Every so often, history presents us with an amazing affirmation of our humanity, a sense of continuity, the passing on of the torch. This applies supremely to Robert Burns’s song “For A’ That.” Burns was highly regarded in the USSR Robert Burns, born on 25 January 1759, lived in an […]
Ideology has dominated the Irish housing sector since the outset. There is no period in history, even during times of relatively robust state house-building, that could be said to have had a stable or working housing system. From tenements to failed housing experiments to bubbles, the Irish story of housing […]
An introduction After hearing the minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, declare the Government’s response to the housing crisis—namely changing planning regulations and restrictions for developments and the clear impact it would actually have—it reminded me of a small pamphlet that I picked up in Connolly Books back in 2008, Land […]
In its electronic newsletter in mid-December the web site German Foreign Policy (german-foreign-policy.com) reports on the launch of the European Union’s new “Military Union” strategy. The report states: “The German Government has announced that the EU Military Union will be officially launched this Monday, with the EU Council formally adopting […]
The merger of Impact, the Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) will create a new 80,000-member, largely public-sector union, to be called Fórsa, in 2018. Towards the end of 2017, 86 per cent of Impact members who voted supported the merger; 76 per […]
Has the wage system hidden the class nature of our society, where one section—the capitalist class, the owners of finance and industry—exploit working people, the wealth-producers? It is this class that enforces the wage system, as they are the paymasters at the end of the day. Working people enter into […]