Workers Solidarity Movement

Union leaders, employers and the government will soon be sitting down to negotiate a new pay round as part of the Towards 2016 ‘partnership’ agreement. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the bosses will be insisting on wage increases of no more than a few percent. They will troop into TV studios to tell us that anything better is – take your pick - impossible, irresponsible or unaffordable.

Working all your life just to make ends meet; having no say in the decisions that affect you; try to do something about it and they'll lock you up. Yes, that's capitalism!

Pity poor Bertie and his cabinet. They worked very hard designing a budget which gives an extra €12 a week to pensioners (though only from next July). What thanks did they get from an ungrateful nation?

What should happen to the €51bn gasfield off Rossport? Let Shell keep it and let the fat cats get fatter? Try to make Bertie’s government nationalise it and use the wealth for our benefit?

Figures published in September by the Revenue Commissioners in the 26 Counties show that the top 50 earners in the state each paid less than 5% tax.

BLUE OCTOBER is an international month of action for access to water celebrated by many communities and NGOs around the world. It challenges corporate control of water and aims to protect water as a shared natural resource that should be available to all. www.blueoctobercampaign.org As part of BLUE OCTOBER this year, the Latin America Solidarity Centre, Debt and Development Coalition and Comhlámh would like to extend you an

For the past eight years the people of Rossport in North West Mayo have been struggling against an at- tempt by Shell and other companies to build a dangerous and destructive gas processing terminal near to their homes and their community. This development would benefit no-one but wealthy shareholders as the Irish Government handed over the extraction rights to the oil companies in the 1980s and 1990s.

Everybody knows what property is, property is something that we own, but why is this such a major issue for anarchists and the left as a whole? You see when most people think about property it’s not such a big deal because what most people don’t realise is that there are two kinds of property, there is personal property and private property.

So then what is the difference then between personal property and private property?

If we are to envision this world as an improvement over our current one, it will be absolutely necessary to retain the advances made during the industrial, and even more importantly the recent agricultural revolution. To fail to do so would be no less than mass genocide. The productive capacity of the world in terms of food, goods and services is enormous. In order to feed the hungry and cloth the naked, we will need an efficient system of production allocation and distribution.

Seamus Brennan is a little man in many ways, but one thing he dislikes is not being in the limelight. So in this election year, the Social Affairs minister has decided to drive the last 150,000 people from the live register of the unemployed. Like some figure from the old testament Seamie will perform the miracle of full employment to prove his worth, He will drive the unemployed into the arms of the awaiting super exploitative bosses.