Support our elderly and resist cuts to the old age pension.
"Labour will not agree to child benefit cut" says Gilmore
Pat Rabbitte "Isn't that what you tend to do during an election?"
Showing posts with label Labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labour. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Saturday, August 3, 2013
On the evening when Enda Kenny was booed in Croke Park, by thousands of Cork and Dublin supporters, this is an excellent piece from DDI. It’s clear the party system is over as the party game ensures that the electorate is always the loser. Labour or Fianna Fail can’t be trusted. Either can Fine Gael.
http://directdemocracyireland.ie/category/news/governance-news/
Self evident political lies by establishment parties
Posted on August 3, 2013 by Admin D
We see this week the repeated threats being made by government to already suffering families, about how they will take property tax from you whether they like it or not. All rights removed, nothing you can do to stop them delving their hands into your wages, pensions, bank account or welfare payments.
It seemed an appropriate time to remind everyone what Fine Gael told us about property tax in their own campaign documents back in the day on the subject of property tax on a person’s home. It seems this was just another false promise. Or was it another broken promise? Either way the effect is the same, and the expediency of their words is self evident.
The best bit in this document is where it says…
“Could you trust either Labour or Fianna Fail again?
They have broken their promises and do not deserve your trust. So much for the much-vaunted commitment to ‘change’”.
It seem the Emperor has no clothes !
Friday, July 26, 2013
LABOUR has lost a third elected representative in the space of a week with the resignation of a Dublin councillor from the party.
Councillor Cian O'Callaghan said that he was quitting the party because it had broken election promises and made choices that have benefited the rich and powerful at a huge cost to everyone else.
"I disagree profoundly with the Labour Party approach in government in a long list of areas," he said.
Mr O'Callaghan has worked as a parliamentary assistant to former Labour Dublin West TD Patrick Nulty, who also resigned as a member of the party earlier this year. He was a member of the Labour Party since 1999 and a was elected for the first time as a councillor for the Howth Malahide Ward of Fingal County Council in 2009. He is the third elected member to quit Labour this week.
Labour Meath councillor Jenny McHugh quit the party this week to join Fianna Fáil, while Leinster MEP Nessa Childers also announced she was resigning her membership and would be running as an Independent in next year's European elections.
Monday, July 22, 2013
The image above is from the Facebook page of Precious Life. There is no death worse than abortion and it is a scourge, a great evil. There is a holy anger across the country regarding this ultimate treachery of the Kenny government. People across the country will continue to fast and to pray. Prayer and action continues. Ireland’s unborn babies are under attack.
Again we ask you to pray the rosary daily. We need a revolution in prayer, a spiritual revolution. Dark forces working in the lodge and in the open, have for centuries, been attacking Christian civilisation. Bureaucrats in the EU, Dublin 4 liberals and the vile media continue to agitate for abortion.
With praying the rosary, you are encouraged to join various pro-life demonstrations or hold one of your own to show your opposition to this ideological attack on our unborn child and our Nation. The abortion industry and these wretched abortionists profit from the exploitation and death of babies. From time to time, a mother dies because of an abortion. An abortion always kills a baby.
At confirmation we become Soldiers of Christ and must defend him and the unborn child in the public sphere.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
An article here from DDI.
http://directdemocracyireland.ie/why-the-government-spin-on-property-tax/
Posted on May 9, 2013 by Admin D
In yesterday’s Irish Independent article it is revealed that registration for the government’s Local Property Tax is currently between 25 and 30% . This is despite the passing of the deadline for returning the LPT declaration form.
It is still quite difficult to get an accurate handle on the real percentage because no two statements can agree on exactly how many households there are in Ireland. Figures range from 1.6 to 1.8 million. Whatever the true figure, it is still a dreadful return and a strong message from the people to the government. Indeed one year on, a third of the population have still not registered for the original €100 Household charge.
The government naturally prefer the lower figure to make the percentage registered figure look higher. Of course there is a good reason for this, and it is the same reason we saw the debate in the media last year disputing the numbers who registered for Household charge. Then the government engaged in a mass media offensive to convince the public that over 50% of the home owners had registered by the deadline, and we are seeing the start of that campaign again.
You see the government continually cites its ‘mandate’ to make these decisions, based on the general election vote (though the fact that FG run the entire country based on 25% of the electorate voting for them is another discussion). However, if more than 50% of the country simply does not register for the government”s new tax, that mandate reasoning evaporates. The government would then be forced to resign, although the history of politicians in Ireland resigning is not an honourable one.
So we can see the thinking behind the wall to wall media coverage. After last year’s problems the government are pulling out all the big guns this time. The Revenue have been called in and have had their ‘information’ campaign all over the media for many weeks now. In reality the Revenue’s message has been one of threat and really nothing else. They refer to people who don’t register as ‘offenders’ and use heavily loaded words to instill fear in normal honest people, and a sense of being unceasingly hunted as criminals. Indeed the article quotes the government on this theme by saying “Government sources say the rise in household charge payments is down to the fear of Revenue being on their trail”
There are still 3 weeks remaining for people to register for the tax online of course and we predict that in that time the media spin machine and the numbers game will hot up again. Undoubtedly the government will claim over 50% compliance (at the lower level figures) before the 28th May deadline. We will of course be seeking our own independent figures as, under the circumstances, it would be foolish to trust a government who has everything to lose to report the figures correctly.
DDI’s stance on this issue is clear. We are well aware that the government has slashed hundreds of millions from local government budgets over the last 2 years, and have diverted that money to paying unsecured bondholders against the wishes of the people. This new tax is simply filling that hole. For that reason we do not agree with this tax and propose that the two issues must be solved together as they are simple cause and effect, and both have been imposed without any recourse to the will of the people.
There is more than one way to stop an unlawful tax of course. The tax can be, and is being challenged in the courts over the last few months by the first man to be brought to court for not making a declaration This test case was reported in the Sunday Mirror on 5th May 2013. The established parties naturally all refute that this is even possible, and we can understand why they would say that. The oddity though is that the minority parties that get themselves directly involved in the campaign protests against the tax seem to be actively coming out against the legal route too. A route which could offer a definitive and binding legal determination on the government. Why these parties choose to ignore the courts is a question only they can answer especially as it is common knowledge that they ‘had’ a very large legal fund collected by tax protestors over the last year. If one were a skeptic one might wonder if they are just another form of controlled opposition to try to limit the effectiveness of the campaign.
In addendum, today at the Public Accounts Committee it has also been revealed that the rate of property tax can be increased by 15% at the start of 2015. This is despite the government having previously said the tax could not be increased for 3 years. The revenue also disagree with the government’s original line and say that it was always in the legislation that it could be increased within the first 3 years. Indeed in 2016 the councils will be able to increase it year on year at their own discretion.
We all remember how Enda Kenny’s government sold the Household Charge with spin like ‘It’s only €2 a week’ or ‘it’s less than a pint a week’. Well now in 2013 that has risen to an average of €8 per week. In 2015 that will be €9 per week, and in 2016 it is going to be over €10 per week and forever rising to the levels we see in the UK where bills of over €60 per week (€3,000 p.a. equivalent average home) are common. Have no doubt this is the goal. Like the boy with the finger in the dyke, if you take out the stopper and let that water trickle through pretty soon the dyke is gone and you will be flooded.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
An excellent comment.
“I am shocked that there are no bullets flying yet. Seriously. Bankers DESTROY the economy. Utterly – to the point, over twelve THOUSAND companies have folded since Fine Gael took over. Over 180 thousand people have emigrated – that’s famine levels – since Fine Gael and Labor stuck their collective bits into the public orifice.
And yet. Bankers – and the politicians that got us into this mess – still drive around in posh cars. Still get million euro bonuses in some cases, quarter-million yearly incomes or more in others. Still are not prosecuted and jailed. And yet, because we are bailing out these animals – by force, let it not be confused here, you are held over a barrel while your family suffers to bail these corrupt monsters out – families cannot afford to keep their loans up.
We are paying the shortfall. There is no evidence provided to this date that our taxes are NOT paying the shortfall that our loans take up. So why should we take the slack? Why should my family suffer because a wealthy banker wanted their miserable little grub-sucker children to go to the top private schools, while mine cannot even get the education I pay taxes to obtain?!?
Where are the bullets? Where are the angry mobs surrounding banker and politician homes, demanding blood and bone? We are so conditioned that our ancestors are weeping in their graves.
One word for you bast-rds. NO. Or NO. And NO.”
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Last April thousands of people stood outside the Labour Party conference in Galway in protest. 1st April is over, Seán.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0406/380046-labour/
Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock has said that there is no crisis in the Labour Party in Government.
Speaking on RTÉ's Saturday with Claire Byrne programme, the Labour TD for Cork East said he fully acknowledged that Labour had not yet been able to deliver on child benefit and student registration fees.
He said Labour was only two years into a five-year mandate and the party felt it was probably shouldering 100% of the blame.
Mr Sherlock said the public discourse is that the decisions that have been made are largely at the door of Labour.
He said there were some people suggesting that the leadership was trying to stifle a conference.
He said it was decided by the party's executive last October not to hold a conference until autumn because of the Irish presidency of the European Union.
Mr Sherlock said Labour was going through a very difficult phase.
He said it was not the first time it has been at this juncture when it decided to go into Government in very tough economic times.
He acknowledged that there are members who have left the parliamentary party but said there was a unitary level of purpose among those who meet weekly in the party.
Earlier, more than 60 Labour Party members met in Dublin to campaign for the party's policies to be implemented in Government.
The group called for an immediate special party conference to seek an urgent review of the Programme for Government.
MEP Nessa Childers urged Labour Party members to take action to save the party and the people it represents.
Ms Childers, who yesterday resigned from Labour's parliamentary party, got a standing ovation at the meeting this morning.
She said taking a stand is not easy, but said she was sick and tired of worrying about offending the leadership.
The party is running out of time and urgent action is required, even if that means getting into conflict with Labour TDs, she said.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Last April (2012) saw thousands of Irish people protest outside the Labour party conference in Galway. Today, Nessa Childers and other Labour party members met in Dublin. Rejected in Meath East and came in fifth behind the newly formed Direct Democracy Ireland. Whilst Gilmore, Rabbitte and Quinn’s pensions are safe, the Labour party are worried about being wiped out at the local and general election.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
With less than a third of the people voting in the Meath East by-election, the major news is the implosion of the Labour party. Eoin Holmes managed to get 1,112 first preferences and came fifth. The new political service, Direct Democracy Ireland came fourth with Ben Gilroy getting 6.5 per cent of the vote. This was his first outing in an election, so a good result.
Whilst not reaching the quota Helen McEntee of Fine Gael was elected.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
These are the words of abortionist Neville Sender and here is one of his victims. This is a
14 Week Suction Abortion.
In Ireland, Fine Gael and Labour are intent on legalising the murder of the unborn child. The abortionists know it is killing. Someone has to do it. It’s a profitable business. Those with an eye on making money will never allow the aborted child to go to ‘waste’. No. The pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic manufacturers benefit.
Do continue your prayers for Ireland. Next Saturday (23rd March), a rosary rally is taking place outside Leinster House in Dublin.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
It’s very clear that the Irish people have lost faith in the party system and are looking beyond “left v right” politics. The Third Position is neither left or right and opposed to both Capitalism and Socialism. There is a credible alternative to this current system.
Austerity is going to kill our democracy
We desperately need an alternative to this Government. Fianna Fail? Don't be silly, writes Gene Kerrigan
03 March 2013
IT'S like one of those hackneyed movies where, after an epic struggle, the bad guy has been killed. Relief all around, the hero relaxes. He turns towards the woman he loves, his smile a mixture of relief and triumph. And, as the good guys embrace, we cut to a shot of the bad guy's hand. And his fingers twitch. Close-up on his face and his eyes are opening. Now his hand is reaching for the blood-stained cleaver.
Yes, you're right. This is about Fianna Fail, coming back from the dead – poised for one last desperate lunge. The polls show life trickling back into the battered body of the party of Charlie Haughey, Bertie Ahern and 'Biffo' Cowen. It's as predictable as the closing scenes of a fifth-rate Hollywood thriller.
Some said there was no way back for the party of the Galway tent, the brown envelope, the scandalous bank guarantee, the party of light-touch regulation and whatever you're having yourself.
No hope for the party of the builders' buddy, the bankers' amigo. The bondholders' best friend. Kisser of Monsieur Trichet's superbly tailored backside, genuflector in the vicinity of Frau Merkel.
Fianna Fail, who still denied that Charlie or Bertie put a foot wrong, even as the evidence jumped up and bit them on their ever-lengthening noses.
Fooled, sickened, angry, the voters devastated the party in 2011. Patience, circumstance and the behaviour of their rivals are giving Fianna Fail a shot at a comeback.
The current Government, with its bowing and scraping to Frankfurt, its casual brutality towards its citizens – and, above all, its unearned air of piety – makes some people nostalgic for the good old days of backhanders and back-stabbing. And that shows what a deep, deep mess we're in – not just economically but politically. When we kick them out, who takes their place?
Shocked by what they did to the country, we threw out Tweedle Fianna Fail. And we installed Tweedle Fine Gael. Are we now destined to do the same over and over, turn and turn about, in perpetuity?
If our fate – at best – is to perpetually swap one bunch of chancers for the other, then there's no point to parliamentary politics.
If parties can oppose each other bitterly and after the election casually swap positions – and just as bitterly champion the policies they recently denounced – well, it's a game. The winner gets a State car and a big pension.
The major parties share the same view on most of the major issues of the day – reverence for bankers and bondholders, absolute obedience to the European Central Bankers. They believe that even in a recession a deficit must be cut, whatever the long-term effects on the economy.
Last week, a couple of economists – Paul de Grauwe, Yuemei Ji – crunched the numbers on five years of EU austerity.
"Countries that imposed the strongest austerity measures also experienced the strongest declines in their GDP," they found. But, maybe it's worth damaging the economy if it strengthens the public finances? Eh, no.
"The more intense the austerity, the larger is the subsequent increase in the debt-to-GDP ratios." The title of the paper: Panic-driven Austerity in the Eurozone and Its Implications.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are two wings of the same party, each taking turns in denouncing and then implementing the same policies.
We were shocked some years ago when Catholic theologists explained how a bishop might legitimately mislead on the issue of child abuse. As long as he secretly had a "mental reservation", it was not sinful. How medieval, we thought.
When Ruairi Quinn signed a pledge not to impose student fees, he must have had a mental reservation. When Eamon Gilmore pledged to oppose "Frankfurt's Way", perhaps he too had a mental reservation.
Michael Noonan must have had a mental reservation when he denounced the "disastrous and obscene" policy of forcing citizens to pay the private debts of rich gamblers. Because three months later he became Minister for Finance and has been cheerfully operating that policy ever since.
And when Enda Kenny met the teenage Joanne O'Riordan and made her a promise, well . . .
"Enda Kenny looked me in the eye before the general election," Joanne told the Irish Examiner, "and promised me one thing and then once again, did another." Kenny promised Joanne – who was born without limbs – that there would be no cuts in disability benefits.
Apparently, speaking to this young woman, looking her in the eyes with that sincere expression he uses, making a promise that meant so much to her, he had a mental reservation.
These are politics that are not only cruel and deceptive, they trash the very notion of democratic legitimacy.
What do we do, we who believe that austerity and bank worship have turned a crisis into a disaster?
We can't vote for Labour or the Greens. These me-too parties merely make up the numbers for FF or FG in exchange for some cabinet seats and a pension.
We could vote for Sinn Fein, if we could be sure that it wouldn't help Fianna Fail into office. We could support that new party that Michael McDowell keeps suggesting – PD Nua. If we could forget that the PDs were in office for 12 of the 14 years in which FF wrecked the place. And that for five of those years, McDowell was a minister. And that the PDs shared FF's view on all those disastrous policies, including light-touch regulation and the bank guarantee.
We could vote Left. But in the period in which the capitalist parties have destroyed the economy, loaded private debts onto our backs, driven thousands into exile, slashed social services and cut disposable income, the Left in the Dail hasn't had much to say that is either compelling or new.
We've heard the same rusty formulas so often, it's seldom that any of the Dail lefties begin a speech most of us couldn't finish. They rightly reject the orthodoxies that have brought catastrophe, but in terms of their strategy, tactics and language they isolate themselves.
If not now, when do they show their mettle? If they can't draw mass support in a period of wholesale robbery of citizens, when might they do so?
Democratic opposition matters. When a parliament is so dysfunctional, other forms of expressing opposition become more important than ever.
Trade unions, community groups, single-issue campaigns – all can influence events. Right now, the unions are in the firm grip of full-timers, many of whom are mere over-paid executives running a service company. Their power depends on their control of a quiescent rank and file.
In Italy, the technocrats imposed by the ECB have been rejected and the Right, the Left and the angry Centre – focused around a comedian – are currently jostling for influence. In Greece, an openly fascist outfit gets a significant share of support.
When we in Ireland hear from the forces denied a voice in the Oireachtas, it will not necessarily be in coherent, reasonable terms.
To put it mildly.
Meanwhile, as anger rises at the casual cruelties and mindless austerity of this Government, Fianna Fail – of all outfits – murmurs its sympathy and sheds tears for the plight of the disabled and the unemployed. And bides its time.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Opposition to the tax on the family home continues and CPSU and CWU members must stand with the Irish people and not corrupt governments and bankers. The message is simple. Lose the fear and don’t register or pay this tax on the family home. Enda Kenny described it as morally wrong and unjust to tax the family home.
Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor – 01 March 2013
PEOPLE will be able to pay their property tax at their local post office – in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the household charge fiasco.
The local authorities did not use the country's 1,100-plus post offices last year to collect the €100 charge – which has still not been paid by around 470,000 households 14 months later. But the Revenue has been given responsibility for the property tax and has now awarded a contract to An Post to allow people to pay it at their local post office.
Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte confirmed the new contract during a Dail discussion about the future of the post office network.
"That will help the Revenue position of An Post and it is the kind of new service it can provide better than anybody else, with a network of 1,138 offices throughout the country," he said.
TDs had previously criticised the failure to use post offices to collect the household charge, given it was convenient for elderly people and those collecting social welfare payments.
It is a sign of the Revenue's determination to use every possible option to collect the property tax.
It has the power to deduct it from the wages and social welfare payments of those who refuse to pay, as well as the ability to take it out of people's bank accounts.
An Post has also got the contract to deliver the Revenue letters to households next month which will contain estimates of how much property tax they have to pay.
In the Dail, Mr Rabbitte could not resist a jibe at Independent TD Mick Wallace, who had brought up the threat to the future of Duncormick post office in his Wexford constituency.
"I am sorry that although I gave the deputy the opportunity to break the news about the collection of the property tax, he did not rise to his feet to welcome it," Mr Rabbitte said.
Mr Wallace is one of several opposition TDs who has not paid the €100 household charge and has been calling on the public to boycott it.
A spokeswoman for An Post confirmed that the company had been awarded the contract by the Revenue to collect the property tax at its post offices.
"We are very much looking forward to playing a key role. We are best placed, with a unique network of over 1,100 post offices and 1.7 million people visiting a post office every week," she said.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Comment: Firstly, don’t be intimidated by this. Secondly, do not register and do not pay this tax on the family home. Thirdly, you are not alone. There is mass opposition to a tax on the family home. Don’t be bullied.
21 FEBRUARY 2013
TAOISEACH Enda Kenny says the Revenue Commissioners will only deduct the property tax from welfare payments and bank accounts as a last resort.
Revenue chairperson Josephine Feehily confirmed today the property tax would be deducted at source from those who refused to pay.
Mr Kenny said every homeowner would have "plenty of opportunity" to make arrangements for paying the property tax.
He said the deduction at source would only happen at the "end of the process" and Revenue have had similar powers for many years.
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