Workers Solidarity Movement

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.

Exploitation is an easy enough concept to grasp. It is essentially, when someone does not receive the full returns to their labour. That is when they do not receive the full benefit from their activities.

Irish Universities are increasingly seeing their primary role as being that of a moneymaking corporation rather than centres of education and knowledge. This isn't too good for the vast majority of students but it also is bad news for most of the workers in the colleges as well.

As well as taking part in local and national demonstrations in support of the Rossport residents, about 20 WSM members participated in the mass trespass of Shell's Mayo construction site on February 16th. This marks a step forward for the Shell To Sea campaign because it recognises that lobbying politicians is not enough, when you are continually lied to or brushed off you have to take action yourself.

Slaving your life away just so you can make ends meet; having no say in the major decisions that affect your life; criminal politicians and businessmen plundering the country. Try to do something about it and they'll lock you up. Yes..

In January 2005, Michael X, a courier driver, went to see his GP complaining of recurrent diarrhoea and passing some blood. Following an examination, his GP sent a letter to arrange for an appointment with a gastro-enterologist for specialist assessment. His appointment arrived in the post - he could see the consultant in July, six months later.

The Shell to Sea campaign has already kicked back into gear in the new year, motivated that 2007 will finally be the year when Shell is forced to refine the gas offshore. It would be wrong, however, to think that the holiday season has been a quiet, relaxing time for the community of Rossport threatened with the dangerous pipeline.

It's like the topsy-turvy world of George Orwell's "1984" where politicians engage in "double-speak" by saying they are doing one thing, while in fact doing exactly the opposite. Nobody could think the Water Charges are a fair way to pay for the upkeep of the dilapidated water and sewage system that the State has neglected for decades. The Anti-Poverty Network has calculated that 37% of the household rates we already pay goes towards their upkeep.

To people living in the North Inner City, the recent revelations at the Dublin City coroner’s court at the inquest into the death of young Terence Wheelock will not come as a surprise. Terence went into a coma from which he never recovered, after sustaining injuries in Store Street Garda station. One witness to his arrest said the Gardai ‘whacked Terence’s head off the side of the van and twisted his broken arm behind his back’.

In times past Dominick Street - developed in the 1750s by the Dominick family - was the “first settlement” of fashionable Dublin and much favoured by “the quality”. It housed such notables as William Hamilton; the mathematician who was elected the first foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA was born in No.36, horror writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in No.45, and Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith in No.4.