Reflections on a crazy week- Let's fight to make it different

Tonight I watched Brian Lenihan who's supposed to know what's going on in our country and economy and Eamon Gilmore on the Week in Politics programme and I saw why the people I've met on the street are really connecting with the Labour Party and its leader. Putting it simply, Eamon wiped the floor with Lenihan in a calm, rational and yet really passionate way. In that he has been joined by Joan Burton, who's now coming across as the only really knowledgeable voice on the economic front. It took her questioning to discover during the week that the pension levy would be tax deductible and therefore would bring in far less than the Government pretended.

Put simply this has been a week which typifies all that is rotten about this Government. The politics of the soft touch has seen people like myself and others on far lower rates of pay than mine scapegoated by this Government.

Of course our local Junior Minister John McGuinness started the softening up process months ago with his mean-spirited attack on public servants. The media has fallen for this spin hook, line and sinker, making it so easy to attack us this week. The unfairness of it all was brilliantly described by SIPTU's Jack O' Connor on Wednesday when he said that a public servant on €40,000 would now pay an extra 7% of their salary effectively in tax, while a self-employed hospital consultant in a private hospital would pay an extra 2% on a salary of €250,000 a year. Worse still the property developers and the bankers who brought us to this mess get off scot-free.

I for one hope that my colleagues across the public service now revolt. We don't mind paying our share in a difficult situation but let's see others bear the pain also.

For now it's time for us to organise to get this shower out. This month Labour are asking you to get involved. If you're in Kilkenny please contact me to join the Labour Party and get involved. If you're anywhere else click here to sign up. The time for talking and criticising is over-the time for action is now and you can play your part.

Bí linn agus is féidir linn

Bronach ataimid- a bad day's work

Rarely have I felt as depressed as I do today by a political decision. After three weeks of postering canvassing texting blogging and harrassing I have to reflect on the will of the Irish people. As a democrat I will defend the right of the people to make what I consider to be a disastrous mistake but I really am at a loss as to what will happen next.
There is a flippancy and even a bit of arrogance in our presuming that 'they'll put it right' and that we'll get another chance to prove ourselves 'Good Europeans' but I get the feeling watching EU leaders over the past 24 hours that we may have tested their patience once too often.
As a socialist and trade unionist I am appalled that Irish workers have given Margaret Thatcher and the European right the biggest political victory of this generation. The Social Charter has been the holy grail of the left and European Trade Union movement for all my adult and took twenty years to make it into the laws of Union. I hope Jack O' Connor, SIPTU and the so-called left-wingers in Sinn Fein and the Socialist party can find a way of explaining to my children how they talked their way out of the best list of workers rights ever secured for our community.
The ball is now in our court however and a few important questions now need to be answered:
1. Do we really want to be part of the EU or not. Being so while thinking we can reject complex treaties painstakingly negotiated by all the national Governments including our own doesn't sit well with that assertion.
2. What does democracy mean to us? The idea that we must uniquely insist on holding referenda every few years on complex agreements and reject them because 'I don't understand it' is puzzling to the citizens of the 26 other democracies who gave their elected Governments the right to interpret the treaty as being in their best interests. Are their politicians better or more trustworthy than ours? I for one am fed up of listening to people condemning our politicians yet walking out blindly as they did a year ago and putting them back into office.