I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in Dublin 12 and Dublin 6W a very happy and prosperous New Year. However, I know this year will be very difficult for the 200,000 people who have lost their jobs in this crisis.
It will not be a good year for the tens of thousands who will unfortunately lose their jobs in 2010. It will not be a good year for those who face short-time working, wage cuts, cuts in the dole and other welfare benifits, or the loss of services which many depend upon. We have a cruel and brutal government, determined to defend the wealthy elite who are responsible for the crises by making ordinary working people and the poor pay. This government does not not regard the explosion of unemployment, with one in every three young males on the dole, as a crises. It is not an accident that the government have not proposed a single measure to tackle the jobs crises. The central plank of their policy, apart from the ¤80 billion bailout of the banks/developers, is to use mass unemployment to drive down wages and reduce the living standards of ordinary people. The logic of their position, if it can be called that, is to reduce costs in the economy, to improve exports when and if the world economy recovers. This may work for the foreign owned multi-national sector, which accounts for less than 10% of economic activity, but it will mean years of severe deflation, and high unemployment for the domestic economy. The more you cut jobs, wages and social spending, the less money people have to spend, the more the economy is deflated in a viscous cycle.. It is condemning yet another generation to either the dole or emigration. It doesn’t have to be like that. There is an alternative. The banks should be nationalised. A state banking sector could be at the heart of a national plan to create jobs and get the economy moving again. Just one example of what could be done is a national programme to insulate all housing, saving energy, taking workers of the dole, getting them to pay taxes, and reducing welfare spending. We need imaginative, creative thinking, and to not allow ourselves to be ruled by the dictates of the elite 5% who own 40% of the wealth, or the so called ‘Masters of the universe’, the spivs, speculators and criminals who control the world financial system.
Happy New year, Cllr Joan Collins.
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