Friday, Jan 27th 2012
The Taoiseach has defended the proposed 2% increase in the higher rate of VAT, saying it won’t apply to food, but only to purchases where the consumer has a choice. Certainly this was the spirit of the original VAT rules - the zero rate of VAT was clearly intended for basic staple items. You can [...]
David Lynch spent Sunday on the streets around a Tahrir Square in revolt. He will be writing about the events in Cairo in the Sunday Business Post on Sunday and we’ll be putting his posts from Arab Spring in My Step up here as he posts them during the week.
Tahrir this morning: Protestors under tear [...]
Statement from one of the occupiers at Occupy Dame Street…Please Share widely
We are 6 weeks at Occupy Dame Street and it looks like residents of the camp are going to be taking a break at the residence of hotel Mountjoy Prison :P Occupy Dame Street has today learned from media organisations and An Garda Síochána that the Central [...]
EU Parliament chief refuses to protest at illegal arrests by Israel | The Electronic Intifada
David Cronin on how president of the EP Jerzy Buzek isn’t too bothered about the arrest of his colleague Irish MEP Paul Murphy by Israel in International Waters.
“The president of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek has declined to protest at [...]
Words of a Euro Doomsayer Have New Resonance | Betting on Bernard Connolly
Good god….
Bernard Connolly was “a European Union economist in the early 1990s, where he helped design the common currency’s framework, but then he was dismissed after he expressed turncoat views. In 1998, just months before the euro’s introduction, he predicted that at least one [...]
Why didn’t the Irish media report this comment by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform?
‘Today I am announcing further reductions in Public Service numbers. I expect this reduction to reduce consumer spending by over €1.2 billion, to cut employment by nearly 25,000, and to remove about €2.3 billion out of the domestic economy. Through [...]
Video: David Harvey at Occupy London November 12, 2011
David Harvey at Occupy London / November 12, 2011 / International Day of Solidarity from Elaine Castillo on Vimeo.
Transcript of the talk here.
Statement from the Communist Part of Ireland.
The revelation that documents relating to the forthcoming budget were found today (17 November) in the German Bundestag, with German politicians poring over their contents, while neither Dáil Éireann nor, most importantly, the Irish people have seen or read what is in store for them, is almost beyond [...]
Aditya Chakrabortty | Why doesn’t Britain make things any more?
Aditya Chakrabortty on Britain’s de-industrial revolution
And yet many of the arguments that preoccupy the British are haunted by the spectre of manufacturing. Angry at the overweening power of banks? Then you want a more mixed economy. Distressed at the gap between the rich and [...]
Michael Roberts | Europe: default or devaluation?
Marxist economist Michael Roberts has an excellent post which goes through the arguments made at a plenary session at the Historical Materialism conference last weekend. The most interesting part of the discussion, and the most heated, was on whether or not the left should advocate that a peripheral Eurozone [...]
