Joe Higgins MEP welcomes European Parliament’s rejection of SWIFT agreement

All citizens who value the need for publicly owned vital infrastructure would have experienced a shudder of fearful anticipation last month when the Minister for Finance established a Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities.

As another year draws to an end and the next appears on the horizon, social and political activists will try to analyse the significance of what has passed and sketch the rough contours of what lies ahead. The truth is that, while 2013 will no doubt bring surprises, the main economic and political developments will trace their roots to what has been sown and society will reap accordingly. Unfortunately that means, not healthy new shoots signalling a significant renewal, but a continuation of the stunted features to which we have sadly become accustomed though not reconciled.

‘We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpieces filled with straw.’ So opens the famous poem by TS Eliot and closes with the lines, ‘This is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper.’

Business and media circles are agog at “the most significant development in philanthropy” for many decades. Forty US based billionaires have pledged to give half of their wealth to “charity” while living or on their death.

The “Giving Pledge” was initiated by two men said to be the richest in the world, Bill Gates founder of Microsoft, whose wealth is estimated to be about $40 billion and Warren Buffet coming in at $37 billion.