Limerick City: Cian Prendiville

Alarmist media headlines over the past week give the impression that €2,500 could easily be deducted from the wages and welfare payments of householders boycotting the registration and payment of the new household tax. In fact such legislation does not even exist at this time. Nor does any legislation allow for the tax itself to be deducted.

"The protesters in Athens can riot all they want, but they cannot alter the fundamental economic fact of their country - it is busted, mainly because it has been consuming more than it produces for many years. Even a socialist revolution... would not change that reality." (Sean O’Grady, economics editor of the Independent)

In this book Jonathan Sperber says he aims to place the great revolutionary thinker and activist firmly in his times. In a comprehensive, readable biography, the University of Missouri's Professor of History does succeed in portraying Marx engaging with 19th century society and intellectual currents.

In the Sunday Independent newspaper on 4 August, Labour Party councillor Richard Humphreys had this article attacking an interview in which I called for a new intifada, similar to the first intifada. I contacted the Sunday Independent, requesting my right to reply through an article of similar length ( approximately 750 words) to Humphreys’. This request was rejected, and instead I was offered the opportunity to write a short letter to their letters page.