Month: June 2012
Socialist Party statement on Mick Wallace tax controversy
Mick Wallace’s failure to pay the original sum of €1.4 million in VAT is disgraceful, unacceptable and indefensible.
Corporate cash hoarders stunt growth
Big corporations are accumulating massive cash hoards. Despite record profits, there is a dearth of investment in production. Corporate surpluses, moreover, are linked to public-sector deficits. Cash hoarders should be subject to an immediate levy on idle capital to finance public works and reduce mass unemployment.
Comment: Establishment got Yes vote through falsehoods and lies
Even as the votes in the Fiscal/Austerity Treaty Referendum were being counted, attention was already moving to the immediate and medium term future of the Eurozone and the fate of the millions of people in its economically beleaguered periphery. History may well show that the treaty itself was an almost irrelevant distraction from an honest appraisal of the cataclysmic problems that bedevil the currency union as all the contradictions in its economic and financial systems assert themselves with a vengeance.
Global warming: Socialist plan for the environment is needed
Global warming is the overriding environmental issue facing the world. 20 years have passed since the United Nations’ (UN) ’Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro highlighted the problem. However, the output of greenhouse gases that cause climate change has continued to escalate to a critical level that threatens environmental catastrophe. As emissions have rocketed, the gap between the green rhetoric of governments in the industrialised capitalist countries and their feeble policy response has become a chasm.
UN reports rise in global youth unemployment
Job prospects for young people are projected to remain bleak for several years. According to the latest United Nations International Labour Organisation (ILO) report (Global Trends for Youth) the number of unemployed young people worldwide has risen by four million since 2007.
Britain: Monarchy – not just a ’harmless relic’
The government in Britain will be hoping that the Jubilee flotilla of 1,000 ships on the river Thames will serve as a useful distraction while it pushes through more swingeing cuts.