Northern Ireland

The proposal to close fifteen libraries in the Belfast area has been met with strong opposition. Hazel Gilliland, who has been campaigning against the closures in Ballymacarrett told the The Socialist that, "the proposals would have a devastating effect.

One year on from the killing of two British soldiers at Massereene barracks in Antrim and the shooting of a PSNI officer in Craigavon, attacks carried out by dissident republican groups have become more frequent, sophisticated and deadly.

The Assembly Executive is to carry out cuts amounting to £113 million from the health service this year. This decision, collectively agreed by the parties in the Executive, as part of the Draft Expenditure Plans 2010/11, is a direct attack on health services which will have a major impact on thousands of patients.

On 5 February the DUP and Sinn Fein agreed a deal on policing, justice and parades. The deal was announced in triumph as a “historic breakthrough” by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness sitting along side Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen.

The political parties in the Assembly Executive were today accused of “gross negligence for their complete lack of action to save jobs at Hughes Christensen factory” in East Belfast.

Although the crisis surrounding the ’sidestepped’ Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, and his wife, Iris, has appeared to temporarily subside, the fact that the whole structure of power sharing and the power-sharing Executive might be in danger of collapse over the controversy, graphically illustrates the artificial nature of that entity.

THE JAWDROPPING sequence of events surrounding Iris Robinson soliciting £50,000 from two millionaire property developers (the late Fred Fraser and Ken Campbell) has opened a Pandora’s Box of corruption which goes right to the heart of the political establishment.

The signing of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 was meant to represent a framework which would enable the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein to work together as the two largest parties in the Northern Ireland Executive. Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary for State at the time, declared it an “astonishing breakthrough”. This so-called agreement, though, was nothing of the sort.

ALTHOUGH THE fans of Derry City knew that the club was in financial difficulty, the decision to throw them out of the FAI League has sent shockwaves through the city.

The exchange of insults between Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness in recent weeks has exposed the real crisis within the power-sharing Executive.

After returning from his luxury holiday home in Florida, Robinson chose to turn the temperature up by declaring at a meeting with big business that the DUP were now in favour of scrapping the current veto arrangement in the Executive and replacing it with a weighted majority arrangement.