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I joined the Socialist Party because listening to the party’s ideas I realised there was an organisation planning to act in a radical way to shift economic power away from the few born with it and towards the working people who create it.

John Delaney, the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, has announced that he is to take a pay cut of 10% which brings his salary down from €400,000 to €360,000. Even with his pay cut Delaney will be payed more than the prize money for the entire League.  It cost €19,000 euro to enter the league yet if a club finishes fourth in the league they will receive a measly €15,000 euro. Delany could pay for €4,500 worth of Irish fans’ drinks in Poland, while at the same time Monaghan are allowed to fold because of debts of €6,000.

“There’s a storm coming”, Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) warns billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in “The Dark Knight Rises”. “You and your friends better batten down the hatches, cause when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us."

The International Monetary Fund has called for the property tax on the family home due to come in next year to be introduced at a "suitably high level".  Cabinet meetings are due to restart on 4 September and it is likely that the assessment method and the level of the tax will be decided at one of the first few meetings.

In a rare victory for “people power” in the European Parliament, ACTA (Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was defeated in July.

The derogatory remarks made by Mick Wallace TD about the Socialist Party while speaking on the Personal Insolvency Bill, reflect poorly on a TD who claims to operate in the public interest. The Socialist Party has taken a principled stand on all the issues related to Mick Wallace and his failure to declare and pay VAT - we reiterate that he should pay all the monies now owed to the state and put all the relevant information regarding his dealings with the Revenue Commissioners into the public domain.

The failure of Mick Wallace to provide certain information to the Oireachtas Committee on Members' Interests of Dáil Eireann and his failure to deal with the controversy regarding his under declaration and non payment of VAT in a fully open manner will only raise questions amongst ordinary working class people.

This week the tragedy that is mass unemployment was intensified further with the official rate rising to 14.9%, a total of 440,600 people and the highest since 1994. This week, also, the Troika is in town to make sure that the Irish people continue to wear the suffocating straitjacket of austerity in the interests of salvaging the fortunes of the failed property gamblers from the European financial markets. Last week a further €1.2 billion was paid out to unsecured bondholders.

Rank and file SIPTU members in Dublin Airport take unprecedented step of writing to Jack O'Connor demanding right to ballot