TRALEE: Launch of PeopleBeforeProfit Election campaign

kerry | politics / elections | event notice Thursday March 05, 2009 22:31 by pbp tralee - People Before Profit Alliance (Tralee) earthsoulrocknroll at gmail dot com

Come along to the official launch of PbP candidate Sean Moraghan's Tralee Town Council election campaign,

and let’s start talking about how we can fight the cutbacks, and bring change to the political landscape of Tralee!

"A la Lucha!"

Local Election Launch Meeting
All Welcome!

“Why Tralee Should Vote
People Before Profit Alliance”

They Say Cutbacks? We say Fightback!

Speakers:

Tralee Town Council election candidate
Sean Moraghan (PbP)

& Sociologist Kieran Allen
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Grand Hotel Thurs 12 March @ 8PM
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It is becoming increasingly obvious that Fianna Fail are only too willing to do the bidding of the wealthy and the powerful. The last few weeks have seen an important shift in tone with a move towards developing what they like to term, ‘a national consensus’.

The outline of this consensus is already coming into view: More taxes are to be imposed on low and middle income groups but there is little talk of taking wealth off the 1 percent of Irish society who made €100 billion during the Celtic Tiger. Instead, specific proposals include: bringing minimum wage earners into the tax net; more pay cuts in public sector wages; carbon taxes, the return of university fees and, maybe, some tokenistic moves on property-based wealth.

A return to domestic water charges is expected to be recommended by the Commission on Taxation which publishes its report this summer. This Commission is dominated by the corporate elite. Its seventeen members include five accountants, three company directors, the CEO of the Irish Stock Exchange, a representative of the Irish Banking Federation, IBEC and the IFA, alongside one token trade union representative.

The FF/Green government refuses to advocate serious taxes on the wealthy. Instead they have embarked on a strategy to cut wages by between 10 and 20% over the next few years. The pension levy on public sector workers and the 1% levy on gross pay are only the start!

This rhetoric of ‘we’re all in this together’ is a strategy long pursued by Fianna Fail. They have always resorted to the economic patriotism argument in times of crisis as a means of forcing a consensus in Irish society.

Yet the reality is very different. There was no ‘we all in this together’ talk during the Celtic Tiger. The Irish rich were making billions of euros every year while workers were preached to about the virtues of wage restraints. Now that the party is over, the establishment find themselves in a mess of their own making. But instead of being made pay the price of their own mistakes they are getting billions of euros in state handouts to prop up banks and protect their profits. We, on the other hand, are being told that they have to bear the pain of this crisis, even though they have had no hand in its making.

The only solution now is for us to fight and protect our living standards, and tell the elites that we will not take the pain for *their* crisis. The huge 120,000 demonstration on February 22 attended by many from Kerry shows that we are willing to fight. Tens of thousands want the pension levy withdrawn and a special pension protection bond created for private sector workers.

People Before Profit Alliance (Tralee) say lets fight to end this crazy system and create a fair and decent society for all.
Come to our Public Launch we'll tell you what we'd like to do, and you can tell us what you want us to do...

www.pbptralee.com