Tag Archives: Labour Party

This afternoon.

Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin 2

Green Party, Sinn Féin and Labour Party members combine to support the Waste Reduction Bill 2017.

The bill aims to introduce a deposit refund scheme for glass and plastic bottles and a “complete ban on single-use non-recyclable plastics, such as coffee cups and plastic cutlery”.

Fight!

Top from left: Green Party Senator Grace O’Sullivan, Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan, Deputy Leader Catherine Martin, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, Labour Party Leader Brendan Howlin and Labour colleagues Sean Sherlock TD, Senator Ged Nash and Jan O’Sullivan TD

Rare cross-party cooperation on new waste reduction Bill (Irish Times)

Rollingnews

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Ah here.

This afternoon.

Tánaiste and Leader of the Labour, Joan Burton arrives at the Glenview Hotel in County Wicklow, for the first day of the party’s Autumn Think-in greeted by local Labour TD Ann Ferris, crawling lickspittle chivalrous press officer Dermot O’Gara and unnamed photographer.

Nice Audi, in fairness.

(Eamonn Farrell/Rollingnews.ie)

Meanwhile…

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This afternoon.

The Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin

Fianna Fail leader Michaél Martin, Willie O’ Dea and Barry Cowan at the traditional ‘toupee check’ during the party’s Autumn think in.

(Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews)

JC 10 september

British Labour Party leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn

The Conservatives are preparing to claim Jeremy Corbyn poses a threat to national security if he becomes Labour leader tomorrow.

David Cameron will signal the start of the onslaught today, with a warning that the finances of every family in Britain would be at risk from Mr Corbyn’s hard-left agenda.

Senior Tories are also planning to step up pressure on the 66-year-old socialist who has claimed he could not see the ‘point’ of RAF drone strikes against a British jihadi.

However…

Privately, senior Conservatives concede that Mr Corbyn’s critique of spending cuts and call for renationalisation of industries including the railways have struck a chord with voters.

FIGHT!

Corbyn poses threat to national security: As Cameron attacks socialist on economy, Tories plan to paint him as weak on terror (Mail Online)

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 11.20.58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTuzdaqDP1E

Thud.

One of several promotional videos from the Labour Party currently circulating on social media.

On YouTube, the party writes:

“Things are getting better for Irish families. And as a result, we can now be a bit more positive about the future. The recovery is beginning to reach the kitchen table. We have a little bit more money at the end of the month to do the things we previously put on the long-finger.”

“Such as giving the house a lick of paint. Or getting that much needed extra room built. Or being able to bring the kids abroad for a holiday. Getting here has been tough. But Labour has brought us to this point. There is more work to do to make to make our communities the best possible place to live, work, and raise a family. You can help us do that.”

There you go now.

WATCH: ‘Upbeat’ video shows Tánaiste ‘completely out of touch’ (Irish Examiner)

Related: Soup kitchen network is providing 2,445 free meals each week (Irish Times)

00129072Senator Lorraine Higgins and Pat Rabbitte TD

Further to Labour Senator Lorraine Higgins’ controversial proposed  bill to combat criticism cyberbullying.

Former Labour communications minister Pat Rabbitte has published his own bill , The Public Electronic Communications Networks (Improper Use) Act 2015, which proposes:

“On convicting a person for an offence [sending ‘grossly offensive’ messages], the court may, in addition to any other penalty imposed for the offence, order any apparatus, equipment or other thing used in the course of committing the offence to be forfeited to the State.”

That’s your tablet that is.

Mark Malone writes:

… imagine you send a tweet sugggesting Pat Rabbitte was a bit of a hypocrite condemning political organisations with links to paramilitaries who murdered people, given his own political history. Granted that might be hard to fit into 140 characters, but imagine it was possible for the sake of an example.

And say Pat Rabbitte was a litigious sort of character who didn’t want to be publicly associated with any of the murders, bank robberies or lots of stuff the Official IRA was involved in when he was member of the Workers Party, the political wing of the OIRA.

I guess you’d be into a couple of tweets now, something that might be construed by Rabbitte and his expensive legal team and barristers as “persistent and without legitimate cause”.

It probably might not matter that you feel it important to public discourse that many younger people ought know that that a former minister – responsible for promoting austerity and a gagging law – was once a member of a politico-paramilitary organisation that murdered people.

You might even infer that the Stalinist tendencies embodied in WP/OIRA back in the day could be found in a bill that seeks to quash public online political dissent today by actually making it illegal to be a political nuisance.

So you are taken to court and found guilty. Say your day job was a graphic designer, or architect or any other job that requires a laptop and/or mobile phone and access to the net. Your ability to earn a wage (or get donations) relies on these things. Rabbitte’s bill allows for a judge to remove that wage earning ability by seizing the tools of your trade….

More here: 8 Reasons Why We Need To Stop These Labour Censorship Law (Mark Malone, Soundmigration)

Previously: What Are They Playing At

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

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[Joan Burton and supporters on the ‘plinth’ at Leinster House yesterday]

Eamonn McCann writes:

“Labour leaders didn’t just embrace the austerity programme but gathered it to their bosoms, basked in the praise of right- wing commentators and Eurocrats and then boasted of their own courage in abandoning both the programme they had been elected on and the general interests of their natural supporters. Their mantra was: we have shown we are willing to take the hard decisions. In fact, they took the easy option at every turn…”

“…Economic and consequent social change underpins social democracy’s decline. Growth allows for reform and rising living standards without doing damage to the system, which is what social democracy exists to deliver. But when the system slows and seizes up, social democratic parties are incapable of winning reforms to benefit those in the bottom half of society.

They are then faced with a choice: either forget about government and challenge the system at a fundamental level, or betray those who have supported you in order to shore the system up. Gilmore, Pat Rabbitte, Joan Burton and the rest made their choice and may never be forgiven.”

Labour’s disastrous election reflects the crisis in European social democracy (Eamonn McCann, Irish Times)

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

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[Joan Burton, deputy leader of the Labour Party and Eamon Gilmore, former leader]

“They knew very well that they were destroying the Labour Party and with it the honourable social democratic tradition it represented. They decided to do it anyway.”

“…It has taken just three years for Sinn Féin to turn the logic of what Labour did in 2011 into stark electoral numbers. They are quite staggering: in 2011, Labour’s vote was twice Sinn Féin’s. In 2014, Sinn Féin’s was nearly three times Labour’s…”

From tragedy to farce: Labour’s big mistakes in 1918 and 2011 (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)