After announcing 300 job losses in March and pay freezes for staff, bosses at First Trust Bank have been exposed for “rewarding” themselves more than £3million in extra secret payments.
Since the bank’s parent company Allied Irish Bank was bailed-out with €20billion of taxpayers money, management claimed to have ceased paying bonuses. But a recent industrial tribunal case taken by staff at First Trust Bank in Belfast has revealed “retention payments” of £462,000 were paid to 24 senior managers. The recipients were instructed that these “Special Awards” were to be kept confidential in July 2011.
Management for First Trust Bank even had the nerve to argue that staff should not receive pay increments withheld from 600 staff over three years due to the “economic hardship” faced by the bank! This criminal looting of wealth must be forbidden by taking the banking system fully into public ownership and run democratically by elected representatives of banking staff, trade unions and public representatives. The needs of ordinary people, small businesses and society must come first, not the profits of bail-out hungry bosses.
Trying to fit in with the angry mood of ordinary people against bankers' bonuses, bailouts and other windfalls of the rich, Tory chancellor George Osborne in his budget speech called tax evasion and avoidance by the wealthy "morally repugnant". 
Andrew Allen from the Waterside in Derry was shot dead on 9 February in Buncrana by the paramilitary group Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD). The shooting of Allen has brought the issue of paramilitary activity and anti-social behaviour into sharp relief in Derry.