
TTIP: Race to the bottom of the Atlantic

Forty-five million people have been infected by Covid-19 globally, with over one million tragically losing their lives. The UK has now surpassed 1.37 million cases, with around 52,000 deaths. In Northern Ireland, we have reached 46,359 cases and 846 deaths. While there are promising signs that effective vaccines may be available in the near future, there is evidence that new strains of the virus are rapidly emerging. There are also serious questions about how rapidly, efficiently and equally vaccination programmes will be rolled out.
Across Britian and Northern Ireland to date, over 200 health workers’ lives have been lost to Covid-19. However, Westminster and the Stormont Executive have manipulated the figures, so this will be grossly under-estimated. Grotesquely, the overwhelming majority of these deaths were preventable. The Assembly followed the Tory plan, prioritising profit before people to protect the interests of big business and capitalism. Sinn Féin and the DUP disgracefully used the pandemic as an opportunity to pursue their own sectarian agendas, throwing the Executive into paralysis. This can only be described as criminally negligent in the extreme.