Over 800 people attended a protest against the closure of the Mid-Ulster A&E in Magherafelt. Politicians from Sinn Fein, DUP and SDLP spoke at the protest despite the fact that they voted 3 times in the last 18 months for these cuts.
A Socialist Party leaflet stated:
“The four main parties in the Assembly Executive agreed the recent budget and ‘efficiency savings’ which included huge cuts in health. Politicians from all the parties also sit on the Health Trusts, rubber stamping cuts. If they were really opposed to the cuts, they should resign from the bodies and call on their parties not to implement the attacks. In reality, the main parties all accept the logic that ordinary people must pay for the economic crisis of the bosses and bankers, through attacks on jobs, conditions and public services.”
More to follow
Millionaire ministers savage public services
At the beginning of April, leading members of the CWI from Europe, as well as from Pakistan and Israel, met to discuss developments internationally, and in Europe in particular. The following thesis was discussed there and adjusted according to the discussion. 
The world is a mess. War, poverty, and oppression are now part of the daily lives of billions round the globe. Even during the last boom 80% of the world’s population – 5.4 billion people – lived on less than $10 a day. Now that the world is in the midst of this crisis even the head of the World Bank has said it will result in “a human and developmental calamity… the number of chronically hungry people is expected to climb over 1 billion this year”. The wars in the middle east, enviromental destruction and worsening economic turmoil are only the most recent striking examples of the crises facing humanity.
CHRIS O’KANE, one of the leading organisers of the sacked traffic wardens who are fighting to be re-instated spoke to The Socialist about their struggle.