Compare this treatment to how business is dealt with by the LPS. Nearly £6million in unpaid rates by private companies was written off last year without any trip to the courts! The Assembly Executive, while pursuing working class people through the courts via the LPS, continues to give away public money to private companies.
Last May, Arlene Foster (Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment) launched a government aid scheme worth £15 million. This scheme allows companies to pocket up to £450,000 a time to help them ‘restructure their business’. On top of this big business can claim millions of public money in grants. Arlene Foster claims that supporting businesses is crucial to save jobs. Tell that to the ex-workers of Visteon, who had to occupy their factory for weeks in order to get an improved redundancy package, and are still fighting for their pensions. Visteon received £138,172 in grants from Invest NI. Or tell it to the Nortel workers, who have been treated similarly. Nortel has received £7.4million from Invest NI.
It is clear the Northern Ireland Assembly Executive believes in one law for the rich and another law for workers.
20 August 2009
"Just look at this ground shaking everywhere…" 
Time magazine paid a tribute to people power by choosing 'The Protester' as its Person of the Year. 2011 was certainly about protest but it was about a lot more as well.
On the 9th March the Northern Ireland Assembly voted through a cuts budget which will strip £4 billion from the economy in the next four years. This attempt to make workers and young people pay for the debts of the bankers and speculators will have dire consequences in the North, where the public sector accounts for a third of employment and two-thirds of economic activity.
According to the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, dissident republican groups have been responsible for carrying out an average of two attacks a day since the beginning of the year. These attacks range from high profile car bombings targeted against the police and army to so-called punishment shootings in Catholic working class areas. Regardless of how “successful” they are in the attacks they carry out they have nothing to offer but a return to sectarian killings.