Paddy Meehan of the Socialist Party said “Typhoon jets are being deployed from Norfolk in an outrageously expensive 3,000 mile round trip using up 60 tonnes of fuel. These flights and attacks will cost thousands of pounds an explosion while every second here thousands of pounds are being cut from schools funding, health budgets and public services.
“The role of the UN including Britain is not to assist democratic revolutionaries in a struggle against a brutal dictator. Their intervention is to stabilise the country and the region in the interests of big business, in particular the big oil companies.
“BP have a £15 billion stake in oil and gas contracts which they negotiated after lobbying the British government for the release of the Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi in 2009. Big business is now lobbying for the UN to defend their profits.
“Rather than fighting BP’s wars we should be spending this money on much needed public services. A democratic Libya that meets the needs of its people will not be bombed into existence by British, French and US war planes. It must come from a united struggle of all workers, young people and oppressed minorities linking up with the revolutionary movements across the Middle East and North Africa”.
PICKET: 5.45pm Thursday 16th September - Holiday Inn, Ormeau Avenue, Belfast (opposite BBC) 
On a Daily Politics discussion on the economy in the run up to the election, Finance Minister Sammy Wilson of the DUP made it crystal clear that, in his opinion, the Assembly Executive will introduce water charges. He admitted that the charges have only been deferred, not scrapped, and went on to say that “when they are introduced” it must be on the basis of “fairness”.
The announcement of massive job cuts in the banking sector further underlines that the bank bailouts had nothing to do with defending the interest of working class people.