“People have not forgotten what the politicians said when they came looking for votes during last years Assembly elections. They then claimed to oppose water charges, but now it seems they are prepared to introduce them in 2010.
“The We Won’t Pay Campaign has not gone away and we will continue to build opposition to water charges until they are scrapped once and for all. Our call for mass non-payment of water charges still has huge support in communities and if water charges are not scrapped the Executive will face a mass boycott of these deeply unpopular charges.”
A Public Accounts Committee review has identified 73 PPP (Public Private Partnership) contracts awarded by NI Water where rules regarding competitive tendering were not followed, worth £28.4 million in total. The review revealed contracts that were signed with private companies with close links with senior managers at NI Water, that were often repeatedly renewed without review and that featured consultants receiving lucrative payments.
Joe Higgins, Socialist Party MEP and senior trade union activists have called for all-out resistance to the plan by the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government to savage the wages of public service workers.
On Saturday 26 June I travelled with two comrades from South Africa's Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM, the Socialist Party's counterpart in South Africa) to a mass meeting they had called in Rustenburg, about two hours north west of Johannesburg.
The I CAN Centre in Ballynahinch has again been threatened with closure and thrust into another period of uncertainty by the South Eastern Education and Library Board in this first round of savage cuts across education.