for lefties too stubborn to quit
Some concern last week that there weren’t any. But the thought strikes me, small examples from anywhere, Ireland, internationally, anything at all is good. For example, one small sign of hope last week was the cohesiveness of the display by AAAPBP TDs in the Dáil. Any others?
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The Cedar Lounge Revolution
Strikes at the Amazon packing and delivery centres have started again at the 9 warehouses in Germany in the struggle for a work-contract, regular hours and, well, humane working conditions that suit people and not robots in general.
Trades unionists from the Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, France, Germany protested at the Amazon headquarters and got together to struggle for European-wide minimum conditions. The likes of Amazon can only be fought at the international level.
BTW, it’s just struck me that after Brexit deliveries to RoI will presumably be made from France or they’ll build a delivery center there.
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Phillip Hammond: “We have a problem, not just a British problem but a developed world problem, in keeping our populations engaged and supportive of our market capitalism economic model,”
Shoulder to wheel, we’re almost there!
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This week’s stonking victory of ordinary women in Poland in forcing the hand of the aptly initialed PiS into a massive U-turn on ultra-natalist legislation that would have made their abortion laws even worse than ours. Looking at the footage and reading the commentary, and indeed hearing a Polish activist speak at a Berlin demo to coincide with the March for Choice in Dublin (and not understanding a word), what sticks out is the ANGER and the absolute unwillingness to back down. It reminded me of what Tony Benn said about protest versus demand, that once you’re “protesting”, you’ve lost the argument, that the trick is to demand.
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Great line of Benn’s.
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Seconded Mick – there were hundreds of thousands of women and supporting men on the street in Poland. Inspiring stuff to see so many young women participating.
It also shows that the authoritarian nationalist PiSer government can be challenged.
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The ovary giving the finger is a stroke of graphic genius.
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Is it a sign of hope when someone you always disliked intensely proves you were right all along.In today’s “Irish News”,Barry Devlin (Horslips) says “I have an enormous admiration for Teresa May and think shes doing a good job”. He later states “I am a great admirer of the Duke of Marlborough”. Laughingly this clown was once fawned over by people not unknown on this site.
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That’s incredible, has he always been like that roddy? I’d no idea his politics were like that.
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just to raise a smile – here’s a special top secret document that shows johnny and janey furriner just how HM Government is going to do “its good job” – https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/post-brexit-top-secret-exclusive-government-link/
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At the risk of being shouted down,Devlin dallied with the sticks at one stage.
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At an even greater risk of being shouted down, I always thought Horslips were just Yes or Jethro Tull with uilleann pipes. The Radiators, now that was a band…
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I like them both tbh, the Radiators and Horslips, and I think Horslips never made any great secret of the fact that they were influenced by prog rock at various points. They also were a bit more complex in their output across the years, shifting from trad/folk to prog to pop rock and on to near enough new wave/power pop at the end. We did a This Weekend some years back https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/this-weekend-ill-mostly-be-listening-to-early-horslips/
Just on Devlin dallying with the sticks, well, I was a member and no one will should you down roddy if you mention that fact. But times change and things move on and you’re now a regular and very welcome visitor to a site run in part by a former stick who would probably hold very very similar views to your good self – so times do change and things do move on and that’s for the good. Neither of us can police people’s views as expressed ten or twenty or thirty years ago, and I’d be more concerned about what people’s views are today and in that regard I’m very very curious as to how anyone would feel that May was ‘doing a good job’.
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Being charitable, it might be that he thinks she is doing a good job in the shambolic circumstances after a pointless referendum:
http://www.irishnews.com/arts/2016/10/06/news/writer-and-horslip-barry-devlin-a-man-of-many-talents-720205/
Or maybe he’s utterly reactionary.
Either way, Horslips were great.
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And I didn’t know his sister was married to Seamus Heaney.
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And another sister, Polly, wrote All of Us There, a highly acclaimed memoir of her childhood in east Tyrone. I read it way back and wouldn’t really highly acclaim it myself. She ended up as an editor of Cosmopolitan or similar magazines in London I think.
One story I remember from it was her attending a very posh dinner in London and being seated beside a rich gentleman from east Tyrone. He was delighted to hear she was from the same neck of the woods as him but when she told him her name, he turned to the guest at his other side and never looked at nor spoke again to Ms Fenian, sorry Ms Devlin, for the rest of the evening.
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WBS,I was merely answering your question regarding his previous views.
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Surely, and I just want to reassure you that you won’t be shouted down for doing so. Do you know did it go beyond talk and when was it?
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Janey, I’m surprised people didn’t know about the Horslips/Sticks link. Sure it was sticking out a mile. The Táin album was a none too subtle nod to the two nations theory – Ulster vs the rest. Happy to Meet Sorry to Part was clearly inspired by the OSF/IRSP split. The Man who Built America was a tribute to Mick Ryan.
And the Horslips reunion a couple of years back was timed to coincide with the borradh agus fás that has occurred in the stick 26 county ranks over the last couple of years.
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Brilliant Joe, sheer class. Let’s not even talk about the couple of torpedoes mentioned by the Zen Alligators in 1981 or so!!!
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Thanks WBS, I was rather pleased with it myself :). Could be the start of a great weekend.
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Surely it was the drummer who dallied with the sticks….
(Gets coat)
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Boom boom! 🙂
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Not since the peace process …
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“Mayor Bill de Blasio, Department of Finance Commissioner Jacques Jiha and Housing, Preservation & Development Commissioner Vicki Been today announced that the city has enrolled 20,000 seniors and people with disabilities in the NYC Rent Freeze Program since expanding access in June, 2014. The program, which includes the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) Program and the Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) Program, helps those eligible stay in affordable housing by freezing their rent.”
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/799-16/mayor-de-blasio-more-help-tenants-20-000-more-seniors-new-yorkers-with/#/0
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Joe two points- Barry adressed meetings of WP “youth” ( some of whom were in sight of the pension !) and secondly Polly was rewarded with an OBE for her “fenianism”. Uncle Tom was never far from my thoughts when the Devlins came to mind.
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Is addressing wp youth equivalent to being an uncle tom? What year do you recall this being?
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Herewith beginneth the list of Uncle Toms according to Ruairi:
O’Neill, Martin from Kilrea
O’Neill, Michael from Ballymena
the Devlins, all of them there, from the western shores of Lough Neagh
…
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Some people were attracted to the WP because of their reactionary position on the “national question” and associated with that party for that reason above all else.And does accepting OBEs not qualify as uncle Tommery?How about swooning over the exploits of the duke of Marlborough in the wars of the spanish succession.? Hardly marks someome out as an anti imperialist?
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I for one am happy to see new outgrowths of resistance to imperialism. Maybe I was I wrong on that whole state socialism thing.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN12801I?il=0
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Posting this on “signs of hope” is one of the worst cases of baiting since before the last CLR ban-wave.
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Michael Martin was a young warrant officer who led colleagues in the Defence Forces to form the organisation which would fight for their rights.
Officers were extremely suspicious of their activities and had some of them put under surveillance. “We met in shady GAA halls,” the author said.
Another former founding member, Sam Fealy, who still serves in the navy, remembers booking halls for covert meetings under the name of ‘The Albatross Sports and Social Club’. “We knew we were being trailed. We thought the government would crush us,” the senior chief petty officer said.
Ironically, one of their colleages tasked with surveillance duties ended up being one of the first to join PDForra.
Officers had ordered Frank O’Brien, a sergeant in the military police, to shadow the agitators. “They told me to keep an eye on them but I didn’t. I’d tell them they gave me the slip,” he said.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/book-tells-of-pdforras-secretive-beginnings-424376.html
Even in the darkest corners…
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