This parody music video from Britain is called Theweezer May – “Ireland and The Sun“.
It is a parody of the Weezer song Island In The Sun.
It says about itself:
1 July 2017
The escapist first single from Theresa May‘s Weezer tribute band, including shout-outs to Northern Ireland and The Sun.
LYRICS:
Hello, I’m Theweezer May
I could use a holiday
Snap election didn’t go well
Now I’m tired and stressed as hell
(But I’ve got…)
Northern Ireland and The Sun
Propping up my government
And it makes me feel so fine
They’re like my bezzie matesWe’ll run the UK together
Confidence and supply forever
Labour‘s got no chance any moreDUP! DUP!
DUP! DUP!
This parody music video from Britain is called New Orange Order – “Blue Money Day”.
It is parody of the song Blue Monday by New Order.
It says about itself:
1 July 2017
How does it feel to get a billion quid to go into coalition with the Conservatives? That’s the lyrical question from the DUP on their first single as New Orange Order.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Tuesday 4th July 2017
posted by Morning Star in Features
Outgoing ICTU president BRIAN CAMPFIELD talks to Morning Star editor Ben Chacko about the Tory-DUP alliance and the imbalance of power between capital and labour
AS THE Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) gathers for its biennial delegate conference in Belfast, I put it to outgoing president Brian Campfield that however unpopular the Tory-DUP deal may be in Britain, workers in Northern Ireland surely welcome £1 billion for investment in infrastructure and healthcare.
“The DUP can’t be criticised for securing additional funding for Northern Ireland,” Campfield acknowledges, “but it certainly can be criticised for helping May maintain cuts and a public-sector pay cap across the rest of the UK.
“What should shame the DUP from a Northern Irish point of view is that it doesn’t seem to care about other UK citizens while claiming to be so concerned about the interests of the whole union.”
Having obtained the extra funds doesn’t hurt their reputation at home or in the republic — “people understand that the DUP were going to use what leverage they had to secure some benefits for themselves and for Northern Ireland” — but other aspects of the deal may still prove toxic.
“There’s still a lot of scepticism about what really has been agreed — what perhaps has not been written down,” he warns.
“It has created a climate of mistrust. That’s especially unhelpful given the talks to resolve the current Stormont crisis” — which Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire insists are still ongoing despite slow progress.
With power-sharing at Stormont having broken down in March, May’s reliance on the DUP could hardly come at a worse time.
“If the British government is reliant on one of the main protagonists in the negotiations, how can they be neutral? It’s very difficult to see how they can claim to be.
“People in Northern Ireland want a deal to be done to restore our political institutions and return to devolved government.
“That’s getting more complicated by the second. In any case a devolved government cannot deliver for the people of Northern Ireland within the framework of an austerity regime — we need a change of government, or at the least a change of direction, at Westminster for that.”
As for the party’s regressive social policies, its homophobia and misogyny — “I don’t think the DUP will be pressing the British government into adopting any of that.
“But they will seek to keep Northern Ireland as a citadel of inequality in that respect.”
It is not just in the north that workers are under pressure from a reactionary regime.
In the republic, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar proposed while still a candidate to lead Fine Gael to bring in a ban on strikes in “essential” services, echoing Britain’s Tory government’s relentless attacks on workers’ right to strike.
“It followed on from public transport strikes — at Bus Eirann in response to threats to cut pay, terms and conditions and at the Luas [Dublin’s light railway] where workers walked out demanding a pay rise,” says Campfield.
“Trade unions will be firm in their resistance to any move to make this law and opposition parties are against it too.
“It’s a threat, but whether it can be progressed is another matter.” But the trend in Ireland remains towards growing corporate power and weakening workers’ rights.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting Varadkar today, and on the agenda is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta), a Canada-EU treaty that, like the more famous TTIP, will allow companies to sue governments if they think the latter’s laws interfere with the former’s profits.
The ICTU yesterday reaffirmed its “outright opposition” to Ceta, which has been agreed but awaits ratification by EU member state governments.
It noted that Canada, often seen on this side of the Atlantic as a progressive North American country by comparison to the United States, has a dire record on labour rights: “Of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) 189 conventions, Canada has only ratified 34 … since 1982, unions in Canada filed more complaints to the ILO’s Freedom of Association Committee than the national labour movements of any other country.”
Ceta poses a number of risks for the left in Ireland as in Britain: it could limit government’s ability to award public contracts to companies which abide by desired labour or environmental standards, for example, a key proposal of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party as to how it would reshape Britain’s economy along fairer lines and end the race to the bottom on pay and conditions that results from outsourcing services to private providers with the cheapest bids.
Widespread opposition to the Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause prompted a name change but the Investment Court System (ICS) “remains just as toxic” since it still allows corporations to sue for lost profits.
Egypt has been sued under a similar system for attempting to raise the minimum wage; the ICTU notes that “maternity leave, minimum annual holidays, extended unfair dismissals legislation and pension legislation” could all fall equally foul of these corporate courts.
It’s the constant drive towards corporate treaties like this, combined with Brussels’s promotion of an austerity economics that has entrenched recession and caused massive joblessness across the eurozone, that prompted ICTU general secretary Patricia King to demand “fundamental change in the direction of EU fiscal, monetary and social policy” last week.
Even so, the congress attitude to Brexit is that it should keep “the UK as a whole in the customs union, if not in the single market.” Why?
“Concerns about the impact on jobs and concern over the border,” Campfield explains.
“Thirty to 40 years of armed violence was partly about the border. It’s invisible at the moment, but if some physical manifestation of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border were reintroduced, that will cause problems.
“There are issues about people who live on one side of the border and work on the other. The ICTU organises in two jurisdictions, in the republic which is staying in the EU and in Northern Ireland which is leaving, so it is obviously concerned about barriers that might throw up.”
Ireland itself has hardly been a cheerleader for EU neoliberalism — the country voted to reject the Lisbon Treaty, only to be told to vote again by the bosses in Brussels. Is there no chance that the republic might follow Britain out the door?
“Too early to say. It depends on the nature of Brexit, and not necessarily in the way you might expect.
“If Brexit causes considerable damage to certain sectors of the Irish economy — exports, for example — then that will prompt demands for the Irish government to intervene. And maybe to intervene effectively will mean challenging EU rules and competition law.
“The European TUC is already saying that those fiscal rules need to be subordinated to the needs of the real economy — that the EU is still an institution of the multinationals and the rich.
“The big question, then, is where are the political levers to achieve this fundamental change in direction?
“All this is important. But what’s most important is that unions start building strength and influence to address the shocking imbalance of power between capital and labour.
“Until we do that, workers will continue to be on the back foot.”
Brian Campfield is the outgoing president of the ICTU.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-345f-Trade-unions-will-be-firm-in-their-resistance#.WVuotFFpwdU
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Tuesday 4th July 2017
posted by Morning Star in Features
It’s time for radical trade union intervention on both industrial and campaigning fronts, says Sean Byers
AS THE dust settles on the Tory-DUP deal and the two parties return to their respective negotiations with Sinn Fein and the EU institutions, it is instructive to point to a number of contradictions that have come to the surface and could sharpen in the coming weeks and months.
For the Tories, the ignominy of having to rely on a small Northern Irish party with deeply reactionary views to cling onto power has not only shocked the British public — the election result led to a spike in the British people’s interest in the politics of Northern Ireland, with an entire nation googling: “Who are the DUP?” — but also caused some consternation in the ranks of the Conservative Party, exacerbating bitter internal divisions that go back to David Cameron’s tenure.
The issue is not so much the DUP’s backward position on social issues, as they will not affect Britain, but that Theresa May was able to identify £1 billion of funding for the deal while preaching austerity for public servants at home.
It is difficult to see how, failing hugely successfully Brexit negotiations for May or a collapse in Labour’s support, this government will survive in the medium to long term.
The DUP, for its part, has survived a tidal wave of criticism — some of it over the top — to emerge from the negotiations in a strengthened position. They have proven themselves to be hardened negotiators and shrewd populists, securing guarantees that will placate different sections of their increasingly broad support base — retention of the triple lock for pensions, money for infrastructure investment, a commitment that mechanisms for dealing with the past would not be overly focused on British security forces, etc.
They along with the Tories have acted against the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, but why would we expect anything else as long as it serves their narrow political interests?
Despite its exceptionally strong showing in the Assembly and Westminster elections, Sinn Fein is now faced with a number of acute dilemmas, some of its own creation, others born out of the DUP-Tory agreement. Having hitched its star to Corbynism and advocated a “progressive” rainbow alliance in the north, participating enthusiastically in the public ridiculing of the DUP, the Shinners are back to the realpolitik of negotiating with a party that has brought home the bacon, to a limited extent, and shows no indication of moving on the red lines dictated by its support base.
To be specific, there is no prospect of an inquiry into the Ash-for-Cash scandal concluding anytime soon, no chance for the DUP conceding to the popular demand of marriage equality and no possibility of a strong deal on historical issues that will satisfy both parties.
The only issue on which there has been any movement by the DUP — the Irish language — is unlikely to be resolved with a single Irish Language Act, but instead with a broader hybrid model that gives equivalence to Ulster Scots.
Added to this is the DUP’s pledge of support for the austerity party which has already cut the Northern Ireland block grant by billions of pounds and will continue to hammer public servants and public services, including the NHS and welfare state, over the course of this parliament.
The sincerity of Sinn Fein’s pledge of “no return to the status quo” will therefore be judged on the party’s continued opposition to the DUP-Tory axis in principle and in practice.
Whether the generation of 1969’s political strategy of putting Sinn Fein into a de facto all-Ireland government, north (with the DUP) and south (with Fianna Fail), will allow for this is yet to be tested.
Of course, any positive moves towards the attainment of social and economic equality will depend on the ability of the trade union movement to mobilise workers and working-class communities around a progressive programme.
This calls for a radical trade union intervention on both the industrial and campaigning fronts, and a political education initiative aimed at building a progressive political consciousness.
We in the north have the benefit of being part of an all-island movement that retains strong internationalist connections with British labour.
This will enable us to look eastwards, building and drawing upon the momentum of Jeremy Corbyn’s popular campaign, and southwards, supporting and actively participating in political initiatives facilitated by the Right2Water unions.
The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’s proposed campaign around pay, decent work and investment in public services could, if properly resourced and executed in a democratic manner, form a crucial nexus between these complementary endeavours and contribute towards the building of a progressive alternative in Britain and Ireland.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-5806-Against-the-spirit-of-the-Good-Friday-Agreement#.WVux4VFpwdU
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