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Rage against Hain helped spark violence

Speech by Eamonn McCann to meeting of the Socialist Environmental Alliance at Sandino's, Derry, Wednesday, September 21, 8pm

Wednesday 21 September 2005

Peter Hain is lying about water charges.

In his speech to "business leaders" in Belfast earlier today (Wednesday) Hain said that if people in the North want better health and education we'll have to pay more in local charges. He referred specifically to water charges, which the NIO wants to introduce in April 2007.

This is dishonest propaganda intended to pull the wool over our eyes. Peter Hain knows that the revenue from water charges will not and cannot be used to fund hospitals or schools or any other public service.

The water charges revenue will not be public money at all. It will be private money. It will go into the coffers of a private company, not into the public purse.

On Monday, true to New Labour form, the NIO used the controversy over recent violence to slip out news that it had handed control of water treatment facilities to a consortium of private companies---including the notorious Tyco International. This outfit, based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, was in the news the same day for another reason---the jailing in New York of former chief executive Dennis Kozlowski and finance chief Mark Swartz for up to 25 years. During the case, Tyco had been exposed as a company in which law and common decency were treated with derision as its bosses looted the funds and lived like Roman emperors while treating workers and customers with contempt.

In Hain's eyes, that didn't make Tyco ineligible to take over a key component of our water industry. It probably enhanced their credentials.

According to Katharine Bryan, the ludicrously overpaid blow-in who was handed the job of chief executive of our Water Service, the private consortium which includes Tyco is intended to provide half the North's water supply.

Not a single person in Northern Ireland voted for this. Not one political party has come out in favour of it. But Hain and his crew impose it on us anyway. And then he has the gall to lecture us about the need to pay more to qualify as proper British citizens!

There's been a a lot of discussion about the root causes of recent violence in both Protestant and Catholic communities. Not enough attention has been paid to the role of cross-community rage against the arrogance, dishonesty and undemocratic behaviour of Hain, Woodward and the rest of the gang of no-goods at the NIO.

Hain has some neck to claim that we are not paying our way compared to people across the water. It's the opposite of the truth. Families here pay over the odds when compared to Britain for gas, electricity and other fuels---not to mention necessities like food and non-alcoholic drink, clothing and footwear.

Hain has the figures available to him. He ignores them because he doesn't give a toss for the facts of the matter. Households here pay an average of £265.20 a year more on fuel than the average for the UK. We pay £431.60 more on clothes and shoes, £213 a year more on food.

But benefit levels are the same here as there---and wages are lower.

How dare Hain tell us we are sponging off the British treasury. It's a wonder nobody has yet given him a clip on the ear.

We should respond to this insulting speech by calling on local political parties and the trade union movement stop shilly-shallying and put their weight behind Communities Against the Water Tax. Tell Hain we are just not having it. Mass non-payment will put manners on this fake-tanned pup.





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