FG disgracefully call on doctors to end strike

by Hilda Robinson Wed Apr 23, 2003 14:12

Could a Labour member please tell us where they stand on the Doctor's strike?

A while ago Liz McManus simply asked the minister 'to end' the dispute. Whose side are you on? the workers or the government? or are you Blairites sitting on the fence?

What about SARS and FG?

by King Mob Wed Apr 23, 2003 14:13

Do you think you could make a point about the strike without descending into 'build the new mass workers party' shit? We've heard it all before, y'know. It means that no-one except your fellow culties will take you seriously. I'm just shocked that you didn' t mention the bin tax as wll..

Is there a grammar school that teaches this stuff?

Down with mumble bumble!
No to the something of the whatever!
Support the somebody somebody!
Build a blah blah blah now!

(must be the same place that you learn how to do rhyming chants and to sell your papers - a number of parties obviously shared a classroom)

by Trotsky Wed Apr 23, 2003 14:20

The unions should discipline the workers and teach them to place the interests of production above their own needs and demands. The ... State requires trade unions not for a struggle for better conditions of labour - that is the task of the social and state organisations as a whole - but to organise the working class for the ends of production

by Hilda Robinson Wed Apr 23, 2003 14:25

The Doctors are workers. They are selling their labour to make a living. Any proper leftist should defend this strike from attacks and emotional blackmail in the form of FG/LAB SARS scares.

Support the Doctors industrial action!
Defend the right to strike!
Break all links with bourgeois Labour Party!
For a New Mass Workers Party!

by KM Wed Apr 23, 2003 14:29

You see? Sarcasm is dead. You can't make this shit up.

by Lenin Wed Apr 23, 2003 15:11

Particular obstructive workers who refuse to submit to disciplinary measures will be subject, as non-workers, to discharge and confinement in concentration camps.

by angry Trotsky follower Wed Apr 23, 2003 15:44

When there is a successful revolution lead by a vanguard party of the working class organised acording to the teachings of Leon Trotsky it will never be toppled from power unlike the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe which fell to the USA and the west without any bloodshed.

by King Mob Wed Apr 23, 2003 15:51

Unless ;

someone from the SP brings labour as a blairite party into it.

Someone mentions Kronstat

Someone slags off Pat C's love life

Someone *cough* Pat *ough* mentions the SPs track record on the north.

Alex from FG gets involved.

Someone mentions the ZOGs.

Feel free to add your own....

by Trotsky Wed Apr 23, 2003 15:55

"We have been more than once accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the soviets the dictatorship of our own Party. . . In this substitution of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class..."

by Alex - Young Fine Gael Wed Apr 23, 2003 16:03

King Mob, I oblige...

This morning a Chinese women is in St. James hospital in a sealed off ward because she has contracted SARS.

Today 15 people worldwide have died from the disease.

Over the last few weeks, several thousand worldwide have been infected.

In Ireland, the doctors are on strike and refuse to monitor SARS. Only this can happen in Ireland.

Yes doctors are workers. Yes doctors have rights. Yes Irish people are workers. Yes Irish people have rights and these rights are been scarificed by striking doctors.

The doctors are in a difficult situation. This strike was initated before SARS, but SARS is too serious too be used as a striking issue. Again only this can happen in Ireland.

by IMC Wed Apr 23, 2003 16:36

Fine Gael and SARS
by Alex - Young Fine Gael Wed, Apr 23 2003, 3:07pm

http://www.finegael.ie/breaking_news/april/1704033.htm
Minister is playing dangerous game with public health - Mitchell Fine Gael health spokesperson, Olivia Mitchell TD said today (Thursday) that Minister Martin is prolonging a dangerous threat to the health of the nation and that his aggressive comments in the Dáil on Tuesday did little to resolve the industrial dispute with the public health doctors.

Fine Gael health spokesperson, Olivia Mitchell TD said today (Thursday) that Minister Martin is prolonging a dangerous threat to the health of the nation and that his aggressive comments in the Dáil on Tuesday did little to resolve the industrial dispute with the public health doctors.

"In the meantime, vital ongoing health services have ceased entirely.

"There are rumours that a frontline health professional has been diagnosed with Hepatitis B. If this is true, it leaves patients dangerously exposed in the absence of a 'look back' system to trace patient contacts. This mammoth and urgent task would ordinarily be undertaken by the public health doctors.

"Despite the fact that approximately a thousand asylum seekers enter this country every month, there is currently no health screening for asylum seekers.

"The sexual health clinic in Baggot Street, where clients attend for STD screening, has closed. So have all the neo-natal BCG clinics nationwide.

"The large foreign national student population going home to all parts of the world for Easter, will shortly be returning to our third level institutions with no adequate or updated port of entry screening or system of checks.

"Vulnerable groups in particular are endangered by the absence of these services and consequently endanger the wider community.

"The public generally may not be conscious of the implications of the absence of these services. However, the Minister knows only too well just how exposed the public now are and he cannot simply wait until a medical catastrophe occurs. Minister Martin must resolve this dispute immediately."

related link: www.yfg.ie

by Mr.Hugh Janus Wed Apr 23, 2003 16:37

Doctors are extremely well paid as it is especially in relation to other jobs.I rang for info on Sars as i am travelling through Singapore and could not speak to a doc because the greedy cunts were on strike.If i was on a doc's salary I'd be more than happy.
Give up the fags.Lose a bit of weight.Easy on the drink.Heres a few painkillers.That will be 35 bucks,nice one.

by TPT Wed Apr 23, 2003 16:42

O no,i must go on strike,I can only afford an E series every year.I want an S with all the extras and leather seats.Greedy cunts.I want saturdays off so I can play golf at the K club with my chums.

by OK - SP Wed Apr 23, 2003 18:50

I think that all workers are fully entitled to withdraw their labour- if they have medical degrees or not.

FG are simply whipping up people's genuine concern for their health in an attepmt to attack this strike. It is not the Doctors fault that the Helath Service is crap. It is the fault of successive Fine Gael, Labour/DL, Fianna Fáil and PD governments.

If FG are a real opposition party they would point out that the SARS threat shows that the Irish Health System is bad, and that the doctors are right. They are strikeing for a better health service. They are striking for better conditions for patients, which includes a proper plan for the threat of infectious diseases such as SARS.

PS
Hilda makes the point that Labour are being very quite on this issue. I do also remember Liz McManus calling for the minister "to end" the strike. She said nothing in favour of the workers on strike for a better health service.

by Dick Dowling Wed Apr 23, 2003 19:19

Khalid Farouk ?

Iraqi ? If you are, it's time to go home. You're needed there.

by Daithi - (not as an IMCer) Wed Apr 23, 2003 19:46

A couple of personal opinions on this:

* FG and some elements of the media are using SARS as a stick with which to beat the doctors - it's highly irresponsible (in terms of causing alarm) and not very ethical either. The doctors didn't cause SARS and they are not responsible for its spread.

* Having said that SARS is a genuine problem, and I don't think the World Health Organisation is lying when they say that a strike during a health emergency is a bad thing. In Toronto the medical profession has suffered disproprtionately from the spread of the disease here, they are weill aware of the dangers, and I don't think any health worker would knowingly or willingly act against the public health. (Just waiting for the "SARS is the fault of capitalism" line...). Diseases don't have political parties.

* Blaming the spread of SARS on non-nationals, foreign students, etc. is not acceptable. It doesn't affect any race or nationality disproportionately, though the cases are concentrated in certain geographic areas. I fully expect those who are 'concerned' about foreign students to now call for the isolation of Canadians to be consistent. What do you mean they don't "look" foreign?? Cases in Toronto are higher than in most parts of China.

* Similarly, that comment about Khalid is just childish and uncalled for. Workers from abroad have contributed more than anyone can imagine to the Irish health 'system'.

* Now to the hilarity of Hilda (following Khalid's lead)...suffice to say that King Mob's parody says it all. Build a mass workers party all you like. 99.9% of the people reading your posts (and I still can't work out if you're taking the piss) will just snigger at the simplicy of it all. I didn't think that you could construct sentences from pre-defined cliches like that but I stand corrected.

* And on strikes - if the doctors were concerned primarily with protecting public sector health (which they are, in part, I accept), they would be calling for a drastic reduction in top-level salaries, in particular for specialists, the closure of private health clinics, a total change in the junior doctor system and indeed medical training in general. This is about bloated salaries as well as health funding; let's not kid ourselves that the motives are entirely altruistic.

* No-one has an obligation to automatically support a strike; in Sasketchewan, the province that established the first medicare system in North America, doctors went on strike for months when the system was introduced. I wouldn't support that; I would feel a moral duty to breach their pickets and support the government that introduced it. Being fully entitled to withdraw labour is fine, but if that strike is for purposes that socialists don't agree with, slavish following and fetishising of "the workers" is a bit wrongheaded.

by Kalid Farouk Thu Apr 24, 2003 15:23

I am not a doctor but I am originally from Iraq. Why should i go home? I've been living in Ireland for the past 15 years I am an Irish citizen.

It seems that you are implying that all immigrants are not welcome and that we should all go home?

I do not simply parrot off slogans. I think this is an example that we need a workers party in Ireladn that can stand up for workers and orgainse them. This is not being done by any of the main 'opposition' parties. Do you not agree? Or I suppose you are a Labour voter?

by Brendan Hogan Thu Apr 24, 2003 15:58

How many people have died of SARS?
How many people have died of AIDS?

The fatality rate for SARS is 4%. God help us if there's ever a real mediacal emergency, because our health service is a disgrace.

by Hilda Robinson Thu Apr 24, 2003 18:48

Daithi please make yourself clear. You did not say you support or not support the doctors strike!

All you have said is that SARS is a terrible disease, it has no boundaries etc (all true). You then go on and attack doctors for somehow not wanting an overhaul of the Health system (which is untrue).

Daithi, you are a Labour member, yet you do not say that you support Labour when it exercises its power to withdraw from work.

Daithi Do you support the strike?

by Daithi Thu Apr 24, 2003 20:54

(1) Who the hell are you and what business have you demanding my position on a particular strike?

(2) What does it matter? I have no role in doing anything in regard to this strike, I have no all-powerful role in Labour never mind at any other level. What sliver of a difference will my answer make one way or the other?

(3) If you take the time to read what I've said your questions are answered already. I've written that I don't believe all withdrawals of labour are worthy of support, obviously you disagree and would support racist strikes and strikes against socialist programmes. That's fine with me, I just have a different opinion. In the case of this particular strike I've written that I don't believe this strike is entirely about a better health service. It is my belief that some elements of the medical profession are overpaid and that the fundamental structure of the job is unsuitable, merely paying them more or increasing funding to the health service is not an adequate solution.

(4) I trust that you are fully familiar with the demands of the doctors, their levels of pay etc. I'm not, so based on what I know at the moment I would give the strike qualified support, regardless of the legitimate scientific concerns regarding SARS. As I don't follow the Bush-style credo of "you're with us or against us", I don't believe it is necessary for socialists to support every strike without any kind of analysis or thought.

by Hilda Robinson Fri Apr 25, 2003 11:55

"Who the hell are you and what business have you demanding my position on a particular strike?"

Daithi in case you forgot you are a member of the "Labour" Party. The fact that you dont see any problem with not supporting workers on strike is an indication that Labour is full of liberals that dont want to 'rock the boat'

The fact that you dont support the strike fully is an indication that Labour is a big business party that do not have any links with the workers movement.

by Trotsky Fri Apr 25, 2003 12:08

I had no problem putting strikers in labour camps and even executing their leaders when I was in power. The SP still support me for doing so.

by the real trotsky Fri Apr 25, 2003 13:07

That is bullshit and complete redscare distotrions of history. If you beleive this re writing of Russian history you are lining up with the same school of thought that claimed the hollocaust did not exist.

by Daithi Fri Apr 25, 2003 13:18

Hilda, I know this is hard for you, but try reading my contributions rather than playing the stuck record. I think I could whistle Baa Baa Black Sheep and your response would still be "that proves that Labour are a bosses' party". I can't figure out whether to laugh or feel sorry for you.

My favourite bit is "The fact that you dont support the strike fully is an indication that Labour is a big business party that do not have any links with the workers movement". No it's not! It's an indication that one Labour member who happens to be spending too much time on one particular website has his doubts about the motives of the halo-wearing doctors.

I don't know what party you're in but I guess you have never been a member of a party that doesn't require its members to be programmed to stick to the line. I expressed my opinions because they are my opinions, not to give you indications for your screwed-up doctrinal nonsense. It's a shame that you prefer to let other people do your thinking for you but I take some comfort in the fact that you prefer to hang yourself on your own words, and will hopefully see sense soon. I've set out for you the reasons that I don't automatically support strikes, unfortunately you haven't done the same, and I doubt you actually read past my first lines. Come back when you get around to doing that, ok?

by Trotsky Fri Apr 25, 2003 14:11

"the militarisation of labour . . . is the indispensable basic method for the organisation of our labour forces" . . . "Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? . . . This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery too was productive". . . "Compulsory slave labour . . . was in its time a progressive phenomenon". "Labour . . . obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker, is the basis of socialism". "Wages . . . must not be viewed from the angle of securing the personal existence of the individual worker" but should "measure the conscientiousness, and efficiency of the work of every labourer".

Trotsky in April 6th 1920 at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions

"The very principle of compulsory labour is for the Communist quite unquestionable .. . the only solution to economic difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary labour power - an almost inexhaustible reservoir - and to introduce strict order into the work of its registration, mobilisation and utilisation"

Trotsky in Terrorism and Communism

"If we seriously speak of planned economy, which is to acquire its unity of purpose from the center, when labor forces are assigned in accordance with the economic plan at the given stage of developement, the working masses cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers". In the same speech, he says "Deserters from labour ought to to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps"

Trotsky in speech to March 1920 at the 9th party congress

by Chekov Fri Apr 25, 2003 14:35

It's a job that is generally picked because it is a 9-5 job without the ridiculous stresses and long hours that most doctors have to face. On the other hand they are easily the worst paid of all doctors. I'm not entirely sure what the particular grievance is here, but most recent medical strikes have been about resisting the gradual transformation of the health system into a 'business' run like any other business, rather than about pay.

by Hilda Robinson Fri Apr 25, 2003 19:05

Daithi you still did not answer my question. Do you support the doctors strike?

It appears to me that you dont. If so why are you in the Labour Party when you wont support workers that are on strike? The answer is that you are not in a Labour Party you are in "Irish LAbour Party" which is a bosses party.

Why do Labour support social partnership? Nice Treaty? Coalition governments? Tony Blair? etc etc.

All you are trying to do is sling mud at me and my beliefs in a vain hope that some mud will stick. I am open about my beliefs, you are not. You are the one that is unclear about support for Striking workers, you are a bourgeois careerist type that is hiding behind the thin veil of the "Labour" Party.

by Hilda Robinson Sat Apr 26, 2003 10:22

It's great to see that the doctors seem to getting more determined to continue with the strike. I hope that other helath workers will join them to shut down the health service.

It's interesting to see that "Labour" Party are very silent on this strike. They call themselves Labour but refuse to support Labour when its in a fight for better pay and conditions.

FG-Labour call themselves the opposition. In my opinion the real opposition here are the doctors who are actually prepared to engage in a battle to improve the health service. Can you remember when FG-Labour-DL put nurses out on strike? Brendan Howlin was Labour Minister for Health!

I think now is the time to escalate the strike. Getting support from other workers in the health service, and seriously put pressure on the FF-PD-FG-Lab party.

Support the Doctors' strike!
Build for a Health Service Strike!
No to a 2-tier health system!
For a New Mass Workers Party!

by Daithi Sat Apr 26, 2003 13:40

Yes, you've convinced me, Hilda. By once more ignoring what I've written, mis-spelling my name, and showing me the error of my capitalistic ways, and then re-educating me through your slogans and overuse of "!", I have seen the light, and it is a bright and beautiful one. Your careful and reasoned argument has taught me a lesson and I will never again express the view that strikes can be for the wrong reasons as well as for the right reasons. I look forward to the next time a strike happens when workers don't want to let a woman or foreigner join their workplace (It has actually happened in Ireland for the former, don't know about the latter). When that day comes, I will have a tear in my eye with pride when I stand shoulder to shoulder with you, Hilda, defender of true socialist values, and we will chant slogans and go home to have dreams about the Holy Workers.

Thank you, thank you a thousand times for turning me away from the path I was following. I think it was the way you addressed the principles of socialism without resorting to slogans and cliches. Just beautiful. I hope that you continue to convince other wicked liberals, social democrats and wavering socialists that they are wrong. Keep up the good work, soldier.

by Hilda Robinson Sun Apr 27, 2003 15:01

Daithi: "strikes can be for the wrong reasons as well as for the right reasons."

I acknowledge that the use of a strike can be done in a reactionary manner. Do you think that Doctors on strike are doing it to keep out foreigners?

Doctors are striking for am improved Health service. They are doing this when the "Labour" party are not supporting them and voicing their 'anger' in the Dail.

Daithi, Lesson 1 in Socialism: Change only happens after a struggle- Doctors are egaged in a struggle, "Labour" are only talking and trying to appear as a 'safe pair of hands'.

by Mark Sun Apr 27, 2003 17:40

Spart alert! Spart alert!

It's funny watching someone like Hilda come up against one of the few Indymedia writers that can actually argue properly - bad call, Sparty baby

by Pat C Mon Apr 28, 2003 10:26

Yes KM, the SP have a terrible Track Record in the North. Never take their advice about thehorses or dogs.