Savvy young voters in Northern Ireland care about in Gaza

The context is more likely to have been the Great Irish Famine than that happening in Gaza right now.

Fermanagh was one of the hardest-hit counties in Ulster during The Famine and the first place in the nine-county province to report blight on the potato crop.

The population of the county was reduced by almost 30 per cent during the Famine years of 1845-1851 through death or emigration, and 20 per cent of those who perished in that period did so in one of the county's three Workhouses, where the destitute were forced to seek refuge.

They died of malnutrition, typhoid, and typhus men, women and children, separated from each other, segregated in conditions that punished them for destitution not of their own making.

More than 4,000 young orphan girls from Fermanagh were shipped to Australia between 1848 and 1850.

Ireland under British government insistence continued to export food. In 1847 alone, 39,000 tonnes of wheat and 98,000 tonnes of oats were exported, and imported 199,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of oats and 682,000 tonnes of maize. Lest we forget!

We continue to watch the growing famine in Gaza, and the political paralysis in relation to ending it, with increasing horror and despair.

The room for denial of the reality that is Zionism diminishes with every family buried in the rubble, every emaciated and starving child.

At its heart, Zionism is a Right-wing, supremacist cult whose power lies in the wealth and financial and political influence of its creators, and advocates, on the democratic institutions of government, primarily in Europe, North America and Australia all of which owe their own wealth and power to their respective histories of colonialism and genocide.

I imagine Israel believes if they all got away with it, so will Netanyahu and the IDF. They won't.

The youth generation of this century have too much humanity, integrity and courage to let that happen.

They are also wiser in their own generation than their grandparents were.

The creative and constructive campaigns in raising awareness and much needed funds for UNWRA, UNICEF, Oxfam, Medical Aid for Palestine and Doctors Without Borders, and other charities battling daily to keep children and adults alive, is inspiring and awesome, as is their resilience, determination and their innovative actions to build boycotts of goods which add funds to war chests.

What might cause some concern amongst our more self-serving political parties is that these young people have not abandoned politics.

They are not part of a 'disconnect' they are connected, savvy, registered and waiting to remind political parties that votes have to be earned, and so far, most politicians aren't really making the cut.

The 'Independent vote' might well be a feature of Northern elections, when they finally turn up.

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The Department for Communities had no good news when published its annual report on poverty last month, on 'Good Friday'

I have no idea why the day is called 'Good' Friday. It is not the happiest days in the liturgy or ritual commemorations of the Christian churches.

I guess it maybe started out as 'God Friday', in much the same way that "good bye" started life as "God be with you".

In any event, it was probably not a bad day to quietly publish a report that made sorrowful reading.

I doubt anybody in Fermanagh or further afield will be shocked to discover that a lot of people were even poorer last year than they were the year before.

It is poor consolation to find that it isn't only you.

The report informs us that, on average, for every £1.00 coming into each household in 2021/22, there was only £0.95 coming in, in 2022/23.

Those of us residing in the outback of the wealthy Kingdom were five pence in the pound poorer before we even spent a penny of our income last year.

The cost of living was and is still rising, so the value of the pound in our pockets was less than £0.85 compared with the year before.

The average for the rest of the UK was a drop of only one penny in the pound in household income.

None of that comparison arose from the existence real or perceived of a sea border.

Children and working adults experienced the greatest increase in poverty, with almost one child in every four living in relative poverty and almost one in five in absolute poverty.

The 'triple lock' policy protected pensioners. It requires the state pension payments to increase at the same rate as the highest cost increase, which was inflation.

That helped ensure that there were fewer pensioners living in poverty, which is of little comfort to those who were.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported that the richest person on the planet 75-year-old Bernard Arnault had a 10 per cent increase in his income on last year.

A total of $70trillion is expected to be inherited by the next generation (of idle rich kids who didn't earn it) over the next 20 years.

In what kind of world is that financial disparity anything but obscene?

A 75 per cent Inheritance Tax for billionaires would go a long way towards solving world poverty, without impoverishing the brats.

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We haven't yet heard from the new DfC Minister about an urgent timetable for bring forward an Anti- Poverty strategy with a prevention of Child Poverty at its core.

That should have been the first priority. Children going hungry and cold are unacceptable vistas in a State that has so much money to throw into weapons manufacture, supporting genocide and prolonging wars.

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Well now, Fermanagh! What about the most westerly county in the UK and the most rural in Northern Ireland being home to the Best Weekly Newspaper in The UK?

Congratulations to the Editor, and the whole team at The Impartial Reporter, on their very recent success in scooping that accolade, who bring such diversity of content into one whole, cohesive paper together every single week.

It is not as stress-free as they make it look.