That, on the day an ailing Margaret Thatcher was being treated in a private hospital, British Tory chancellor George Osborne was rising at Westminster to wield his ideological axe was highly ironic.

Last Wednesday [September 29], around 5,000 people participated in rallies in Belfast and Derry, organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions as part of a European day of action against austerity measures and attacks on public services.