This year's 'Scrooge of the Year' award, run by Socialist Youth in the North, has certainly attracted some worthy nominees, and the chosen winner well deserves the title!

This year's winner of the booby prize is Barry Gardiner, the NIO Minister in charge of education. He gets the award for forcing brutal cuts upon our schools and libraries. Schools face deficits of millions of pounds, and it is set to get worse when New Labour cuts a further £40m from our education service in the next budget! These cuts include cancelling all but emergency maintenance, slashing the school meal provision and sacking all temporary and agency staff.

Runners-up are Securicor Group 4 Guarding. This profitable company has refused to give their workers the four weeks annual holidays they're entitled to, allowing them only half this time off. Also, this Christmas, they told employees working on the Xmas and Boxing Day bank holidays they would not be getting the double pay their contracts include, and those who refused to work would "have made themselves unemployed".

In third place is TK Maxx in Belfast, who cheated a young employee out off 3/4 of her pay over a three month period because of a technical fault with their clocking-on system. These disgraceful examples are not the exceptions and Socialist Youth will continue fighting for workers rights!

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Spirits were high amongst Socialist Youth members in Belfast as they picketed the Belfast Education and Library Board for obediently introducing the cuts the New Labour government demanded.

The picket was timed purposely to coincide with a meeting of the BELB, but terrified of negative publicity, they changed the scheduled time and venue of their meeting after they discovered that we would be holding a picket.

Public support was evident in the fact that a number of passing cars beeped their horns, members of the public talked to us sympathetically and a bus driver employed by the BELB displayed a poster of ours in the window of his bus.

Omagh

The Western Education and Library Board has so far refused to implement cuts in their area, because of their fear of a negative public reaction.

Socialist Youth in Omagh picketed their meeting on 8 December, to put pressure on them not to give in to the government's demands.

Ten members and supporters of Socialist Youth were on the picket line with placards and leaflet Board staff and passers-by to inform them about the threat to our education system.

We got a great reaction, except from a number of rich bureaucrats driving in and out in their posh cars!

If we have anything to thank George Bush for it is that there has been a greater sense of political awareness of the injustices in the world among the students at Queen's this year.

Many students have turned to the open meetings of the Queens Socialist Society as a way to voice their opinions and frustrations, and through various campaigns we have created awareness and consciousness among the student body.

We now have a strong group of active members and regular attendants of our meetings. Working alongside Queens' Students Against the War, we have organised panel discussions on the future of Iraq and participated in several anti-war rallies held in the wake of the invasion of Fallujah.

Our five elected members on the Student Council, despite opposition from various parties, have managed to pass several motions successfully. The Student Council now supports a socialist Iraq and is affiliated to the "We Wont Pay Campaign" against the water charges.

At a time when student politics at Queens seems to be increasingly dogged by sectarianism, the Socialist Society is emerging as the only progressive group dealing with issues that are affecting students today - everything from the situation in the Holylands area to the recent controversy surrounding the Ukrainian elections. All that we can hope for as a Society is that 2005 is as productive as the past few months have been!