Socialist Youth's new campaign demanding the cancellation of world debt has had an impact in the aftermath of the tsunami.

Our stalls have provoked a lot of discussion. We have challenged the belief that no one was to blame. We explained that tsunamis can be predicted if proper equipment was in place, but instead the ruling classes pour millions into military spending.

We also called for aid to be placed under democratic control and to be fairly distributed. Aceh on the northern edge of Sumatra has registered nearly two-thirds of the total death toll by the Asian tsunami.

The Acehnese so far have received only 30% of UN food deliveries. This will only serve to stir up further racial tension in the area. We also reminded people of the fact that Africa experiences a tsunami scale economic disaster every week! The campaign has reinforced the fact of the unequal world we live in and will hopefully draw people to socialist conclusions.

The effects of the cutbacks in education spending are already being felt. In early January, one young student fell down a dangerous slope and broke his leg at La Salle school in West Belfast.

The slope had been left exposed because of cuts. Plans to build safety fencing had to be abandoned as the board allowed only emergency maintenance. If this sort of incident is already happening and the safety of young students is at risk, surely these cutbacks have to be stopped.

If the government had put a fraction of the money that they spent on the war in Iraq into education here, this situation would never have arisen.

Education boards in Northern Ireland have overspent on their budgets due to government cut backs and an increase in oil prices. Fortunately many children with special needs are moving increasingly into mainstream education, so surely the government should increase budgets for education boards to be able to cope with the needs of all their students.

Three of the boards have agreed to implement these cuts, including the Belfast Education and Library Board.

Socialist Youth held pickets of the Belfast and Western Boards in late December. On 1 Feb the Belfast Board held a meeting to discuss potential cutbacks in libraries. NIPSA held a picket of the meeting, at which Socialist Youth intervened.

Because of the public pressure, that they are coming under against cuts in libraries, the Board backtracked on their plans to close at least seven Belfast libraries. This shows that pressure and protest action can get results.

Socialist Youth calls for students, parents and staff to stand up against the cuts, alongside a campaign of industrial action by the trade union movement to force the government to provide adequate funding for decent education for all.

On the surface the image of Strabane has improved a little over the past year. But only on the surface.

A number of businesses, with much backslapping from their friends in Sinn Fein and SDLP, have benefited from schemes that do not provide real jobs.

Strabane, particularly its young people, have been promised an arts centre, more computing courses and workskills initiatives.

All this is fine except that it means nothing without the thing young people in Strabane need before anything else - stable employment.

No schemes are of any benefit if no future employment exists, nor will they magically create long term employment.

Why do the mainstream parties not face the real bread and butter issues rather than prostituting themselves with so-called reform and improvement programmes that really amount to nothing for the majority of young and even older people?