The protests in Ireland are not about just fuel! They are about the distance between Ireland on this graph and every other modern and developed economy. Ireland is second wealthiest but gets waaaaay less than any other country for that wealth. By a golden mile.
That visual gap in this graph? That’s what people are protesting. It’s a lack of infrastructure and the everyday enshittification of services, the economy, and the additional difficulty of trying to live, relative to peers in any other country. It also highlights why people don’t get uniformly listened to! - because there is no government architecture to engage meaningfully across this huge gap.
That gap is a three hour drive to work in traffic, a 14 month wait for an MRI, buses that don’t arrive, trains that don’t exist, schools that have no places for your kids, houses that are unaffordable, pubs that close before midnight, €12 sandwiches, expensive fuel.
People feel this gap, even if they can’t explain it precisely. And that builds into resentment, and ultimately protest. Fuel just happened to be the next thing that could be pointed to, today.
Latest tally from Kildare South with over 90% of boxes tallied. #kildaresouth#GE24 FG well ahead. Dogfight between SF, Lab and FF for remaining two seats. (It’s a four-seater, but Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl is automatically returned, so for this election it’s a three seat.
Congrats to Pfizer for being in business for 175 years, not curing a single disease, and earning the title of paying the largest criminal fine in American history.
@Womens_Aid What a scumbag Cathal Crotty is, he bragged about his appalling actions and then lied, attempting to blame her, the coward. Shamefull judgement handed down @HMcEntee hopefully the @defenceforces have higher standards then the so called justice system and court martial him.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been alive all of my life. In that time, some of the greatest politicians, journalists and philosophers who've ever lived have tried and failed to resolve it.
The worry now is that with arguably the least capable, intellectual, and most corrupt global political class ever, along with client journalism now being the norm instead of the outlier, that millions of people living in abject misery daily are neither served by their political leaders or the self ordained global policemen, east and west.
If you're a politician, no wonder people are apathetic at best and shaking with anger at worst.
On your watch, all of you. Left, right, centre. The least capable bunch at the greatest time of need.