The population of Ireland was reduced by 40% during the Cromwellian wars and sits at the severe end of European demographic catastrophes over the last 400 years.
“A country with a €23 billion surplus and the highest GDP per capita in Europe is debating whether its young people should live in sheds in their parents’ gardens”.
#HowIrelandWorks
I JUST WANT TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT IRAN NEVER HAD ANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ WAS ALREADY OPEN BEFORE TRUMP STARTED THE EPSTEIN WAR 🤷
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.
Struggling for a position on fuel protests.
Agree:
Govt built economy for corporations not people
Cost of living/housing criminal
Govt failure on key issues
Need change
Yet:
Far right infiltration clear
Likely changes will benefit a select few
Real cause ignored
#EnochBurke is in prison because he refused to obey a court order to stay away from a school, not because he refused to use "they/them" pronouns.
This is a fact
It’s not just Ben Gvir. People keep pointing to him like he’s the problem, like he’s some outlier—but he isn’t. He’s a reflection of a system that backed this.
62 Knesset members voted for the death penalty law.
Stop pretending this begins and ends with one man. It doesn’t.
Winston Churchill deployed the hated paramilitary Black and Tans to both Ireland and Palestine.
They carried out atrocities in both countries.
Did an Irish Taoiseach really describe him as a "great war time leader" in the White House today? 🧐