The Blindboy Podcast - Have you anything to say about the Fuel protests Blindboy? Or are you a Government shill who is worried about losing his next Late Late show appearance?

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

An interrogation of Neoliberal structures Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eat the Sideways Sweeties, you Yeasty Peters. Welcome to the Blindwell podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. You know the deal. My audio's a bit fucking shit here on I fix it.

My vocal settings here on my pre-amp are off. Eat the Sideways, Sweeties! Sideways Sweeties. Yeasty Peter is whispering in the ear of a dove. He's offering the dove, a sideways sweetie. If you're testing a vocal effects chain, you really do gotta be talking like this. To get the best results.

Sideways Peter, Peter is eating sweeties with a dove. Whispering in his ear, he's going to hell. So you're also noticing the gentle pitter-patter of rain on my roof, were welcoming the rain in this week onto the podcast, but when it does rain, I have to adjust my microphone to accommodate the sparkly effervescence of its sound. So we've had a very intense week in Ireland.

There were large-scale protests that pretty much brought the country to a standstill. Farmers and truck drivers who were impacted massively by the rising cost of fuel as a result of the US and Israel attacking Iran. That pushed up the price of diesel and petrol and then this. This triggered farmers and truckers to ask the government for assistance. So they protested.

I protest that I support. Because I support workers. I support unions. I support collective bargaining. I support strikes. My DA was a union leader. I was raised on this. The farmers occupied roads with machinery and they also blockaded fuel depots.

So by last Friday, I think it was 60% of petrol stations, civilian petrol stations in Ireland, were running out of fucking petrol of fuel. So the country itself, by Saturday a couple of days ago, critical infrastructure had been brought to the brink of collapse. because we have an infrastructure that relies upon cars and trucks having petrol and diesel in order to deliver our goods, emergency services, everything. The lunch that I ate today was different to my regular lunch because the shelves in my shop, in my supermarket, are still half empty because trucks couldn't get there at the weekend. The guards were called in. A request was made for the army to be called in. The guards removed physically some reports of violence, removed protesters around the fuel depot blockades. Long story short, the protest mostly stood down and the government responded.

The government announced a 500 million euro of measures to support people that are struggling with rising energy costs. It's not an adequate response, but it's some response. And what I like about all of this is we saw a protest working we saw a protest working and then a response the response is more of a band-aid than a solution some people weren't happy with the protests at all

they were saying if you want a protest just get out there and march why do you have to block the roads why do you have to block critical infrastructure why do you have to stop people get into their medical appointments are unable to get fuel for their cars. That's not a protest.

Unfortunately, that social contract has broken down. There used to be a social contract, which was, if you the people are unhappy with what your government is doing, then just very politely and in a civil way, get out there and march. And that is enough to frighten the government into action. That social contract doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately. The rain's getting very strong. That social contract doesn't exist anymore because of neoliberalism.

I've done many podcasts on neoliberalism this year and last year, but neoliberalism, it is when public services, housing, healthcare, education, these things used to be controlled by the state, but instead they're handed over to the private market. But I pay taxes, you say. I pay taxes and my taxes are supposed to provide people in Ireland with housing. That's true, you do pay taxes. And that money that's supposed to provide a person with a house, you see, it used to go to a local council who would build a council house.

And then a person would receive a council house. And the rent would be law, and it'd be a long-term arrangement, and it'd be secure. But now the same tax, via a... scheme like the Housing Assistance Program. Now that same tax goes to a private landlord who charges market rate. So now the state you see is paying a private landlord. It's astronomically expensive. It makes the housing crisis worse because all that public money actually pushes up rents for everybody. No new housing supplies created so it's not council's building houses anymore. Now the state is competing with private renters and it's this horrible feedback loop.

So the housing crisis doesn't become something to solve. It becomes an industry to be profited from. So under neoliberalism, you pay your taxes for a public service and then a private company comes right in the middle and sets up a toll booth and takes most of that money. So then you have a society that doesn't see evidence of a social net. I can walk around Limerick City. I'm aware that there's not a recession. I'm aware that there's high employment, that there's actually a bit of money flying around,

like compared to the recession 10 years ago. Things appear to be doing well around me. But I also see shantytowns. I've never seen that before, even during the recession when things were terrible. I've never seen settlements of tents underneath bridges. in an Ireland where there's clearly also high employment. I mean, healthcare.

In Limerick City we have University Hospital Limerick. That's what the emergency room is. Around the time of the recession, emergency rooms in other counties, there was one in Ennis out in Clare was shut down. And then the emergency room in Limerick started to serve as a massive region. So there's not enough beds.

people are very vulnerable people who are incredibly sick are lying in trolleys in corridors in the hospital in Limerick and this has been going on for years I can pull up headlines headline from the Limerick Leader 2025 Four young women dead

catastrophic failures demand action on University Hospital Limerick now where there's inquests into the deaths of four young women who died while in that hospital public services aren't working. I would dread getting into an accident and having to go to the hospital in Limerick.

I would dread it. For me or for my kids, I would hate for that to happen because I have zero confidence in receiving adequate, dignified, comfortable healthcare based on evidence that social contract has broken down. But luckily, a new big, massive, private hospital

has been built in Limerick. city and lo and behold what was announced, the government is seeking private hospital capacity to address the limerick overcrowding crisis. So that private hospital is going to charge private hospital rates, but to the government, another vital public service healthcare is being handed to the private market for profit. So I live in a city where I see emerging shanty towns, I don't mean to be disrespectful when I say that but that's the word that we have. All right, little semi-permanent settlements of tents, which I've never seen before in my life.

See that. I see a hospital I hope I never have to visit because I have zero faith in being safe there. News reports of very sick people laying in trolleys there and inquests into deaths of young women who tried to access health care in a society where we're supposed to have access to healthcare. So we're all seeing that and when you see that, then you're not seeing evidence of a social net. The social net is part of the social contract, right? It's a broad agreement that citizens in a society accept state authority, right? Police, being taxed, the laws, in exchange for the social safety net,

that if you are unemployed and need housing, that that housing will be employed for you. If you get sick, healthcare will be provided for you. and if you lose your job, social welfare will be provided for you. That there is the social net and it's part of the social contract. We no longer see evidence of the social net. And there's consistent housing protests for the past 15 years. Peaceful housing protests and nothing gets done. There's been direct action housing protest such as Frederick Street in 2018

where housing activists decided to occupy. abandoned property and then masked men showed up in balaclavas and unmarked cars and beat the shit out of them in front of police the police stood back and let it happen so when the social net erodes around us and we can see it then the social contract starts to erode and then you start to see a type of protest that is highly disruptive that's when you start to see people blocking fuel depots and now you can't get petrol in your car that's when you start to see that type of protest

when the social net is no longer evident so that's what I'd say to people who were pissed off at those farmers for for blocking roads and I say this as someone who very nearly had to cancel a gig last week I almost had to cancel my limerick gig

because we didn't know whether people were going to get to it or not and despite that I still support those protests and if you want to get pissed off with something, get pissed off with years of neoliberalism, that's what leads to that. Neoliberalism erodes the social contract. It erodes public institutions and the social net. And when that happens, it erodes the conditions under which a society believes that collective action can work. You become hopeless. You become pointless. Protest doesn't work. Voting doesn't work.

Nothing changes anything. Taxes don't even work. This is hopeless. That's it neoliberalism does because it's a fucking scam. Ultimately it's just a way to siphon public money into private pockets. And then all of us go, where's the money gone? What? I don't see any houses being built. I don't see healthcare. What's happening here?

Where's the money going? It's going into the pockets of private companies that have now taken over public services. over public services, and this is what's been happening too. The West, we'll call it. It started in the 80s, which started in the late 70s in Chile, Thatcher and Reagan, but it accelerated after the fall of the Berlin Wall when capitalism no longer had a major competitor. The communism of the Soviet Union fell, and then capitalism consumed everything,

including public services. But the hopelessness and futile. that's created by neoliberal policies is also what creates fertile grounds for the far right. Why? Because when the social net is eroded and something like housing for people who need housing, when that is given to the private market, let's just say you've got to rent a house in Ireland tomorrow, which is a very difficult thing to do because there's fucking nothing on the market. You've got to rent a house in Ireland tomorrow. you're competing against someone who's homeless and might be receiving hap from the government.

So instead of housing being provided for people who need it, everybody, private and public, is not competing for the same housing. And that pushes people to see something like housing as individual competition rather than a shared system. Selfishness, scarcity, individualism. Politics doesn't appear to change anything because so much. much has been shifted to the private forces. And then collective action feels pointless. And we can see that there's a problem, but most people can't identify the source of the problem

because it's so complex. Like I know from seeing comments on the internet, a lot of Irish people don't understand that. Something like emergency accommodation, they don't understand that. One of the so-called solutions for homelessness is for homeless people to be provided with emergency accommodation via hotels. So there's, like how much does a hotel room cost a night? Between 150 and 300 euro. Hotel chains are charging the government that amount of money every single night to house

homeless people. That's market rate, so most of that money is profits. Chains are siphoning hundreds of millions every year from the Irish taxpayer because homelessness is being run as a for-profit industry in the private market. Taxes that we think are helping homeless people are being pissed away as profits to hotel chains. Most people aren't aware of that. Have you ever stayed in a hotel that's also used as emergency accommodation? I've stayed in one near Dublin Airport. It was really expensive to stay there, really expensive per night. And then when you get into the hotel, it has full occupancy, but there's no staff. They've stopped implying

people there. There's just one person at the desk looking after maybe the 10 or 20 private customers, but then the rest of the hotel has full occupancy. So you have these full occupancy hotels that are making a bunch of profits at the top, but now they're behaving like they're in a recession and they have fuck all customers. They don't need customers. The government is their biggest customer. Like one of the arguments, government's far neoliberal policies is trickle down economics. Well, if the government is paying all these hotels, then those hotels are businesses and those businesses imply people.

So there's a benefit there. They're not fucking implying people. I've seen it with my own two eyes. They're keeping staff to a minimum because most of the occupancy is through emergency accommodation. They're getting socialism for the rich and they don't need to compete for customers anymore. So there's no fucking trickle down.

It's a scam that hurts everybody and turns the misery that homeless people have to face into a product that can be perpetually milked and never solved. That then causes people who are using the hotel to then have a problem with the homeless people who are receiving emergency accommodation. I don't see evidence for the average person

in common sections on the internet or how I speak to understanding how deeply evil that particular system is and the scope of it and what's happening. People know, oh, emergency accommodation, I think it's when they put homeless people into hotels for a couple of nights. I mean, it's great if it's cold outside and there's a family because otherwise they'd be on the street, so isn't it great that they're in a hotel for a couple of nights? So it looks like a good thing, but I don't think they grasp that it's a for-profit system where there's no incentive to solve it because so much money is being made. It's been going on for years, despite having the term emergency in there.

if it's some temporary measure. It's been going on for fucking years. And the people who are living in emergency accommodation, there's no new housing supply being built for them to actually get homes. So this is actually very fucking evil. And in a caring society, it should be illegal. And the government should be using our taxes

to directly build and provide houses for people who need them. You can't do that. That'd be too expensive. You can't just, government can't just build a lot of houses and give them to people. That'd be so expensive. It'd probably be cheaper than what the fuck we're doing now. At least that's not for profit.

But we don't see that. We've forgotten what it used to look like. Like, you know how my parents got a house? Like my dad, my dad had a regular job. My dad worked in an airport. He worked at a ticket desk. My mother worked in a supermarket packing shelves. Fairly humble jobs, neither of them would get you access to housing now.

There was a thing called the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act. Houses weren't financialized. houses weren't like hoarded and bought and sold for profits the way that they are now and also the state was building houses and that kept overall prices down I remember saying to my ma'am

did you get a mortgage from the bank and she's like no the banks didn't give ordinary people money the banks didn't do that there was no mortgages like how the fuck did you get a house so if a person had a job a relatively stable job which is what my dad and my ma had

the council would literally just give you a loan with fuck all interest on it they would just give you money to buy or build a house that loan was backed by the government so you didn't have a bank breathing down your neck if you missed payments

and my dad missed loads of fucking payments and nothing happened no threat of eviction nothing why did that exist because a social net existed it was government policy the government policy was it is a good idea

if lots of people have their own homes, because then we have a stable society. In order to have a society, we must have a stable social net first. That's the most important thing. And then with that social net and the social contract, you can have the confidence

of collective bargaining, strikes, protest, fucking unions. My dad was in a union. My dad worked for Aer Lingus when it was a state company, owned and controlled by the state, and they had unions,

and if they weren't happy with their employment conditions, they went on fucking strike and their demands were met and people couldn't fly. But what it also meant was full-time contracts, stable, secure job, pension, a person who the government could give a loan to

for a fucking house. See, that's a system. Contrast that with the 2008 recession. Limerick, for example, half the fucking town is employed by Dell, this big giant American multinational corporations that are in Ireland

so that they don't have to pay fucking tax. Yes, they're providing employment, but do those people have full-time contracts? Do they have fucking unions? Do they have pensions? Do they have job security? Do they fuck? All those people are giving loans to purchase houses by banks who are doing it for profit. Then the economy goes tits up.

Dell computers who are employing half the town have zero loyalty. They say fuck that, we're leaving. Everyone then defaults on their mortgages and you get a massive recession. Working in middle class people lose their fucking arces. they have nothing, then the wealthy people who have the money get to buy up all that debt, get to buy up all those, get to buy up all the really cheap houses that people had to abandon after they lost their arces. And now they're renting those things out. Neoliberalism is designed for that. It's designed for boom and bust, and every time there's a bust, the rich get richer.

But the world of unions, council houses, getting loans from the council, job security, pensions, a social, net and a social contract. That is all flipped now. The point I'm trying to get to is neoliberalism, it's very difficult to see. It's a fog. It's an ether. It's a mire. You can't really point it and go there. That's the issue. It's such a complicated system. And that's where you don't see a lot of literacy around that system. Instead, what people see are its impacts. They just see loads of homeless people on the streets and the emergence of shanty towns

and are unaware of why nothing's being done. People are trying to get houses, people who are lucky enough to be able to afford to get a mortgage are now competing with giant investment funds. Giant faceless piles of cash

are buying up entire housing estates to rent, to rent all those houses. To the Irish government. And where do all those profits go to? To someone's pension in China. The same thing is being done with IPAS centres, international protection applicant centres.

Refugees, the provision of housing for refugees in Ireland is being run as a for profit system. Today the Irish Minister for State, an independent TD, Michael Healy Ray from Down in Kerry, He resigned from government in solidarity with the protesters, in solidarity with the farmers and the fuel protesters. He held his fist up high when the cameras were pointing at him and it created a narrative of, a media narrative of this man, this is a man of the people standing with the protesters. Eight days ago, it was reported in the news that this government minister, the minister for state, his private property farm received 1.3 million for accommodating Ukrainians. So here's a government minister who's also profiting from the refugee crisis.

When things like housing, things that are public services, when these things are put to the private fucking market and then run as a for-profit system, like there's a huge amount of our government ministers are also landlords. When these things are run as a private system for profit, then you have to wonder, where is the incentive for a real solution when so much money is being made? Why do you think so many hotels get built?

Why do we need so many fucking hotels? Why not build houses? So many hotels are being built because they're recession proof. If you've got a hotel, you've got guaranteed business from the state in either housing, homeless people in emergency accommodation, or home housing people who need international protection and refugees.

These structures are very complex. They're not widely understood. I know this from speaking to people and from witnessing conversations playing out online underneath news articles. This shit isn't widely understood. What is understood and seen and felt are the visible impacts of it, you see? So you look around and you see a society

where something like housing is becoming unstable. People feel exposed and they feel that the causes of this are personal because it's competitive now. It's individual, not structural. Politics and voting, whoever the fuck you vote in doesn't seem to change a thing. Collective action feels fucking pointless. Protest feels pointless. And that combination of bullshit, the high insecurity, low trust in other people. No clear structural explanation.

because it's too complex. That creates the conditions where people are very frustrated. And when you can't see what your big, big, big structural enemy is, you redirect that anger towards visible others people, refugees, homeless people. There's a housing crisis because of immigrants. It's them, it's those people over there. Know that there's a system where the state is deliberately, as policy, not to be.

not building enough houses because housing now relies on the market and because it relies on the market. Scarcity of housing pushes up the rents and prices makes it more profitable for the landlords and now public money ends up flowing into the pockets of landlords instead of solving the shortage. So it's a vicious loop. So it becomes fertile grounds for the far right. and a lot of far right elements tried to jump on those fuel protests at the weekend and tried to capture

the anger and make the fuel protests about immigrants or refugees outweaving their brand new Irish flags I mean we're getting to the point now I never ever thought the Irish flag could be co-opted by the far right

because it's a flag of revolution and anti-imperialism and it's a flag of unity. But now we're in the situation where you see an Irish flag and you have to wonder, does that mean up the ra or refugees out? And the only way you can tell is if the Irish flag looks brand new and it still has the crinkles on it from the packaging, then it usually means refugees out. And then the older non-creased Irish flag means up the ra. But why am I talking about housing when I said it was going to speak about fuel protests? Because it's all systemic. The

system of neoliberalism over the past 20, 25 years, and the feeling of hopelessness, the fact that protest doesn't work, politics doesn't seem to work because things are pushed to the private market, that breeds a social infrastructure whereby effective protest then has to become disorder, disorderly. Let's not forget that there were riots in Dublin two fucking years ago, but the farmers' protest there of the past week was non-violent. The only violence that I saw was members of

the guards ripping protesters up. But this was a non-violent, highly disruptive, highly disruptive protest. Achieved a response. Not the response that the protesters would have wanted fully, but

I think we should all take a little win from the fact that we all saw protest working there the past week. That's what we saw. And if you want to get back to a place where protest doesn't need to be that disruptive because a social contract exists,

then educate yourself about neoliberal policies and fight back against it. Thousands of people march to the streets peacefully at an agreed time. The government sees that and then they respond to those demands. That's the social contract. That's how it's

supposed to work. And when it comes to voting, like the Far right are going to emerge with very simple narratives, pointing fingers, going that person over there is the cause of your problems. The far right are shills for neoliberalism. Like, why the fuck do you think the billionaires? Trump and America are supporting the far right in Europe. Why do you think they want that?

Because when the far right getting, they shill for big business, even more so than so-called. centrist. They shill for big business and then they bring in deregulation. There's laws and regulations that protect consumers, that protect workers. There's things that businesses and industry and corporations cannot do because these things are crimes. Deregulation removes these things so they're not crimes so that consumers can be exploited and workers can be exploited in the service of profits. You look at where neoliberalism was the most aggressive. And it's in countries where there was far-right fascist governments.

As soon, neoliberalism was tested out on Chile in the 1970s after a fascist coup. And when it was brought in, it was the fascist far-right government of a pinachet who got it all public services and handed it to private companies, all right? Vote for who's talking about health care, who's talking about housing, who's talking about unions, workers' rights. I hope the farmers protests there. It can go in one of two fucking directions. I'd like to think that the past week was an example of how collective action and civil disobedience, peaceful civil disobedience, can serve as an example for all of us going forward when it comes to holding power to account.

Those protesters, like I said, they didn't get exactly what they were. want it but they can walk away with their fucking heads up high because the real victory is they showed everybody there is a way to do this like when it comes to housing i keep saying this but find out where your local cat who is community action tenants union there's loads of them all over ireland join one of those that's a community action tenants union that's collective action protest against illegal evictions rent increases like holding land landlords to account, corporate fucking landlords. If you have a mortgage, if you pay rent, you can join Katu.

You can't join Katu if you're a landlord, but if you have a mortgage and you pay rent, you can join Katu. It's not political, it is a community action tenants union. A collection of words there that strike fear into any fucking neoliberal. If all the Katus in Ireland gathered together and got enough fucking members, you could be dealing with a Charles Stewart Parnel's situation. situation. Charles Stuart Parnell, you know, there's a fucking Parnell street in every city, lads. We've named streets after these people.

Charles Stuart Parnell and the Land League, they had huge campaigns of civil disobedience, rent strikes, people power, and they used this against the might of the fucking British Empire to achieve land reforms and to advance home rule and to lay the foundations that would eventually become, you know the Republic, the free state, the 26 counties but those farmers were, they protested because

a lot of them after the attack on Iran by Israel and America it didn't just put fuel prices up it also put up the price of fertilizer

so I want to speak about that because it actually it's, I get to talk about barred shit again not only barred shit I was a by a... not attacked. I was accosted by a swarm of flies

and I want to speak about that but it's relevant to this conversation. Let's have a little ocarina pause before I do that. I have my bass ocarina with me this week. So I'm going to play my bass ocarina, which the ocarina last week was disturbing some dogs. And also a few people pointed out that some people listen to me at night time

and they like to drift off to sleep and if I start blowing a high-pitched ocarina it can be quite alarming for somebody who's drifting off to sleep so I've got a base ocarina I'm going to play this and you'll hear some adverts for bullshit and you got rain there as well

that was the base ocarina pause support for this podcast comes from you with the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast if this podcast brings you mirth

entertainment, merriment, joy, distraction whatever the fuck as you listen to this podcast. Please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. Because this podcast is listener-funded and fully independent, that's how I have the time and space to show up every single week with a podcast. I adore this job. I love it. It brings me

a fantastic amount of meaning. I love showing up each week. That's why I haven't missed a week in eight years. I'm going to continue doing this podcast for as long as podcasts are things. You know, I'm going to keep doing it. I adore this. So if you like showing up each week and listening too, then consider paying me for the work that I'm doing.

But if you can't afford it, you just don't want to. Don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. And all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. month. That's it. So consider supporting the podcast directly, if you'd like, and if not, no hassle. Everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. And it means that I'm not beholden to advertisers in any way.

No advertisers. Advertisers don't want to sponsor a fucking podcast about neoliberalism, okay? We don't have to worry about that. I'm not worried about sponsorships. If they want to advertise here to do so on my terms. They don't want that they can fuck off. That's fine. No one gets to dictate, shape, change, even suggest what the content of this podcast is. This is listener funded. I've won responsibility to make sure that when I do show up for this podcast

that what I'm speaking about is something I'm legitimately passionate about. That's what I do. Okay, upcoming gigs. I think my next gig is Vickers Street. Yeah, I'm in Vickr Street. next Monday the 20th of April for a lovely gorgeous relaxed Monday night evening I have a magnificent guest for this podcast also I'm probably not doing another Vicar Street until 2027 next winter I'm taking the summer off and I'd say next winter that's

going to be I'll be trying to get some international gigs in so if you do want to catch me in in Vicar Street, which it's the spiritual home of this podcast, really, of the live podcast. It's where I have my most intimate gigs. If you want to catch that, the last opportunity for a year is going to be next week

in Dublin, 20th of April, all right, and there's a small amount of tickets left for that. Then Galway there on the 25th of April on St. Mark's Day. I'm there in Leisureland, come along to that. Daytime gig in Maynooth

on the 9th of May that's a Saturday at half one in the day at the Arts and Minds Festival in May New University come along to that if you're doing fuck odd at half one in the day on a Saturday in May Sheffield there in July

Berlin and Germany two gigs in Berlin on the 19th and 20th of June but I'd say they're sold out let me check there a few tickets left on a second night there in Berlin I got some wonderful recommendations last week

on Instagram for, I asked for some pubs that sell Czechoslovakian laggers so I got some wonderful Berlin recommendations there. Sheffield in July on the fucking, is that the fifth? I think that's the July. July is the seventh month, isn't it? The fifth of July I'm in Sheffield at the Crossed Wires Festival, taking it easy in the summer. And then October, my tour of England, Scotland and Wales, beginning in Brighton at the Brighton Dome. Cardiff. Warwick Art Centre in Coventry Bristol Guildford

London that's very nearly sold out Glasgow also nearly sold out Gateshead and Nottingham The whole tour is Even though that's six months away That whole tour is quite low on tickets So if you're thinking of waiting

I'm going I'm going to get tickets for that Close to October You might miss out So you're better off getting them now So throughout the fuel protests in Ireland The weather was mad In the morning times it'd be sunny And then by lunchtime it was freezing cold

And then by the evening you could have aggressive hailstorms And then it was sunny and warm again So this very Tempestuous, unpredictable, aggressive weather As you know I'm trying to grow vegetables this year I've got potatoes and I've got loads of little seedlings for broccoli, spinach, all of these little plants. And I made a mistake last week.

I keep these plants, these seedlings, indoors. But I'm trying to weather them now, which means I put them outside under supervision so that they can get better quality sunlight because they're outside. And also to harden them against the cold for when they eventually go into the earth in about two or three weeks time. But I put my seedlings out. and then this fucking colossal hailstorm came from nowhere with no warning

and battered the seedlings and actually severed a load of them so a lot of my broccoli seedlings and my cabbage seedlings they got split in two it killed all of my sunflowers these hailstones split them in two and when that happened

and I was so disappointed to see the devastation of my seedlings to see that at least 30% of my cabbages and broccoli now, they're dead because they've been battered by hailstones. I said to myself, I should have been listening to the folklore. The first 10 days of April,

I say this every fucking year. These 10 days are very important to me because there is specific folklore that exists in Ireland about those first 10 days that tell us, that warn us, The first 10 days of April are insane weather-wise. So you have to be careful. Never try to predict anything with the first 10 days of April.

They're chaotic. Now they're chaotic because Ireland is an island where a little island in the middle of the wet, moist Atlantic Ocean. As the days get longer from the middle of March onwards, the longer days and the increase in sunlight that heats the land, It heats the soil. So the land is a little bit hotter. But then the air, the Atlantic air, is cold and fucking wet.

And this just creates instability, chaos. That hot air meets the cold, wet air, and you've got chaos. But in Ireland we have a story for this. A piece of folklore called Naléhenta, Leantan de Naboria V. The days of the brindle cow. So the first 10 days of April are the days of the brindled cow And this is an old old story

And my ma used to say it to me as a child When it came to April 1st or second or third And it's sunny outside She'd go, don't go out without your jacket It's the days of the brindled cow It could rain out of nowhere Never trust the first 10 days of April Now I'm fascinated with any piece of folklore

Which addresses the predictability of seasonal behaviour Like Halloween is one of them. Halloween night, the Kailoch, the winter the winter goddess or the hag emerges from a cave and strips the land bear and that's the Halloween night story and it's really about

the emergence of winter. It's very beneficial to a population who don't have writing. You don't have fucking writing and the system of writing. You need to hold your stories in oral culture and then the landscape and the weather systems and the cycle of time becomes the book that you read from.

And these stories have held true for thousands of years. But we're the first generation living in climate collapse. We are the first generation of people to experience climate collapse. So every year I like to watch the stories of the folklore that I know are thousands of years old and see if do they still hold true. And each year the first 10 days of April that is held true. It's the story of the old brindled cow I tell it every year at this time

I'll tell you a simplified version There's a heart of cows in a field They're brindled cows It's a pattern And there's one old cow She's an old brindle cow And she's seen a lot of winters And it gets to the end of March

And she walks around all cocky in a field And she says that was a very mild winter Fuck that winter That was nothing the breeze didn't knock me. I'm an old cow, and that winter should have killed me, and it didn't look at me.

Now I'm after to enjoy summer. But the season of winter overheard the cow and got mad offended. The fuck do you mean? What do you mean I was a shit winter? What do you mean I wasn't cold enough? What do you mean? I wasn't windy enough or wet enough.

What do you mean I couldn't kill you? You stupid cow? I'm winter. I'm all powerful. How dare you insult me like that? So winter is so insulted. So winter, the month of March, consults the month of April.

So two months are having a chat with each other. So March goes to April and says, this fucking prick of an old cow is boasting that I'm not harsh enough, all right? I want to finish her off, but then the month of April says, chill out March. It's my turn now.

I'm about to get warm and hot, all right? But then March says to April, how would you feel if that cow was taking the piss out of you? Come on, are you on my side or not? So April says, okay, fair enough, March. All right? I'll give you a shot at killing this cow with some cold freezing breezes. Give her everything you've got.

I'm going to give you a loan of 10 days. So the month of April gives a loan of 10 days that should be spring, but hands it over to March and says, go nuts. Do a bit of winter for 10 days. Your grand, you can have it. So March gets the 10 days and really prepares to wreak havoc on the land Now meanwhile the old brindle cow

Is out in the middle of the field Not a care in the world The old brindle cow is like Fuck winter Winter was shit Now it's summertime, now it's my time She's wandering around the field All cocky

Eating nettles, eating grass Convinced that summer is upon her And then finally winter goes You don't fucking know that I'm after getting 10 days, I'm after getting 10 days off summer. So for the first 10 days of April, it's not spring, it's not summer, it's actually winter, it's the end of winter, and winter has fucking mad crack with it. So it goes nuts and kills the cow, kills the cow with wind and rain and sleet and hail and everything that I saw in the past week, everything that I witnessed

and experienced in the past week the first 10 days of April, chaotic weather, that fucking story delivers it. And I should have known better than to put my seedlings outside. Within tooth, they just got decapitated by hailstones from fucking nowhere. After it happened, I said, these are the 10 days where that shit happens. So I was glad to live another year during climate collapse, where the first 10 days of April were chaos. that gave me a feeling of comfort and predictability. Once that starts shifting, you see, and you can't,

and the first 10 days of April aren't chaotic, then the climate is changing before your eyes and the old stories are losing their meaning. That's heartbreaking. A story like that, which was once all existed before writing, that that will now become irrelevant. And the reason I know that that story most likely predates writing is because it's actually highly relevant to farmers and to fertiliser.

Before colonisation, Ireland had a pastoral tradition. We were a cattle-based economy, so cattle was a big deal, but people moved with their cattle. And there used to be a tradition that would start about now. This tradition was called bullying. bullying was very important. So if you had cattle and they were to feed on grass, instead of fertilizing your field to get stronger grass, when it came to about April, every community, usually the teenagers, the young boys and the young girls, came to about April, they would move with their cattle, right, up to the hills where the grass was thicker. So you're not

Relying upon fertilizer, you're moving your cattle to an area where the grass is better. And entire communities in Ireland, I'm talking 1500 years ago, longer. Entire communities in Ireland would move with their cattle to the hills to stay in these huts known as Bowley's, Bowley huts, and they would stay there for the summer with their cattle. But what made it really important, it wasn't just about moving cattle to the hills. It was a meeting place for all different communities. and it was a place of courtship because it was the teenagers that were going. So people would meet people from the opposite sex

from a different community. You'd share songs, you'd share stories, you'd share weaving techniques. Culture would be shared at these pastoral sites of moving, these bullying sites. But that story of the old Brindle Cow as a piece of oral folklore is so old that it was for the benefit of people

who were bullying, it was for the benefit of people who moved with their cattle to the hills. The thing is, with bowling, if you had a herd of cattle and everyone else has a herd of cattle, well, you want to get the best spot on the mountain. So some people, like if you're on holidays and the jarmans come out with their towels and they'll leave the towels on the deck chairs before everyone else, you might have some people who decide, I'm going to go up to the mountains early now and I'm going to bring my cattle and I'm going to get the best spot. If these people did this on the 1st of April, the 2nd of April, then chances are their entire herd could die

because it would get battered with that crazy Irish weather that happens in the first 10 days of April. But they couldn't write this down. This is happening before the 5th century when the technology of writing arrives in Ireland. So you hold that knowledge in the story of the old Brindle cow. So you tell the story of this cow went out into the field at the start of April and winter got angry and battered it. So that was like the, that was the folk knowledge that warned

people, don't go bullying, don't take your entire herd of cattle up to the mountain on the first 10 days of April. Bullying started to collapse. That practice, the pastoral farming, uh, um, moving with, people moving with their cattle, that collapses with colonization. I'm really simplifying things, but I've done podcasts on this. If you want a podcast about the history of Irish farming traditions, go to my podcast about potatoes from about six weeks ago, I think. Ireland from the 1600s to the 1800s, right, fully colonized country, which becomes an export-based cattle economy.

So forests are clear. land is cleared and Ireland becomes pasture land where cows are an industrial product to be exported for the benefit of the British Empire. Dairy and then by the 17-1800s a lot of Irish beef was being exported and salted via cork for the slave colonies that the British owned. But it establishes a farming tradition that's based heavily on the export of cattle products. And then a huge reliance there then on fucking fertiliser. Fertiliser that can be brought in from outside. We used to get fertiliser from barred shit. Up until about 1905,

most fertiliser came from imported barred shit. That was the source of nitrogen. What stopped that was, a chemical process called the Harbour Process was invented in 1905, where modern chemistry figured out, how to pull nitrogen from the air. So now we had unlimited fertilizer. But in order to execute the harbour process,

you need natural gas. And that's where the Iran war right now, why that's impacting Irish farmers and fertiliser, not just fucking Irish farmers, farmers ought to around the world. 20% of the world's fertiliser has to pass the straight of hormones, right, which is that choke point there at Iran that's been in the news all week or for the past three weeks.

So countries like, so Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman. They have the natural gas, right, where a lot of the world's fertiliser is made to do this harbour process. They use natural gas to pull nitrogen from the air and make this into fertiliser.

This is what gives us, this is where the world has 8 billion people when the harbour process was discovered in 1905 humanity effectively achieved unlimited nitrogen there used to be a finite amount of nitrogen you got nitrogen from decaying from cow shit from decaying plants

certain plants that you can grow like clover can take nitrogen out of the and put it back into the soil. But before the harbour process, the human population could only grow to a certain size because that's how much food we could grow to feed ourselves. As soon as the harbour process got discovered, we had all this nitrogen,

and then the human population in the world exploded because there was more calories available. The current global, unsustainable human population, the massive amounts of humans that exist in the world, exists because of an excess of nitrogen and because of access to that nitrogen. When Israel and America attacked Iran a couple of weeks ago, right? 20% of the world's nitrogen was cut off from supply chains because of the straight of hormones. The United Nations announced yesterday that 32 million people worldwide are now facing famine as a result.

of this. You're talking about growing seasons. 20% of the world's fertiliser is, that's massive. So crops that were supposed to be planted a couple of weeks ago and grass that was supposed to be fertilized a couple of weeks ago, that didn't happen because 20% of the world's fertilizer did not leave the straight of hormones. So for me and you, what that will mean is, come September, October food in the supermarkets is going to be quite expensive. What it means for people living in the global south

will be famine. Even if shit resolves tomorrow and all that fertiliser manages to get out, it's creeping out at the moment. We're talking about growing seasons. It's too late. So that there was also a huge driving force behind the Irish fuel protests.

it's not just the price of diesel for their tractors, it's the fertiliser. 20% of the world's fertilizer supply disappears, then you have to try and find fertilizer from somewhere else. Under the rules of capitalism, now fertilizer is more scarce, so the price goes up, now it becomes unaffordable, and farmers are going to be out of business. That's real shit. So the question you have to ask there is,

how the fuck does it get to a situation where 20% of the world, fertiliser is in such a volatile area. Like, does that not seem fucking nuts? So all the fertilizer is being made in these Gulf countries. And if shit kicks off with Iran and Israel, this hotbed, if shit kicks off there, you mean a strait of international trade is closed and we're all fucked. How the fuck does that happen? Neoliberalism.

The great race to the bottom. The great race to the bottom. is what happened there. From the 1980s to the 2000s, right? So under deregulation, trade liberalisation, cost-driven globalisation associated with neoliberal policies,

the large corporations figured that they would make the most amount of profits and produce the cheapest fertiliser if they moved all production to that gulf area inside the strait of hormones. That's what happened. It actually served,

to destabilise the area more because it makes the stakes higher. You're going to put all the fertiliser there in that area where all the countries are fighting with each other, where Israel is stuck into the fucking middle of it, canonising, all the fertiliser is going to be produced there. Why? Because this is neoliberalism. This is about profits. This isn't about social nets or social contract.

This is about the profit of private corporations. So our profits are actually. more important than food security. That's what's the most important here. So we can make the cheapest fertiliser there around the straight of hormones and export it globally. But then what happens is

fucking Trump decides to have a crack at Iran and now the world lost 20% of its fertiliser and 32 million people are going to be plunged into famine according to the United Nations. Does this impact the nat? the companies that are producing the natural gas that the fertiliser has been made from,

no, their profits go up. People are the ones who pay the price, not the corporations. This just means that fertiliser has become more scarce. So if you're in the fertilising selling business, or if you're in the natural gas business, this is excellent, your prices go up now. And then what happens in Ireland and loads of other countries now, because of that, last Saturday, you couldn't put petrol in your car

because the farmers are blockading the roads because their livelihoods have been put in stake because of this straight of harmon shit. That's a huge, that's nuts. Could somebody not have predicted this? Could somebody, yes, they could have. Absolutely. Food security is also part of the social net.

The capacity for a country to produce its own food if it needs it. We used to have a state-owned fertilizer company. Ireland used to make its own fertiliser specifically so that something like this could never happen because something like this used to be completely and utterly unthinkable it used to be unthinkable that the farmers of Ireland could not access fertiliser

that's just no no no no no no we can't let that happen how do you not let that happen well what you do is you have a fertiliser company which isn't run for profit. This actually isn't run for profit. It's run by the state as an essential service because fertiliser is so fucking important. Food security is so important

that just like our electrical services state run or the health service or even the airline is state run. We need to have essential services and we can't expose these to capitalism. We need to make sure that they're state run. So fertilizer is. so important, let's do that. So in the 1960s, Irish fertiliser

industries, IFI, there were two fertiliser plants in Ireland. One of them was down in Cork, I believe. But these were state bodies, semi-state companies, like Aer Lingus, but of fertiliser. From the 1970s, Ireland had, we

had natural gas from the Kinsale gas field. So Ireland was producing its own fertiliser for our own farmers. at an affordable price because it's not being run for profit it's being run for the social net for food security by the 1980s it started to collapse because of neoliberalism

because of cheap imported fertiliser from outside from the private market from these new companies that were being set up in the Gulf were undercutting this really really really cheap imported fertiliser was undercutting the safe domestic fertiliser that existed to to prop up the food safety net

and then by 2002 the company had to be wound up so by 2002 we no longer had a national state producer of domestic fertiliser our fertiliser used to be a public service this public service doesn't exist anymore and then it was put to the private market but because the private market is run exclusively for profits

and not for a social net or for safety or for food security because it's only profits. Now we experience collapse when something goes wrong. So that's the farmers are out protesting because they have no social net. And in six, seven months time the poorest people in Ireland are going to have great difficulty affording how to feed themselves and according to the UN 32 million people in the global South are going to be plunged into poverty and we don't know how many of those people are going to die from families. It's not just because of the horrendous actions of Trump and Israel.

It's also the system of unfettered capitalism for profit is far, far more important than a social net. When I say social net there, what I'm saying is regulation, right? Neoliberalism seeks to deregulate. Regulation, it's laws for businesses, laws that say, no, that should be a crime. No, that can't happen. That should be a crime. Hold on a second. 20% of the world's fertiliser has been made in this one extremely volatile area. And if something goes wrong with the straight of hormones for like two weeks,

you mean tens of millions of people could die? Just so ye can earn more money? Ye gas companies and ye fertiliser, just so he can earn more money? That should be illegal. No, no, no, that's out of the question. That's unthinkable. No, no, no, no, you should go to jail for even suggesting that. No, no, food security and fertiliser is way, way too important, way too important.

So what should happen is that different countries should have, fertiliser should be a public service to make sure that something like this doesn't happen as part of the social contract and the social net. So we're going to bring in regulations to make sure that that happens. Neoliberalism, we used to have those regulations. neoliberalism de-regulates them. So the profit is the most important thing. So anyway, before I go, I told you I was accosted by a lot of flies.

So in the Bardshit district, the Starlings haven't returned yet, they're going to return mid to late May. So in the Bardshit district in Nimick City, which is a city, a street that's full of Bardshit, not right now. One of the flagship shops on this street was a Deals. Deals, if you're listening over in England, it's like Poundland.

It deals, deals a fantastic shop. It's a dollar store, just really, really, really cheap shop. What an excellent place for people who don't have a lot of money. To buy shit that they need really cheaply, especially like cleaning products, toilet roll. Fantastic for that. Deals has shut down. Since the pandemic, that model is no longer profitable. for the company. Inflation rising costs mean that they can't really operate as a super budget

shop anymore and turn over a profit. So the poorest people, pound land clothed as well I think over in the UK, I might be wrong about that. The poorest people are losing access to the shops, the last vestiges of affordable living. These are disappearing. So deals is shut down and the Bardshit district. But what's left outside it now is thousands and thousands of flies. It only shut down a couple of days ago. Now I can't explain it, but like in the summertime people walk around the Bardshit District and they have to put their t-shirts up over their faces because the

stink of Bardshit is so great and then when they put their hands up above their t-shirts they lose balance and then slip on the Bardshit. It's phenomenal. But now people are getting not attacked by flies. but there's so many flies that people are running past them. It's chaos because of all the flies outside this deals. It's only been happening for a couple of days but I've been fascinated by it. Now I can't answer why the flies are localized around this abandoned deals. There was obviously something at the door or in the shop where the flies were spawning, okay?

But I went down there to where the flies were and I managed to capture one and then correctly identify it. And this is the bit that I'm fascinated about. The flies are called St. Mark's Flies. They're a very common indigenous fly to Ireland. St. Mark's Flies. The reason they're swarming and that people are being really disturbed by them outside the deals is they're currently, they're engaged in a mating ritual and part of the

of the, I'm talking a swarm of thousands, right? They're not massive. They're like large midges. They're black. But the males are looking for a mate. So what the males do when they swarm is they all do a dance. And the dance is quite a lazy, swaying dance. So this is why they're annoying cunts.

They're flying all over the Bardshitt District, into people's mouths and eyes and everything. But I want to close on the St. Mark's fly. Because here's the thing. You know, I keep speaking about what are the stories, the stories and folklore that are relevant to the seasons, where you can measure it against the climate and see evidence of climate collapse. So the days of the brindle cow rang true. The first ten days were chaos, brilliant. Fucking St. Mark's Fly. They're called St. Mark's Fly for a reason. St. Mark's Day is the 25th of April. these flies, their behaviour is so predictable

that we've decided to name them after a fucking day 25th of April they're after appearing two or three weeks early outside an abandoned deals and why does it matter? Why something like that? Who gives a fuck about something like that? Who cares about St. Mark's flies? They're very important pottenators. They're only going to live for about a week

so they're supposed to come out. around the 25th of April. So that means that flowers will emerge around the 25th of April and their pollinators are already dead. Because whatever

change has happened in the climate the St. Mark's Flies think that the 5th or 6th of April is actually the 25th of April. So when it comes around to the 25th the St. Mark's flies have already died. They've pollinated fuck all. They've just danced outside of deals. and then flowers have lost their pollinator

and that there is climate collapse alright I'll catch you next week last two gigs of my big Irish tour next week and then I'm chill a bit for the summer except for a couple of gigs peppered here and there but come along to Vickr Street next Monday that's going to be wonderful all right in the meantime rub a dog

wink at a swan and shove your head into a swarm of dancing St. Mark's flies and tell them that I was asking for him. Dog bless.