Man I’m tired, aren’t we all says you? Yep, so when you’ve two wee lads scrapping round the house your patience is extra thin. Trying to teach them conflict resolution is tricky however. Especially when you’re poor at it yourself. But one main tenet I try emphasise is ; ‘irregardless of what went on, once you,  hit you’re wrong; wrong too or just wrong on your own’, either way I’m trying to get them to understand that there are certain ways of doing things. Getting your point across, without letting emotion dictate and lashing out. Well, ideally anyhow.

What’s this got to do with anything you ask? Other than a safe vent on the throes of parenting? Well, I’m seeing a lot of toddler behaviour about at the minute so I felt the reference was disappointingly pertinent. A global oil crisis and we with ships unable to dock for people pretending ‘blockading’ is ‘peacefully protesting’. The mind boggles.

Yes we have had enough, yes it seems everything costs a bomb and yes people are working bleddy hard. But how on earth does this help anyone other than a few? Looking at my bank balance, as I head beyond the initial euphoric days of my monthly payment. I can certainly empathise with those feeling the pinch. I very much am, and I understand we all are. This is certainly a time where serious mutual respect and empathy is needed, and lacking I fear.The top of the payslip versus the bottom is a stunning contrast; like the first crunch into a loop the loop versus the last lukewarm green bit of slime dripping off the damp stick.

Collective Bargaining

I’ve always believed in the power of protest, the power of unions and moreover the power of collective bargaining. I’m involved with my own union and see my only voice as an employee as being in my union, and indeed for any worker. So, over the years I have always been understanding of and supportive of workers involved in mandated industrial disputes.

I’ve also always struggled with people’s shock when they’re disrupted by industrial action as that’s the whole point surely? I couldn’t get over the treatment of Luas drivers for example or indeed anytime a teaching union even mentions balloting members for strike action.So as the week dragged on, my old friend nuance came into view.

Phrases like; ‘We will allow some water through, or people going for cancer treatments etc’, much akin to that disturbing audio from that water protest, way back when when he asked the mob; ‘will we let her go?. The hubris to think you’re entitled to impose on anyone else’s autonomy. Why should someone have to reveal personal health information to randomers from organised facebook groups in order to be ‘let through?’ Just who do they think they are?

To then double down with statements of ‘we’re speaking for the people of Ireland’, even more confounding. You do not speak for me, and many times many of us have tried to speak and you wanted no such things. So spare me and get a grip.

Elephant in the Room

All of the anger, the outrage and the ping-ponging of the usual soundbites is strangely narrow in the focus at the moment. Like heading back listening to The Beatles these days, I do like to look to the source. Why can’t some look to the source of this dark, expensive chapter? When we all know it’s the orange maniac in the big White House. All of this uncertainty created sure is great for his pals, speculating on prices with his bit of fore-knowledge on when to buy and sell (Called insider trading in days of yore).

Why not call that out or at least acknowledge it? Why not blockade Doonbeg or the US and Israeli embassies? Probably because these are not times of nuance, these are times of entrenchment. Some, have been shown to have awful things on their social media that play all the hits: great replacement theory, anti-immigrant hate, the usual feel-good hits of the far right. And of course the vilification of any green initiatives and the weird hope that something awful happens to Greta Thurnburg.

Why not send anger his way? No way, of course not, it doesn’t tally with their groupthink.

All I’m Saying

So, at the risk of repeating myself, I can’t emphasise enough I see people’s struggle and I am living it. We are all in the same boat and have to react to inflation not avoid it alas. Every sector is entitled to lobby for tax breaks or whatever else they can get to help make their work pay that bit more reasonably.

Which is what is concerning here though; for those shouting about all sorts apart from fuel, as in the usual far-right die hards. Whatever is forthcoming for hauliers and farmers will not satiate the appetite for hate of those guys. As well as those who have shown a fundamental misunderstanding of what was actually being sought here. How those outcomes may tally with their own expectations is unclear.

The fact it isn’t being called out by so called opposition TDs and commentators in general shows a complete fracture with the actual moral courage needed to be in politics or the public ream, for me. It is unfair on genuine protestors to lump them in with the toxic elements that destroyed it.

It wouldn’t be a blog without a heavy handed tip of the hat to a poet who can put things far less heavy handed than me. Kavanagh’s wit and ability to nail the human condition is pertinent here I feel as he says in his poem Epic:’
‘I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.’

Make no mistake we are at a crossroads: don’t let a mob of maniacs speak for us. They do not.