While this is true to a degree, and while older generations of Irish people have made horrendous mistake after horrendous mistake, this is the kind of thing that is feeding into the anger younger people have for older people, which in turn, leads to issues like support for a right to housing referendum.

You can see the anger that is building on both sides here.

This is an incredible thing to say and a milestone in United States politics.

You're essentially demonising tens of millions of Americans with comments like this.

The reason this is important is because what happens in the United States tends to have a knock on effect in countries like Ireland.

The west is sliding into totalitarianism. Journalists will all be on board with this and will go down with the ship on this one. So will economists, NGOs, senior civil servants.

When these forces will really come into contact is through SF being elected. What do you do when the ruling members of your party go in one direction, when a big percentage of your voting base go in another?

Good article on the vaccines. Basically after the first five months the vaccine related deaths seem to decline and vaccine related risk falls as well.

We can see this on the rip.ie graph above as well. Six months on from July 2021 (peak amount of vaccines being administered) deaths go back close to normal in December
2021 to March 2022.

The boosters are then rolled out in January/ Febuary 2022. Since August 2022 deaths are still high, but have noticeably gone down. It seems to be following this trend to some degree.

This of course doesn't take weakened immune systems and all of that into account, and theres still the unknown/untested part of all of this but the worst case scenarios don't seem to be playing out.

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/this-one-graph-tells-you-everything?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Snapping point number one.

Going live at 21:30 today to talk about the coming months. The power situation, the right to housing, the psychology of journalists, prepping, how the middle class are propping this up. Leave any comments below this post.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for everyone who pointed out the technical (sound does improve) issues. Stream talking about the right to housing, the power issues, prepping, journalist compliance and inability to solve problems, gas turbines, the middle class and social unrest.

Hmm.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

Back after a brief hiatus, now with even less farming content and more stuff I find interesting.

Fantastic comment by Jo Blog here.

Just to push back a bit on the prospects of a Housing Referendum being passed:

You identify two groups that would be essential to getting it over the line. Virtue signalling boomers and young people looking for a home.

The virtue signalling boomers were subjected to a full court press by the media to try and get them to offer accommodation to the Ukrainain refugees. There weren't that many who signed up and of those who did most of them had a second cold hard look at the idea of surrendering their property and said no.
The all in media/government effort to persuade them failed miserably.
An all in media effort to persuade them to give up their property rights seems likely to fail the same way.

Your other group, young people locked out of the housing market, are the ones you really expect to deliver.
But again the Ukrainian example.

We've just seen that even if the government can conjure up accommodation out of the blue - modular housing appearing all over the country - it's not going to Irish people.
Even if the government can accumulate the powers to take over private housing, young people must assume the houses will go to deserving north africans first. Houses for africans is what you would actually be voting for in a property rights referendum.
How do you convince young people otherwise. They're seeing it with their own eyes.

In order to convince young people that the new property rights would benefit them you would first have to stem the flow of immigrants.

I'd enjoy watching the government struggle with that dilemma.

On The Right to Housing stuff.

The trap they will end up pulling is to get people saying "it's communism/the end of private property/WEF" so that they can write those people off as "far-right conspiracy theorists" to put normal people off.

You can simply say: "Well Sweden tried and it made the Housing Market much worse."

I think Paddy is correct on this one.

Watch what people do, rather than what they say.

The constituency Varadkar is poised to move to is FG central.

https://youtu.be/WhaJbwkL1RU

I'd consider this nearly essential viewing. A look at industry and agriculture in Donegal in 1983. In this video you can see how Donegal desperately needed something to happen to stem the tide of emigrants, at the same time you can see the start of the hallowing out that hasn't stopped the emigration, but has just started industry like our medical device factories (that a big chunk of the Donegal population are dependant on) and the near death of the wool and textile industry we used to rely on.

Ardara would be the last of the traditional weaving areas that have any weavers left at all. McGees of Donegal is basically singlehandedly keeping the traditional tweed going (got one of their flatcaps on my head already, buy local).

The dependency on EU subsidies in Agri still can't keep away the modernisation of farms, they're gradually getting larger even in this part of the country where selling land is not a thing that happens regularly.

Each generation of farmers seems to get smaller and the machinery gets bigger, to a point where farmers with machinery are in effect Agri contractors that have animals on the side, most other farmers are either past retirement and getting the pension or work at other jobs, usually for other farmers or in the nearest town. In the poorest parts of Donegal it's not uncommon for smaller farmers to just take the "Farm assist" or whatever other dole type payment the government will give them and they just live off that plus whatever small amount of animals they sell during the year.

This video was 1983, and things have changed, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. Farms rely on government schemes and payments and most people get a junior cert or leaving cert and either move to the cities or just leave altogether. Getting funding for rural projects means there's work, and therefore it buys people time instead of moving. I know men over the age of 60 who get paid to build walls, they're good at it tbf to them, but when you're paying people like that to lift rocks while their kids are packing for Oz, there's clearly a problem.

Rural people, especially Donegal people, are very conservative in general, but at this point they're willing to try something else than what we've been doing for the last 40 or 50 years because it isn't working. The problem is now if we're lucky we can go get electrical degrees and get big money putting up wind turbines. Some get jobs in the medical factories and the rest are left fend for themselves. Donegal people are known for being an introspective bunch and fairly melancholy about things, but the clock is going to hit midnight in this place sooner rather than later unless something happens to shake it up.

Can't burn turf, cattle are evil and babies are accessories in Ireland now. People are doing whatever they can to keep things going but another recession is going to literally kill people out here. Same as everywhere I know but the time for theory and rhetoric is a luxury in places in rural Ireland.