In the Dark

I suppose I should comment on the ongoing disruption to road transport in Ireland as a result of “fuel protests”. I put that in quotes because from what I’ve seen many of the protestors are the usual far-right anti-everything troublemakers who have latched onto the fact that some hauliers and farmers are struggling with the increased fuel prices arising from Donald Trump’s stupid-headed war agains Iran.

The first thing to say is that I haven’t been directly affected by any of this yet. Although the roads in Dublin have been gridlocked for four days, I don’t live there and don’t have to commute. If and when I do have to go into Dublin from Maynooth, I usually take the train and then walk. Moreover, if I did plan to travel somewhere else – purely hypothetically, you understand – to spend a couple of days away at the end of the Easter break, perhaps with another person, then there are alternatives to flying from Dublin Airport…

I say I haven’t been directly affected by any of this, but in due course there may be shortages in the shops owing to disruption to deliveries. More importantly the congestion is causing difficulties for the emergency services too. All this is reminiscent of the fuel protests in the UK in 2000, which I remember very well because they happened when we were trying to organize the annual summer school for new PhD students at Nottingham, which we almost had to abandon because of interruptions to food supplies.

I’ll just make a couple of comments on these protests before going out for dinner at an unspecified location.

One is that the Road Traffic Act 1961 states:

98.—(1) A person shall not do any act (whether of commission or omission) which causes or is likely to cause traffic through any public place to be obstructed.

(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) of this section shall be guilty of an offence.

Parking on a motorway in Ireland is also serious offence under the Road Traffic (Traffic and Parking) Regulations 1997.

Here is a trailer with a scaffold with a posting containing an incitement to murder (from here):

(I’m reliably informed that “globalist” means Jewish to these people.)

There have been four days of obvious offences like these being continually committed and the Gardaí haven’t once even tried to enforce the law of the land. They come down like a ton of bricks on, e.g., climate change protestors, but the far-right are always treated with kid gloves. Double standards or what?

I can think of two possibilities: (i) that the Gardaí are sympathetic to the Far Right or (ii) that they are scared of them. Both could be true. Either way, it is very disappointing to us ordinary law-abiding folk to find that the rules applied to the fash are not the same as those applied to the rest of us.

I’ll end with a comment about one of the ringleaders of the unlawful roadhogs. James Geoghegan is a “farm contractor” who passes himself off as an upstanding fellow but it turns out he has numerous judgements against him for non-payment of tax and cruelty to animals. He chose to put himself forward as the “PRO” of the protestors, which doesn’t seem very wise given that it was inevitable his substantial sack of dirty laundry would get a very public airing. I saw him on TV last night in an interview in which he gave every appearance of being a complete idiot, which is at least consistent.

I don’t want to tar all farmers with the same brush, but Mr Geoghegan is of an identifiable type: he hates the idea of paying his tax but is simultaneously more than happy to accept state subsidies paid for people who pay theirs. He probably hates VAT and excise duty because he can’t avoind paying them. He claims to be among the downtrodden poor but owns a fleet of vehicles. His performance in the role of victim is not exactly convincing.   If he’s looking for sympathy then he’ll find it in a dictionary.

Farming is obviously an important part of Ireland’s economy and social infrastructure, but so are many other activities.

Anyway the “protestors” say that they will stay in Dublin for “up to a month”. They must be pretty well off if they can afford to take such long holidays!