The Blindboy Podcast - Against Bigotry and Hatred

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

A look at anti irish sentiment and what it can tell us about now  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pull your shoelace from Daniel Day-Lewis's toothache, you cakey barts. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast, you glorious cunts. I'm having a hectic day. I'm having a hectic and stressful day. Because I'm on my way to Australia and New Zealand. It was communicated to me that I was supposed to be flying out on Friday, but turns out I'm flying out tomorrow. So I had everything planned. One day to put out the podcast, and then another day to pack all my bags, to print out all my visa stuff, to make sure everything's okay before I go off on tour. But alas, I'm after losing 24 hours,

so now I have to do it all in one go. And if you're thinking, blind boy, you know you were going to Australia and New Zealand for ages, why didn't you do this a week ago? And I always get these messages. I get secondhand anxiety from people who are really, really good at planning. The answer is, I'm too fucking busy.

I'm simply too busy. One podcast a week. I'm always gigging. And then on top of that, I'm always working on television shit, whether it gets made or not. So for the people who get secondhand anxiety, you'll have to just sit with that anxiety.

You'll have to sit with it. I'm gonna figure things out. Everything's gonna be absolutely grand. I'm gonna put out a podcast, and I'm gonna pack my bags, and I can sleep on the airplane if I want. There's nothing I can do about it, I was too busy. And I had planned. There was enough time. There was enough time to record my podcast, and pack my bags. But the information I received was incorrect. So I'm flying out tomorrow. But I can't wait to be honest. I'm...

I'm so fucking grateful. I'm so grateful. Just to be going...to be going down to fucking... to be going down to New Zealand. To a sold out gig. And to be...to be sharing a space. To be sharing a space with people who listen to this podcast on the other side of the fucking world. Who tune in each week on the other side of the world to listen to me do a podcast about

how much bird shit is in Limerick City. So I'm unbelievably grateful and so excited to be able to go down to the other side of the world to do that. And I hope my tour has no surprises. I'm winning new touring company. Like here's the thing with fucking, like I've been touring for years. And if you're an entertainer or whatever, and you're lucky enough to get to do gigs outside your own community to get to go to different countries and do gigs. It's a big job. Touring is really stressful. It's very stressful because like next week I'm going to be gigging Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne

one day after another. Now Australia is huge so that's like saying I'm gonna be in Greece, Italy and Norway and I have to be on stage on time to do a gig and if I don't everybody's broke you're fucked. So it's a very high stakes high stress environment doing a tour but this is why you hire a tour manager. So when I get to Australia tomorrow or whenever honestly I don't know because flying to Australia is I think it's 28 hours and you travel back in time so it's deeply confusing. I don't know when I'm going I'm at this long... The first tour of Australia I did was in 2011. So I'm at it long enough to just... I'm not worrying about it. I'm gonna end up in Australia.

And I'll figure out what day it is when I get there. What's most important is that I pack spare t-shirts, jocks, and also shower gel. This isn't even a podcast now. This isn't a fucking podcast. This is me doing my list. I'm trying to pass it off as a podcast. I promise I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna use this podcast as an excuse to compile a list of things that I need. But I do need to mention the uniqueness of travelling to Australia. It's broken up into two flights. One flight is like 9 hours. I think I'm travelling into Singapore, Singapore airport. I was there once in 2015. I saw Kenya West in real life.

And then I smoked a cigarette in a smoking area that had a lot of butterflies in it. But the most important thing about travelling to Australia is you have to fucking wash yourself. When you get to that airport on the first leg of the flight, have your shower, change your t-shirt, change your jocks, change your socks, brush your teeth so that you're fresh for the second leg of the journey. That's fucking essential. So I have to pack jockscks t-shirt and socks on my carry-on luggage and showering equipment for Singapore Airport because

then the second leg of the journey that flight is like I think 17 hours from Singapore to Australia is between 15 and 17 hours and if you don't shower in the middle you start to produce a type of sweat that you didn't know your body was capable of producing. It's not particularly pungent, it's just... I don't wanna know this about myself. This is a new smell, this is a new smell that my body is generating.

I've never smelled it before. I guess this is what it smells like when you spend 24 hours sitting on an airplane, but I don't ever want to smell like this again. It's not pungent, it's not offensive, it's just...it smells like what the color grey looks like. I smelt it once in 2011 after not taking the opportunity to shower in Singapore Airport, and it's never happening again. Also just flying to

Australia in 2011 to do a stupid horse outside tour, like that wasn't pleasant. There was a lot of people crying in the airport, you had a lot of... 2011 was peak Irish emigration so you had a lot of young people going, I'm going to Australia to emigrate to become an economic migrant and I don't want to because we were raised to believe, my specific generation of elder millennials, we were raised to believe that we would be the first generation of Irish people who would never have to emigrate. Then the other thing about touring, like I mentioned, you have to have a good tour manager.

You have to hire a person whose job is tour managing. So when you arrive in the country that you're going to, there's a person there and they're a professional and then they say, how are you getting on? My job is to make sure that you get to your gigs on time. You're the artist. You don't even have to think about getting to your gigs on time. You're the artist. You don't even have to think about getting to your gigs anymore now. You just think about doing your job of going up on stage

because I'm the tour manager and I'm gonna get you to your gigs on time. Just listen to me, follow me, and you don't have to think for the rest of this tour. Now I think I need to start hiring a pre-tour tour manager or else I wouldn't be in this situation I'm in right now where I'm both recording a podcast and then mentally packing my bag and trying to pass it off as a podcast which if we're being honest

That's what just happened there. I'm also gonna bring my eye gel so I don't get dry eyes on the airplane That's very important and I'll'll be bringing my loop earplugs. Now this isn't an advertisement, as in I'm not paid for this or anything, but there's a brand of earplug called Loop, right? There's a lot of knockoffs as well that look exactly like them, which I'm sure they're absolutely fine, but these loop earplugs, they're only about 20 quid. These things, they'll block out about 98% of outside sound. Like, they're dangerous. These earplugs are so good, I only reserved them for special situations, like having to sleep on a plane.

And I've even, I've in the past, I've gotten like specially molded earplugs that were made just for my ear that cost a lot of money and these lope earplugs that you get for 20 quid, they're better than them. So not an endorsement. Well that was an endorsement, it just wasn't a paid one. Buy a cheap knock off if you want, I'm sure they work just fine. So I'll be bringing my earplugs on the fucking plane so that I can sleep so that I can sleep sitting down very uncomfortably

And then I'm gonna arrive in Australia and meet my tour manager who I hope Because I've never met this person before who I hope is really good at their job and not a fucking lunatic because I'm gigging a long time. I'm touring a long time and I have met I'm gigging a long time. I'm touring a long time and I have met fucking lunatics. I'm not sure if I told you this story before. I may have told you versions of it and changed details in order to protect identities. But I did a gig once. Holy fuck. This was an international tour. I'm not gonna say the country.

It was a large international tour. I'm not going to say the country. It was a large international tour. And sometimes the promoter of a tour just wants to save money at all costs. Save money at all costs? That doesn't make sense. The promoter wants to save money at all costs. That's known as a semantic paradoxical irony. You'll find it quite a lot in hiberno-English, which is English as we speak it in Ireland. We speak the English language, but it is informed by the grammatical structures of the Irish

language. So sometimes we'll say statements that actually contradict themselves, and the confusion of that to an outsider is it's sometimes what leads to the the stereotype of the thick paddy So I just said there gig promoters will try to save money at all costs Completely contradictory, but you get the point. It's Expressionistic you get the point or we might say if you want to say someone's wrong You'd go, you know actually, you know a Irish and Irish, a hiberno-English response to what I've just said there. You know, promoters will try to save money at

all costs. The hiberno-English response to that is, I suppose you're right in your own way, which is a highly fluid and ambiguous way of saying that I'm wrong. But not really though. I am right in my own way. Or if someone was to walk into the room, if someone I know was to walk into the room, instead of saying hello, I might say, ah there you are now, it's yourself. Which can mean many different things. It's...there's a playfulness there, you're definitely happy to see the person, but it's also a bit mad. Ah there you are, but it's also a bit mad. Ah, there you are now, it's yourself.

Like, I'm conscious of this because I'm about to go on tour, so I'm going to be saying shit like this to Australian people and people from New Zealand. I've said things like that to Americans and British people. Ah, there you are, it's yourself. And they go quiet. And their eyes go cross-eyed as if they're trying to look at themselves. It's myself? I'm sorry, what?

Yeah, it's yourself. Yourself, there you are now. It's yourself. They don't know what to do with it. They're like, am I being accused of something? It doesn't really make that much sense in the English language because it's informed by the Irish language. In the Irish language you'd say, is tu fainé?

Which means it is yourself. So these Irish phrases find their way into the English language. And it can be sometimes contradictory. Which is why I probably said something as fucking ridiculous as, a gig promoter would try to save money at all costs. And I suppose I'm right in my own way, I am. So this is the point I'm trying to make and what you have to be aware of when you go on tour.

Some promoters would try to save money at all costs. And it's something I have to consider. So if you ask for something like a tour manager, they'll say, yeah, sure, we'll hire a tour manager. And then when you arrive, it's not a fucking tour manager. Because as I mentioned, the tour manager, essential, an essential job. This is the person who gets you the gigs on time

and organizes everything, so that the artist can just focus on entertaining. I did a tour once, and when I arrived in the country, to the airport, the tour manager was a woman that the promoter had met on Tinder three hours previously and she was on acid. So I arrive at the fucking airport and this woman is there on acid, like tripping off her balls on acid. And her job is to drive me to my hotel.

Now I've just done a massive flight, right? I've just done a huge flight, I'm arriving in this new country, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I just want to get to my hotel. So I'm not fully cognizant that this person is on acid. I'm a little bit like, like, she didn't straight up say to me, how are you getting on? I'm not a tour manager at all. I don't even know your promoter. I met him on Tinder a couple of hours ago. I'm on acid as well. She didn't say that. I had to figure this stuff out. I had to figure this stuff out as the journey went on. So... The first really bad sign was...

I get outside the airport and there's her car. Now usually you see a good tour manager. A good tour manager has a good car. They usually hire a car. This isn't any fancy Mariah Carey shit. A good tour manager hires a good car because they need it to be very reliable. The tour manager's job, I'm going to get you to the gig no matter what and nothing's gonna go wrong. So what I've done is I have hired a car that I know is fucking perfect This is gonna get us to the gigs, but not this woman It was like a shitty fucking hatchback, right? So I'm that's my first sign going Okay, something's not something's off here something's off

And then I get to the car with her with all my luggage and there's not any there's no room, right? So we stuff all the luggage into the car and then there's no room, right? So we stuff all the luggage into the car, and then there's no room for me. And then she says, you're gonna have to go in the boat. Now I'm like, I've just done a huge flight, I'm tired,

my critical faculties weren't present, probably a bit of autism thrown in. This person is the tour manager. When you get there, you listen to the tour manager. And right now the tour manager is telling me to climb into the boat. I'm asking, is this okay? Is it fine? Yeah, work away. So now I'm... Now I'm in the boat. I'm in the boat of the fucking car.

It was a hatchback so it wasn't completely dark. I could still... She was driving and I could speak to her and I could stick my head up over the back seat, right? And we're going along, lots of heavy traffic in the middle of a city. And I'm like, this is a bit strange. I've never been collected for a tour before and had to travel in the boot while my luggage gets a seat. This is really odd.

And then, and then, I'm asking her questions. Oh, how long have you been a tour manager for? You're looking forward to the gigs. She knows fucking nothing about my gigs fucking nothing. She's like no No, I just met the promoter a couple of hours ago, but I'm your tour manager now fucking hell And then I say is the promoter like the hotel you're taking to me taking me to is the promoter there and the hotel you're taking to me, taking me to, is the promoter there? And then she's like, yeah, he's there. So I'm thinking, okay, fair enough. I'm gonna get to the hotel, she's gonna drive me to the hotel, then I'm gonna speak to the

promoter and say what's going on. She keeps talking anyway as she's driving, driving like a fucking lunatic. I'm in the boot, no seatbelt, my head's sticking up over the fucking backseat. Like one of them, one of them stupid innocent looking dogs, big cock or spaniel head on me. Then she says that she owns a box full of crystals, she keeps the crystals at home in a lead lined box and that when she opens this box and focuses on the crystals, that she can stop terrorist attacks from happening. And then of course I start questioning, how

do you know you're stopping the terrorist attacks from happening? And she's going, because they don't happen. And then I'm like, I can't argue with that. I actually can't argue with that. And then I just look, I look into the fucking the rearview mirror from the back and I see I Look at her eyes and I'm like, okay our pupils are fucking nuts, right? She's on something. So I'm trying to figure out how how do I because I'm worried about my safety now So I'm like, how do I figure out what she's on? Because I'm in the boat and she's driving me to the hotel and I don't feel safe now, so I say Any chance you could get me some weed she says no problem I've got a lot of acid if you want some too and then I went right okay and I said have you taken

acid and she's like yeah so she drives me to my fucking hotel. And I'm going, God almighty, this is terrible but I'll deal with it. And then... Then... The car... There was kind of a smell of sweat. The car had like a smell of sweat, right? I didn't take much notice of it, right, but then she offers up. Oh, by the way, sorry, the car smells like sweat.

I had a boob job a few days ago of just taking my bandages off, but it hurts the shower. All right, okay, fair play. This person, like she really, she embraced chaos. This was a chaotic individual. And we get to the hotel, and the fucking promoter, who's also a lunatic is sleeping in my bed my hotel bed the promoter is sleeping in my and he's not even asleep and I said to

the but what the fuck are you doing sleeping in my bed and he goes well you weren't sleeping in it I was getting value for money so the promoters pissed off at me what he wanted me to do was, this tour was like 10 years ago, he wanted me not to get hotel rooms but to ask the people who were coming to my gigs to let me sleep on their couches instead. Now that's not a joke. Some bands, when you're starting off, when you're really really starting off, some bands will literally say to the audience, can we sleep on your couch tonight? We have nowhere to sleep.

I didn't want to do that. You do that in your early fucking twenties when you're starting off. You don't do that when you get a name for yourself. And I don't want to. I don't want to sleep on somebody's couch or I don't know. I need the headspace of my own hotel room. So the promoter was pissed off at me, basically, that I'd asked for hotels while I was on tour,

and was so resentful of this fact that he'd gone up and slept in my... Like, just lay inside my bed. Just for the sake of it. Because he couldn't... He couldn't leave the bed unattended. He's like, if I'm fucking paying for this bed, if I'm paying for this hotel room, well,

I'm not... I'm gonna fucking get value for money here and have a lay down. So that was immediate red flag. For me, I'm like, oh fuck. Right. This is going to be a difficult tour. The promoter is sleeping in my bed. And my tour manager is not a tour manager.

It's a woman on acid who the promoter has met on Tinder three hours previously. This is fucking bad. And then it gets worse. So I had a gig that night. Now I'm being conscious not to say exactly when this was or what country this was because I don't want to... Look, people are allowed to be lunatics. For me it just means, right, I'm my own tour manager for this tour. I have to look after myself now. I have to make sure I'm getting to the shows. I can't rely upon these people. Fuck. I thought I'd be able to relax

between shows. No, but fuck it, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. People have paid to come to the gigs. We're gonna do it." So I go to the promoter and I'm like, look, let's just call her Shirley. Her name wasn't Shirley, but let's just call her Shirley, right, for the crack, because it makes it easier. So I say to the promoter, look, I know Shirley isn't the tour manager, right? I know she has no experience with this whatsoever. I know that Shirley doesn't even know who the fuck I am or what I do.

She hasn't a clue. And I know that Shirley's on acid as well. I kind of don't wantly to be the tour manager. It's fine, it's fine. You can pay her, pay her whatever you agreed. No hassle, right? But I don't need her to be my sh- I'll be my own tour manager. It's fine. And then the promoter,

who's also on acid, says, but she'll be really disappointed now, I promised her. I really promised her that she'd be tour manager here. I met her on Tinder. So then it becomes clear to me, ah, okay, I see what's happening, okay. You've basically, you've managed to convince a woman on Tinder,

go on a date with me, right, but as part of this, you get to be a tour manager for a tour for an artist, and you can travel all around this country and I'm assuming there was some type of romantic arrangement as part of this too. So I'm realizing this promoter, the same the same fella who resented getting me a hotel room, right, who was like well if I'm getting a hotel room then I'm gonna sleep in that bed when no one's in it. He's also now applying the same logic to the fact that I asked for a tour manager.

So he's thinking, fuck that, I'm not paying for a tour manager. Instead, I'm gonna turn the tour into a giant Tinder date and see if a woman would be willing to become a tour manager for the duration of the tour. And I guess it worked, because she wanted to do this. She really wanted to become a tour manager for the duration of the tour. And I guess it worked, because she was really, she wanted to do this. She really wanted to be a tour manager. And as far as I could tell too, she was, she was the one with the acid. The acid was her idea. She was the one who had the acid. She was the one who was given the promoter the acid. And they were both fine

with this. Not me, obviously. I'm there to do podcasts, I'm there to do a job, I'm not. I'm not gonna take acid on a podcast tour. That wouldn't be... You wouldn't get good podcasts out of that. So anyway, this one, let's call her Shirley. I'm thinking, look, it can't be that bad. This is... I'm gonna do... I've done a million gigs before, I'm just gonna do the fucking gig, get out there, speak to my guest, it'll be grand, alright? Shirley can't fuck it up that bad, even though she's on acid, I'll give her a job to do, I'll give her a job to do, it'll be grand, and I'll worry about the important stuff, such as sound, lights, I'll worry about all of that. So then we

get to the fucking venue, Shirleyli is walking around... on acid. Really getting into this tour manager shit. Real sense of self-importance. She's shouting at the venue staff now. I'm the tour manager here. Then we get backstage. And I put on my plastic bag for the first time. Obviously I'm not wearing a plastic bag in the hotel or in the airport or anything like that. So I put on my plastic bag for the first time. Obviously I'm not wearing a plastic bag in the hotel or in

the airport or anything like that so I put on my plastic bag for the first time and this blows Sharlee's mind. She didn't know that I wore a plastic bag or anything like that even though she's my tour manager so whatever. So this just she's on acid and this plastic bag this is amazing oh my god what is this so the gig starts and I go out on stage and I'm speaking with my guest and as I'm up on stage speaking with the and it was it was a late night it was like a late night podcast and it was a bit of a rowdy crowd this was early days of the podcast, so there was still some rubber bandits fans showing up and stuff like that.

So it was a bit of a rowdy, drunk, loudish podcast. Like, you have to remember, I started touring this podcast back in 2018, right? I'm actually doing this a long time. And the early podcast gigs, especially the ones outside of Ireland, I would guess not a huge amount, but you'd get some people coming who were Robert Bandits fans, which was the act that I was in years ago. You'd get it that we were a rowdier, more drunken kind of audience,

and some of these people would come to the podcast gigs, the ones outside of Ireland, and the gigs would just become a rowdier affair. More drink, more shouting, and they'd be a rowdier affair. They weren't like my podcasts now that are kind of quieter, closer to a theatre show where the audience is different. Now everyone who comes to my fucking podcast are people who actually listen to this podcast. So I'm up on stage. I don't even think I can remember who the guest was. The guest was very freaked out by just all the loud paddies in the fucking audience who were drunk. The guest was kind of freaked out. So the audience is loud, there's mayhem. I wouldn't call it a podcast, it was a lot of shouting. And I'm

up on stage talking to my guest and in the corner of my eye, I think I see in the crowd a fairly familiar sight, a familiar sight. If you do gigs, if you have an act, if you have fans, a familiar sight. Not at a podcast now, more at a music gig, but still. So on my left I experience a familiar peripheral jiggle, and I think, it's not someone pulling out their tits is it? So bear in mind I'm speaking to a guest on stage, so I take a quick glance to the left and yeah, lo and behold, there's a woman in the front row and she's pulling up her top with her boobs out. And a podcast? And a- and a podcast?

Yes, that's a thing you see. If you do gigs, if you're up on fucking stage and it's rowdy, occasionally a set of boobs will get pointed at you. Fair play to you. It's your body. If you want to do that, that's your choice. No problem at all. Work away. Enthusiastically consensual boob pointing. it's your body, if you want to do that, that's your choice, no problem at all, work away. Enthusiastically consensual boob pointing. So I noticed it in the corner of my eye and I'm going, is that a set of fucking tits? And a podcast and oh my god it's Shirley. So my tour manager, my fucking tour manager, is down in the audience and she's the one,

she's down there putting up her top and shaking her boobs around the place. And then I'm on stage trying to interview a guest and then I start thinking on stage, oh yeah, I had the new boobs. She got the new boobs, that's why she was telling me she smelled like sweat. This is, this is mad. So then I'm thinking fuck it, it's coming up to the interval of the gig. This is going be weird backstage, no, so I get backstage. I remember coming off, I remember who my fucking guest was now. I'm not gonna say it, I remember who my guest was. My guest said to me,

Who was that? Did you see that woman with the boobs? And I said, yeah, that's my tour manager. She goes, what? So we get off stage, go backstage. And then Sharlee is there, her top's back on obviously, and I take my bag off right to air my face between, at the interval, backstage and fucking Shirley's all pissed off. Now she's back in tour manager mode. You've lost him! Where's Blind Boy? He has to get back up on that stage! We've got a gig to do! I gotta speak to the sound engineer!

Just roaring about a bunch of shit that she thinks a tour manager should say. She's never been a tour manager, she doesn't know what the job is. She's met me eight hours ago, and then I realize, oh my fucking god, she thinks that the fella on stage with the bag on his head and then me without my bag are two different people, two completely separate entities. This is a woman on acid who thinks that she has a box of crystals that can stop terrorist attacks. So she thinks that me with my bag and without my bag are two completely separate people.

And me without my bag is someone she shouts at. And me with my bag is someone she pints her boobs at. Three minutes ago, when she was down in the crowd lifting up her top, she was doing that to the bag man. And she doesn't realise that she'd actually just done it to me who doesn't have a bag in his head. Gig ends, promoter shows up. I'm supposed to get me and my guest are supposed to be given food after the gig, which I pay for, and the promoter arrives with his pizza that he's eating and then he gives us a slice each and there was another three gigs left on that tour

that was the first night and I rang back home to my agent and I said please get these people away from me I'm gonna do the rest of the tour I'll do it myself I'm gonna do everything myself I'm gonna be the tour manager I'm gonna be the promoter I'm gonna speak directly to the venues I'm gonna do everything myself. I'm gonna be the tour manager. I'm gonna be the promoter. I'm gonna speak directly to the venues

I'm gonna do everything myself Please for the love of God because these people are on acid, okay, please and that's what I did so that's the shit that can be waiting for you and The other side of the plane when you go and do a tour On the other side of the plane, when you go and do a tour, some promoters will try to save money at any cost. And they'll land you with a fake tour manager. And that is absolutely not the first time I've been given a fake tour manager. But for this tour, because it's so fucking important, this tour that I'm about to embark

on tomorrow, doing Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne right after each other three days in a row, that's very intense. There's no fucking around with that. That needs to be run with military precision or else there's a thousand people showing up to see a gig and I'm not there. So for this tour, I just made a point. I said I want a professional tour manager. I want to see their CV.

I want to see what other acts they've worked with. Hired this person to do this very specific job. So that's what I have. That's what I've hired. And the only fuck up is I thought I was flying on Friday and it turns out I'm flying tomorrow. About 10 hours. I'm flying in about 10 hours. So I just need to get this podcast done. And then I'm gonna do some packing. And make sure that I have all my Visa stuff printed out. And make sure that I bring my tea. Blind by, there's an Irish community in Australia. You can buy berries and lions in Australia. I don't drink berries and lions. I actually drink Tetley. I drink

Tetley tea. Tea is very important to me. Hugely, hugely important. I drink about maybe 10 or 11 pints of tea a day. I bring my own tea bags on tour. I bring my own special stainless steel pint mug with me on tour. No disrespect, Australian tea is not nice. And I actually don't like berries or lions. And that's... in Ireland you either drink berries or lions. People fight over this. I drink Tetley. Why do I drink Tetley? Because you'll remember maybe sometime in the mid-90s when Tetley first started getting into the Irish market, they had to compete with berries or lions. So when Tetley first started getting into the Irish market, they had to compete with Barry's or Lion's So when Tetley went into the supermarkets, it was always a hundred percent free

So you got twice as many tea bags for the same price and my ma couldn't walk away from a bargain So she brought Tetley into my house and I formed a habit. So because of that Tetley is my favorite tea Why do I bring my own mug? Because I have on the inside of this mug what's called a tannin patina which is a brown stain, a brown stain of tannin which takes months to develop inside in my teacup and this makes my tea taste just right and I have to drink 11 pints of this a day in order to feel normal. That got me a few ticks on the old autism box

when I was being assessed. So I gotta bring my tea, visa stuff, podcast equipment. I'm gonna have to record two podcasts while I'm in Australia. My loofah, I thoroughly enjoy washing myself, washing myself correctly. I refuse to wash with just soap and water, I must scrub myself with a loofah. Did you know that loofahs grow on trees? Yeah, natural loofahs. They're a type of large abrasive sponge that you scrub yourself with in the

shower. They fucking, they're related to pumpkins. And they're indigenous to India, I believe. But they grow a lot of them in Egypt. I bring my slippers that have art support. I'm just doing a list. I'm doing a list, lads. I'm doing a list for my packing and passing it off as a fucking podcast. My hotel comfy clothes.

Again, this is another thing, again, related to being neurodivergent, right? So neurodivergent people, autistic in particular, and also ADHD, very much need to unmask. And to unmask means to spend quite a bit of time by yourself, literally being yourself. Being the person that you can't be in public because it would be viewed as socially unacceptable but nor a divergent people need to to unmask privately to recharge our social batteries and for me what this means is 11 points of tea I need to be able to pace up and down. Literally when I'm by myself, I pace back and forth, nonstop.

Back and forth for hours. Pacing back and forth, flicking my fingers. It might look like anxious behavior, it's not. It's actually quite calming. I want to do that. It's how I write all these podcasts. It's how I write my books. If I'm pacing back and forth rapidly, then

it means I'm focused and thinking and happy. It's called stimming. I need to do that. Do it in public. You look like a lunatic, you don't do it in public, so I do it in private. And also, I need to be wearing very specific clothes in order to feel like myself. I've one set of tracksuit pants and one hoodie in very specific sizes and I own maybe 25 versions of these exact tracksuit pants and this exact hoodie in that exact size. I own about 25 of them. Two are in active use and the rest are in storage. And the reason is I know with confidence that I have the exact same tracksuit pants and hoodie for probably the next 15-20 years.

And they're my indoor unmasking clothes. I would never wear them in public because they're too baggy. I look ridiculous. But these are the clothes that I have to wear by myself in order to feel comfortable from a sensory perspective. Some of you might be listening on, Jesus Christ, that's mad. It's autistic. I've been doing this for years and then I go for a diagnosis and they're like, that's pretty artistic stuff that is. And I promise you other neurodivergent people that are listening, I bet you don't

think that's mad. I bet you have very specific clothes or items, things that allow you to be the you that you are not allowed to be in public. And then we go out into public, we wear the uncomfortable clothes. I don't pace back and forth or up and down. I force myself to stay still. I do lots of small talk. I put great effort into appearing and behaving like a normal person. And then after a day of that, I go back to my hotel room, put on my ritualized comfy clothes, drink 11 pints of tea, and pace up and down for hours. And that there is happiness. That's happiness for me and every neurodivergent person needs that. So I gotta make sure I pack that shit. Very specific.

Slippers, tea, comfy clothes. And what happens if I don't? What happens if I didn't do that? It wouldn't be the end of the world. I'd buy a Traxx out of her in fucking Australia, but it would put me at risk of missing a gig. If I can't unmask and relax and be myself and follow my routines, then I lose skills of executive functioning. And I hate that word. I really don't like that word, executive functioning. Doesn't feel very human. I understand why it's used.

But planning, timekeeping, reading clocks. I have to be at the train station in three hours. These are all of the things I need to do in order to get to that train station in three hours. All of the skills needed to do that shit are called executive functioning skills. Masking. And I'm not talking about my plastic bag.

Masking. Small talk with strangers. Eye contact. Smiling. Appropriate clothing, even though it feels weird. Just talking to loads of different people. These things leave my brain feeling scrambled and confused. So unmasking.

Being by myself, pacing up and down, comfy clothes, that gives my brain clarity again. And then I can get to the train station on time. That's the experience of being autistic. That's what it is. That's level one. Meaning I don't require any support. I'm able to go about my day, I'm able to pass myself off as quote unquote normal, but that's what it is, that's the daily, that's what you live with day to day. And something like this right now, where I have to pack and go on tour and I thought I had an extra fucking day, that's actually really challenging, that's quite stressful

and difficult, so I have to ground myself around the whole thing and I'll be honest even mentioning some of the things I have to do in this podcast has been really helpful this is definitely one of those podcasts where I don't want a new listener to stumble across it oh I gotta bring a fucking ocarina with me I gotta bring an ocarina with me to do the ocarina pause when I'm recording my podcast in the hotels let's have an ocarina with me to do the ocarina pause when I'm recording my podcast in the hotels. Let's have an ocarina pause now.

Well I don't have my ocarina here, I've got a kazoo. Let's have a kazoo pause and you'll hear an advert for something. Rather uneventful kazoo pause there, hold on. I like that bass one. You could have heard an advert there for something. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If this podcast brings you mark merriment Entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the patreon page

This is my full-time job. So I earn a living so I pay my rent so I rent out my office So I purchase my equipment It's how I have the time and space to deliver a podcast each week. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You listen to the podcast for free. Listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast, I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind By podcast. And try not to join up on Patreon on the iPhone app

because Apple will take 30% do it on a desktop please. Upcoming gigs. Australia and New Zealand is sold out obviously. A lot of stuff is sold out. The only gig left you can get tickets for is in May, the 18th of May. I'm up at the Cavern Arts Festival. Wonderful, beautiful Cavern. That's a very small gig.

I'm doing that because I want to go to that arts festival. So there's only like 150 tickets on sale for that. But if you want to go to the Cavern Arts Festival on the 18th of May, come along, I'll be there doing a live podcast. Then I'm off on my big, big tour, my summer tour of England and Scotland. There'd be no fear of that tour. My fucking tour manager, my tour manager for the UK, Darren, shout out to Darren, is fucking brilliant. The best tour manager that I've ever worked with. Fucking phenomenal. Gets me to gigs

on time and has no problems talking about. We talk about the history of heavy metal, that's what we talk about, the history of heavy metal, and if I'm speaking about the history of heavy metal, jeez I could do that for fucking eight hours a day in the back of a car, no bother. Doesn't impact me in any way. That doesn't count as small talk. Big long chats about Hawkwind or fucking Budgie, Budgie were a early, I wouldn't even call them metal but an early prog rock slash metal band from Wales in the 70s, the mid 70s. And I can also, I need to do a podcast on this. Can't do music podcasts anymore because

I did take down, if you use any fucking music in a podcast now, Spotify takes it down. I've got a, I've got a theory, a very elaborate theory where I can where I can trace, I can trace Los Angeles 1980s hair metal to a coal mine in Wales in the 1930s. I'll do that podcast someday when I can figure out a way to do it without playing music. What am I talking about? Yeah, my tour, my tour of England and Scotland there in June. I mean, starting on the 31st of May. No, no, no. First of fucking, first of June. Bristol, then Cornwall, then Sheffield, then Manchester, then Edinburgh, then Glasgow, then York, then London, then East Sussex, Bexhill, and then Norwich. Those tickets are almost gone, a lot of those gigs are sold out. I cannot wait to come and play for the Kraken 10s this summer.

And knowing that I've got a shit-hot tour manager who's brilliant at their job, that takes all that tour anxiety away. That that huge tour now is no longer intimidating. So fain.co.uk forward slash a blind buy if you want tickets for that gig. Then I've got Derry in September, right, and also there's a Vicar Street gig in September. Something I want to chat about before I sign off, because a lot of people have been asking me to speak about it. There's a growing rise in people repeating far-right talking points, okay? And we need to make that distinction. You've got actual far-right fucking racists, zealots, who are very dedicated to the cause

of spreading fascism, and these people are working really hard at spreading misinformation, spreading fear and spreading hatred about immigrants in Ireland and the things that these people say spreads around social media, gets commented on and then some people repeat these things. So there is a difference between a person who is far right and then a person who is spreading far-right talking points or using far-right talking points because the latter person there, they might simply just be misinformed. They might be misinformed and are open to change changing their opinion if they receive different facts.

What if they're still hanging on to hateful opinions even though they've just received fact-based information to the contrary? And that's different. Now they're emotionally attached. There's a fear-based response going on here and that person could well be far right. What would I, what would I consider a person far right? There's many different ways. But a big one, a big one is does this person believe that they're superior to another group because of where they were born, the color of their skin, do they believe?

No, we're actually, we're better than those people over there. Those people over there, they're inferior to me. They need to be watched. They need to be expelled. They need to be treated very differently to me. I have very negative, strongly held beliefs about an entire group of people. So if I hear someone speak in that way, then

I think that person's a fascist, I think they're a far-right fascist. And this shit is really getting, it's gaining hold in Ireland. And we don't have a history of that because we were colonized. Because we were colonized. We were the ones underneath, at the bottom of the system. That's our history as a being at the bottom of the system. And misinformation is being peddled. Just like lies.

Conor McGregor was invited to the fucking White House around Paddy's Day and he just he said things that aren't true. He said, I'm here to raise the issue that the people of Ireland face. There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop. Like, that's just not true. That's a man writing a piece of fiction. It's not verifiable. It's not true.

It's not a fact. I've just spoken about a sentence there that's a piece of fiction that doesn't have basis in fact. It appeals to emotion. Like in my city of Limerick, I've seen the videos on TikTok. I've seen videos on TikTok where you could have some Muslim people in Lerick and these are poor Muslim people from Syria or from Afghanistan and they go to the mosque but they don't have a mosque, they have to, they have a makeshift mosque they have a mosque that they have to make themselves usually in like just a shop. They'll queue outside a shop and they're in there, they're praying and this shop is their makeshift mosque. A bit like us Irish people when we didn't have, we had to say mass on rocks, we had mass rocks. We

practiced our religion that way too because we didn't have churches, it was illegal so we had mass rocks. But I've seen videos on TikTok, and it's a lad filming Syrian and Afghani Muslim people just going into a shop to pray, that's it, just doing their fucking religion, that's it. And the lad is going, look at this, Limerick is overrun, look at them. Look what they're doing to this country. And all it is is maybe 12 people, maybe 12 people who are all dressed the same, dressed differently to us, dressed like Muslim people, adults and children, and they're just going to mass. That's all they're going to mass. That's it. But when you go at that from a fear-based lens, if the emotion you experience is fear, the emotion of fear will cause you to see things that don't exist, to interpret everything in front of you as a threat, to overestimate the

size of that threat and to catastrophize. And then you're filming a lot of people from Syria going to mass. And you're saying, look at this, they're overrunning the place. They're taking over. Feelings are not facts. And then Conor McGregor's in the White House saying there's rural towns in Ireland that have become overrun in one swoop. There's no facts behind that whatsoever. There's no data to support that. There's no facts behind that whatsoever. There's no data to support that.

There's no census to support that. It's not true. The closest thing, there's one, there's a town in Mayo called Ballyhanas, and this has a 39% of the population are immigrants because of Ukrainian refugees. So if you're in the pub and your friend is saying, there's towns in Ireland that are being overrun,

Irish people are becoming a minority. This person is repeating a far-right talking point. And you can just say to them, but that's not true though. It's not true. Oh yeah, but look at them, there's Muslims everywhere. Are there? Like, I see new Muslim people in Limerick.

They dress differently. They dress differently. They stand out. They're escaping war in Syria and Afghanistan. We spent the past 20 years, the past 20 years, with the media telling us that people who look like that are terrorists, are dangerous. That's been the entire narrative of the media for 20 fucking years to justify neocolonization for the extraction of resources for the West. And we've been fed the propaganda that peep that

Muslims are terrorists. So I can appreciate why, I not appreciate, but I can... If we're fed a media diet for 20 years of fear about Muslim people, you're then going to have certain people who get a fear response when they see Muslim people walking around Irish cities in the clothes that

in the clothes they grew up in, in the clothes they feel comfortable with, the clothes that they brought over from Afghanistan. Propaganda works, propaganda works and we've received a lot of it for 20 fucking years. Like with a moral panic in the country this week because Brennan's bread, which is like Irish bread, they announced that they're halal certified. Now Brennan's are just being capitalist there. It's Ramadan. Muslim people break their fast in the evening and they eat so Brennan's there are going buy some of our bread. It's halal certified, priced by some of our fucking bread. Why is it halal? Because it's fucking bread.

Bread. Brennan's have had to do fuck all to make their bread halal. It just means it's bread. There's no animal products in this. There's no alcohol. All right, so I'm just letting you know it's halal. We're being capitalists here.

We want some of your money. But that didn't stop Irish people trying to boycott Brennan's bread, responding emotionally, believing that this is the big takeover, they're taking our Irish bread, they're making it halal, they're changing it, this isn't an Irish country anymore. No critical thinking whatsoever, emotional fear fear-based thinking, because of 20 years of propaganda – I'm not just blaming the far right here – normalised, anti-Muslim, racist propaganda that we received in films, The Nose. For 20 fucking years we received this to justify the war on terror, to justify that, to justify extra rendition flights that were ran through Shannon fucking airport, the CIA going to France or going to Spain and pulling Muslim men out of their houses and bringing them to Guantanamo Bay.

Some of them involved in terrorism, some of them not. Innocent people just taken because they were Muslim, imprisoned without trial in Guantanamo Bay for 10-15 years. Or Barack Obama and George Bush just droning weddings. You'd have a wedding and maybe at this wedding they can confirm that there's one member of Al-Qaeda. So they just drone the entire wedding. Happened loads. Men, women, children, dead. An entire wedding party blown up by a drone to get one terrorist.

That happened a lot. And how do you do shit like that? You dehumanize all Muslims. If you dehumanize all of them, then when a wedding is blown up, the person in the West goes, well they're all a bit like that aren't they? They're all terrorists really, aren't they? The reason I'm saying this shit, if you're listening to this podcast, chances are, you're not one of these people. But you might be in the pub and your friends are.

Or maybe you are one of these fucking people I get shocked with some of the DMs I get I Normally agree with you blind boy, but you're wrong about Muslims or you're wrong about Romanians or you're wrong about Nigerian people I normally agree with you, but you're wrong about that. I get those I get those messages What the fuck are you doing listening to my podcast for? This podcast which is consistently anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, and the system. The last two podcasts I did were about neoliberalism. The biggest problem in this country is probably the housing crisis. Do you know why we've got a housing crisis? Because of policy, because of government policy, because the government, successive governments,

will not build social housing. Successive governments want housing to be scarce so that it's more expensive. Housing isn't about the public good anymore. The government are no longer interested in providing people with homes. What you have is property which needs to be kept scarce so that it can be profited from. New houses are being built privately and then they're being bought up by giant investment funds who just want to rent out these properties and keep them scarce so that rent is high. Some of these investment funds are called REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts. They're

just giant piles of faceless cash, often pensions and shit like that, but giant piles of faceless cash buying up huge amounts of property to rent. What does that mean? It means that regular people, even if they could afford it, can't buy houses because they're being priced out. And these giant piles of faceless cash that are buying property in Ireland, these REITs, Read Estate Investment Trusts, Let's just call it a billion euro, a big pile of cash, a billion euro, and that this billion euro owns loads of apartment blocks and they're charging massive rent to people for these apartment blocks. That real estate investment trust, they don't pay corporation tax. They don't have to pay any corporation tax since the Tax Cut Consolidation Act of 1997.

So you, who works, you, who can't get a mortgage, you, who pays ridiculous rent, you, who pays tax, you're getting fucked over. But a giant pile of faceless cash that's buying up apartments, that's buying up property all over Ireland, doesn't have to pay corporation tax?

And then get this. This real estate investment trust, or other ones are called vulture funds, so this giant faceless pile of cash, they buy up 500 apartments built to rent, right? Nobody can buy these other than this giant, faceless pile of cash. They buy all these apartments in your town, right? And then they turn them into social housing. So yes, people on the housing list are now getting affordable housing. They pay a small amount of rent. But the Real Estate Investment Trust, who owns the apartments, they charge the government full whack. They charge the government proper

high rent. Who pays that? The taxpayer. The taxpayer. So these real estate investment trusts not only don't pay tax, but they're effectively stealing our taxes. This is neoliberalism. This is what neoliberalism is. It's what I did the past two podcasts on. If you can imagine it as a system has come about whereby we pay taxes, if you work, you pay taxes. And the general understanding is that your taxes, right,

they pay for public services, services for the good of the people. Hospitals, housing, schools. What neoliberalism does is it allows a very very wealthy person or entity to set up a tollbooth between your taxes and where they're supposed to go. So you want to pay, you're paying tax so that somebody who's less fortunate than you can get a house, okay? So you pay your tax so that that person has a home. Then a giant investment fund comes right in the middle and says I'm gonna take 90% of that money for profits. So

that's what the problem is. That's what's wrong with Ireland. All of that there is policy. That's government policy. That's what the government has been doing. It's not just in Ireland. That's happening fucking everywhere. That's what everybody needs to be furious about.

That's what everybody needs to be angry about. That's what people needs to be angry about. That's what people need to be. Doing wrench strikes, boycotting, getting really fucking furious, holding politicians to account, making politicians feel afraid. Feel very afraid. You're gonna lose my fucking vote, unless you tell me what you're gonna do about real estate investment trusts. Because this sounds like it should be fucking illegal. Why is this happening? Why do vulture funds exist? Why is the government not building social housing? Why can't tax money be used, like it was in the past,

for corporations to build houses, cheaply? Why does all the money have to go to private companies? Why is everything put to these private companies, who are siphoning off tax money? So we are all paying taxes, but we look around and things are getting worse. This feels like it should be illegal. Why is this happening? But all of that shit is very complex. Everything I've described there, and I'm trying my best, and I'm not a fucking expert. I'm just, I know where to read, and I try and read the words of people who are experts

so they can understand it. This shit's really complicated. A real estate investment trust? What the fuck is that? This shit is deliberately obfuscated. It's deliberately hard to understand, hard to pinpoint. Our anger, our critical thinking, our attention, these are all resources. These are resources.

We have a limited amount of these things. Capitalism loves fascism. The government love it. The people are now starting to get pissed off with immigrants. They fucking love it because when people are wasting the resources of their anger, of their critical thinking, their attention, when people are wasting those resources on immigrants and blaming immigrants, then the government just to get they get to keep doing what

they're doing. They can keep on doing it and They can come in looking like the Saviors Because classism comes into it too. There was riots in Dublin over the summer A young girl was stabbed and the suspect I don't think there's been a court a trial yet so the suspect was from Algeria and Massive riots were stalked by by the far right. Bosses were set on fire. There was looting, a lot of damage. And then when you look at the media and when the media show us who is doing the rioting, it's

young lads in tracksuits. It's people. They're showing us images of people from the poorer communities of Dublin doing the rioting. And then the government gets to come in and says, we're going to jail these people. We're anti-racist. Immigrants are welcome. This is not acceptable behaviour. We're going to deploy more police. We're going to get more police on the streets to be more heavy handed.

We're going to crack some skulls. We're going to arrest people. And none to be more heavy-handed. We're gonna crack some skulls. We're gonna arrest people. And none of the underlying issues have been fucking resolved. There's no conversation about inequality, social inequality, lack of access to housing. There's no conversation about what the government's policies are fucking doing. The harm and the violence, the state violence of government policies. No conversation now. And now the government get to look like the heroes.

They look like the heroes now who are mapping everything up. Racism is a very useful distraction. A very useful distraction that the people with money can use to get people fighting among themselves to punch down, to punch sideways and never punch up, to never punch up and ask the people with wealth in power, here what the fuck are you doing?

The fuck are you doing up there? Giant investment funds are buying up all the property and then renting them and these investment funds aren't paying any tax, and it would appear, it would appear that the housing crisis appears to have been, has been turned into an industry, a for-profit industry, for very wealthy entities that don't pay tax. What the fuck are you doing? The people who are doing that love, they love it when people are going, look at those Muslims over there, look at them, oh my god they're turning bread halal. They love that.

That's fucking brilliant. They don't get to be held to account now. This is what I want to leave you with. If you're an Irish person and you're looking around and you see groups of people from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, whatever the fuck, Romania, you see people in your city and you now have quite negative beliefs about this entire group of people. That you have negative, negative beliefs, fear, suspicion about an entire group of people because of the colour of their skin, because of how they dress, because of the country

that they're from, and negative belief about an entire group of people. If you're feeling this way, there is not one negative harmful stereotype about those people that wasn't used on us in our history. I'm going to read you some quotes. This one's from like 1845, high to the famine. We've got one of the largest refugee populations in the world. There's a genocide happening in Ireland and we're trying to escape it. Dr. John Griscombe writes on the report on sanitary condition of the laboring population in New York. So this is a yank. The Irish are more dirty than any other people.

Their ignorance, filth and poverty tend to increase the spread of disease. They're saying that about your great grandfather. That's your great grandfather they're speaking about there. 1849, Thomas Carlyle is a Scottish philosopher. These Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses. Scratch an Irishman and you'll find a savage. And he wrote that in a book, which I can't even read the name of it out because it contains a racial slur. The book was from 1849 and it was called The N-Word Question.

The Times of London, 1848. Again, this is about all Irish people. If you're thinking to yourself, oh it's just about the bad one. No, no, no, this is about you. This is about all Irish people. They are brutal, ferocious and a cruel race, treacherous as Italians, revengeful as Spaniards and as idle as Mexicans. That's in the times of London in 1848. 1885, if you find yourself looking at, you're in your town and you see some Muslim people and you decide, why can't they dress like me? Why are they off praying to Allah? Why are they so different?

Why can't they mix? Why don't they assimilate? I'm not a racist, but these people won't assimilate. Here's a quote from 1885 by Falakol Josiah Strong. The Irishman cannot mix on equal terms with the Anglo-Saxon. He pulls down all who are near him. They're talking about your great-granddad. That's about your great-great-grandfather, your great-great-grandmother. That's about the Irish, men, women and children, an entire group of people called Irish people.

That's what that quote is about. We've portrayed as disease spreaders, ape-like, not human, inherently violent, right? Inherently and genetically violent. There's nothing can be done with the Paddy. We're just fucking violent savages. There's nothing can be done with us. Portrayed as violent, terrorists, spreaders of terrorism, religious extremists, fucking everything, everything for hundreds of years. Whether we went to Australia, whether we went to fucking England, America, that's what was said about us.

Do you know why? Because we were at the bottom of the system. We were the poorest people. And we were colonized. We were the easiest target. The easiest target. Point at Paddy, and all of a sudden you're not asking questions about inequality above. You're not asking questions about what the rich person is doing, because you've got these filthy, stinking, dirty Paddies drunk in the street with the trauma of what they've just been through at home. A million Irish people

have emigrated since 2010. Since 2010, one million people have emigrated from Ireland. I'm off to Australia tomorrow. Now these quotes I'm reading out are from the 1880s, that's a long time ago, but I'm off to Australia tomorrow. Irish nurses, the place is full of fucking Irish nurses. Irish nurses experience prejudice and stereotypes over in Australia that happens now. Now I'm not saying this shit to be like, sure we are Irish we can't be racist because hate was used against us, which is often happens with this conversation. What I'm saying is, yes we can be racist but we have this entire history that allows us a very unique experiment in empathy.

We can read shit that's being said, talking points that are being used against immigrants in Ireland now and we can go to these talking points and we can find the exact same talking points that were said against us. We can do that and we can empathically use critical thinking to analyze that and ask ourselves is this true? I'm going to leave you with a clip from 1985. 1980 fucking 5. Okay, Millennials were being born in 1985, that's not a long time ago. And this clip, I don't know where it's from, I found it on TikTok, but an English journalist just went around a city in England,

I think it's in the north of England, and just asked them, asked the English people, what do you think of Irish people? And I want you to listen to this, this is 1985. I think their way of living is different to ours, and how does that show? We were in the south last summer and the people are very far behind us, and I should say they're old-fashioned a way in their outlook and they're very much slower than what we are. Well we're all really the same, same as far as we're humans, we're all humans you see. Thanks very much. Not very much difference when you look at it that way is there? What about any other way? Well, everyone, you know, at school they all say they're mental and they call you Irish,

but I don't really think that's true, because they're Irish, they're not really any different. What do you think of the Irish in general? I'm not against them. I really don't want them here, that's it, but... You don't want them here? No, no. Why is that? Well, you know, let them start where they are. Do you think they're different from the English?

No. Oh no. When all they're like is just the way they've been dragged up. I think they also settle down. That's what I think. Do you? I'm fed up with them, yes. They're quite jolly when they're drunk, but I think they drink a little bit too much, personally. They don't mind the Irish jokes, do they, so much? But when it comes to, well, the religion's too important to them, isn't it? I prefer the Irish than English people. I feel comfortable among the Irish people.

Why do you think that is? I don't know. I don't know if it's because they are foreigners in this country, you know, but I find myself... I don't find myself accepted by the English as much as accepted by the Irish. I think unfortunately they have this label of being a little bit simple and it's justified in a lot of cases. There you have it now. How does that make you feel? How did that make you feel?

If you're an Irish person listening to that, and this includes... like I have a lot of people listening to me in England, mostly working class people listen to me in England, so you're probably Irish. But like... That's 1985. Were you born in 1985? Were you alive? That's about you. Those people are talking about you. Those people are talking about your family, your ma. They're talking about your ma. They're not saying certain Irish people, they're talking about the Irish.

These people have an idea in their head about a group called the Irish. The Irish, those Irish, they have an idea of a paddy in their head and anytime they hear an Irish accent, or see an Irish person, they think of the Irish. They're afraid of the Irish. They're disgusted by the Irish.

They're suspicious of the Irish. They don't like the Irish. They don't want the Irish. They think that all the Irish are the exact same. That they're bad. How did it feel hearing that? Didn't it feel a bit silly? Didn't it feel ridiculous? They're talking about you. They're talking about your uncle, your aunt. They're talking about you.

You'll hear all that shit. Everything that fucking Irish people are saying now about recent immigrants to the country, they're saying the same shit. The same shit. I'm not racist, but they can't mix, they can't assimilate, they have their fucking religious shit, they're rude. Reflect on how that made you feel. Reflect on how easy, how easy was it to hear that, how easy was it to just go, oh my god love will you stop talking out of your fucking hole.

Oh they're all a bit simple, justified in some cases. Really, is that it? How easy was it to bat that away and to go, would you shut the fuck up? This is so rude. How dare you speak about me like that? This is ridiculous. You fucking aegis.

You don't know any Irish people. What are you talking about, you fools? I'm not like that. What are you saying that about my ma for? You ignorant bigots. Have you any idea how silly you sound? Why not come and actually talk to us? Have you any idea how foolish you sound? These are all the feelings that came up in me. Can you apply that to yourself? When you when can you notice when you find yourself? Because what are those people doing?

They are motivated, informed and led by the emotion of fear. Fear isn't very nice. So they alleviate the fear with the certainty of hatred. The certainty of hatred and dislike. These actionable emotions that make us feel like we're doing something. I'm afraid there's the target and that's why they're hurting me. Boom. That's what these people are doing. They're thinking emotionally and they're speaking about an entire group of people. They're speaking about an entire group of people, millions of individual complex human beings and they're speaking about all of them as

if they're one person based on misinformation, stereotypes and shitty messaging from the media, propaganda, classism, racism. So if you can listen to that clip and you can easily make all these excuses for yourself, you can make them, this is for yourself. You can make them, this is ridiculous, we're not all stupid, Jesus Christ, will you stop talking, you're mortifying yourself. If you can do all of this when you hear those English people, those misinformed, frightened English people, label an entire group of people. If you can extend that criticality and empathy to hearing that, then can we work on doing that when we find ourselves speaking that way about Ukrainian

people or Nigerian people or Romanian people or whatever the fuck are Muslim people? Because it's the same faulty logic, it's the same bullshit, it's the same fucking horse shit, the exact same. And shout out to that man at the end with the Caribbean Lilt who was from Jamaica or Barbados or Trinidad for his solidarity there. No surprises, he's the person that says no I prefer Irish people, I like being around Irish people, with his Caribbean accent that still has the traces of Cork and Kerry in it. Those are our people. That's who our fucking people are. Colonized people. People whose history is about being under the yoke of fucking colonization and oppression.

That's who the fuck was standing up for us in the 1980s. And don't listen to the fucking far right. They've got this great replacement theory bullshit. You know what they think? They think that the world is run by a secret cabal of Jews, and that what these Jewish people want to do is replace white people with people of darker skin. I don't even fucking know why.

It has something to do with interdimensional shapeshifting lizards, if you really want to go deep on it. Demons or Satan, I don't even know. The problem is capitalism. In Ireland, housing policy for many years has been put to the speculative forces of the market. Housing is about profit, commodity, money, scarcity. That is what housing is now. It's no longer about homes. That ship has sailed. Public services are being privatized. Very wealthy private interests are

siphoning off tax. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. We feel confused. We feel confused and frightened. And then we start punching sideways and downwards instead of up and the people at the top benefit from that exactly and all you gotta do is look at history, this isn't new, this isn't new I have to pack my fucking bags, I have to pack my fucking bags for Australia Alright Dog bless, hopefully I'm gonna be running around the Sydney Botanical Gardens

or the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne, the Royal Botanical Gardens. I keep getting messages from their Instagram page. Everyone at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne is a huge fan of my podcast and they want me to come and visit. And I just want to give them a shout out. I will visit, but I probably won't be speaking to anyone. I'll wander around myself quietly and the Melbourne Botanical Gardens are gorgeous All right

Wink at a swan Put a worm back in the ground. No leave the worms do their own thing. They should be out at this time of year and Last week I asked a robin redbre to sing to me, and he did. I was just hanging around a fence and a Robin showed up, and I just said to him, you'd never give me a song would you? No one was looking like, he started singing to me. So ask a Robin Redbreast to sing for you. Todd Bliss. The End I'm sorry. You Thank you.