Since I’ve been making posts about American/ British entitlement towards Ireland, I thought I’d talk about this video here.

I am a student at this college. It’s a big tourist attraction for many reasons, but the main one being that the book of Kells is kept here. I am also from Kells itself, but Dublin having the book and not Kells is a whole other issue.

So this protest that’s been happening over the the past few weeks is in response to the college once again raising rents for student accommodation to astronomical rates. That being when rent in Dublin (and Ireland as a whole) is already unliveable. You’d find cheaper rent off student accommodation, but it’s hardly easy to find places like this. As well as this, the majority of the student accommodation isn’t even on campus to begin with. Most are about a 45 minute luas journey away. So what the fuck are you paying for?

This protest is necessary. It’s been a long time coming. Time and time again they prioritise tourists over us. Buildings are old and falling apart, equipment isn’t functional, accessibility is god awful. I know this because I am disabled and use a rollator, but I can’t even use it on campus most days because there’s simply no ramps/ elevators in some buildings.

In one of my lectures last week we were in one of the old buildings. We had a lot of content to cover, but of course the projector wasn’t working. The professor spent fourty minutes trying to get the computer/ projector to work, but to no avail. So we have a whole lecture to catch up on! All of this while I was looking out the window at this atrocity:

A new building for tourists! Yay!

They’ve been building new school buildings for years, but of course instead of finishing them, they’ll spend their time and money on the tourists. I’m not even having an exam in one of my modules because they told the professor that there simply isn’t enough room to host our class for the exam. And it would be “too expensive” to book a venue… it’s only a class of about thirty. He had written a whole exam and we were under the impression we’d have one, but now it’s just continuous assessment I guess!

So you have to understand why we’re not exactly jumping for joy for the tourists. There are hundreds on campus everyday, just generally being annoying and entitled. And yes DISCLAIMER; not all tourists, not all Americans/ British people, blah, blah. But from my experience, you do encounter some obnoxious people everyday.

So that’s why they blocked entrance to the book of Kells. That’s why it’s disgusting for the tourists to be arguing with them and demanding entrance. For once we just want our college to prioritise us! So yeah we will revoke your entitlement, because we are the ones who study here, we are the ones who have to LIVE here.

If you're currently furious about the amount of money the British oligarchy spent on a funeral and a coronation during a cost of living crisis: consider the fact the UK will have to do it all again in less than 10 years when Chuckie 3 kicks the bucket.

This is not at all a new take on life here in the US of A however I feel as though I will peel my skin off if I don’t say it;

People are seeing death as a valid option to the current state of the world + the future and now I am fully understanding why.

There is no more ‘village’. There are no reliable social safety nets installed that are realistic or easy to access. You H A V E to drive EVERYWHERE if you’re even able to drive. If your area has a bus it has to fight on the road with every other driver. To get 9 miles away from point A to B takes 2 hour out of your day. No one is hiring or they are paying minimum wages for you to run their whole circus operation damn near by yourself. Average 1 bedroom apartments are $1.1k a month for 500 sqf and if you SOMEHOW get a roommate and get them to agree to split rent and utilities then y’all are going to battle for personal space. A 2 bed is out of the question bc there is no way in hell that you can save anything if you are spending more then half of your wages on rent. You want to go out and have a sense of what it means to be fulfilled as a human? Don’t even dream about it, you have your bills coming up.

Get a second or 3rd job? Wait… you were able to find one? They didn’t ghost? Lucky you; now you are better off & you can now sleep knowing that the 2nd job will be able to pay for the gas ($3+/gal), insurance (3X what it used to be but still making you open up ur wallet before they step in), and your car note! (Wayyy too much for a used).

What is fun? What are get togethers? What is a ‘cheap meal’? What’s a bucket list? What’s a vacation? What’s a hobby? Wait, you can afford to replace items and not get anxiety over it? You can afford more then an arm full of groceries?? Will you be able to retire by the time you’re 60 with enough money in the bank to not just exist, but to do the things you’ve always wanted to do during those working decades? What will elder and death care look like? Will your children be able to not live in poverty?

We as young people are seeing death as a valid option because we know we will NEVER see an adult life like those before us prior to the 90’s. Starting a family or adding on to your family will put you in poverty. Buying a house if you’re fortunate enough will put you in poverty. Renting will put you in poverty. Working more jobs will put you in poverty. Having a car will put you into poverty, not having one will keep you from ever getting one. We will just work and work to never ever have anything to show for it. This is not the lifestyle that I’d doom more life to do for the rest of their lives. Something’s gotta change sooner rather then later and it’s gotta be grass roots. We have to be willing to break some rules to get to where we need to be.

Things. Must. Change.

Another normal day in a normal country, where the food banks are shutting for some rich old bat's fucking funeral

I can't for the life of me not get why the majority of the UK is not livid right now. People are starving on mass in our country in the middle of a crisis where billionaire CEOs of supermarket, energy, and oil companies are profiting millions, and I turn on the TV and BBC news is taking 6 hours to live stream Lizzie's hearse going down a Scottish motorway. Fucking Hunger Games shit.

I knew this kind of shit would start happening

For anyone who doesn’t know, Martin Lewis is a journalist specialising in money saving advice. He’s been one of the most prominent people speaking out about the cost of living crisis occurring in the UK, particularly the increase in energy prices, and is constantly trying to provide the best and most up-to-date information to people who are extremely concerned about how they will be able to afford basic necessities in the coming months as prices soar.

Tonight he posted tweets providing updated advice regarding energy bills, which many people are currently having to navigate following announcements from the government earlier today about tariffs.

And so many replies were along the lines of “this is not the time, have some respect”

You know what’s not respectful? Telling someone who is simply trying his best to help people not freeze or starve to death in their own homes that he shouldn’t be sharing important, time-sensitive information about how they can save money, just because a 96 year-old who never had to worry about affording anything in her whole goddamn life died!

I’m already sick of people acting like the major issues of this country suddenly don’t matter because the Queen died. That somehow the problems affecting the millions of people in this country living in poverty can be quietly swept aside for the coming weeks and months, despite this being the most crucial time for action to be taken to prevent mass suffering.

The average asking price for a rental unit in Canada reached $2,178 last month, a 9.9 per cent year-over-year increase and continuing a trend that has seen asking rents hit new highs for six months in a row. That's according to the latest rental price report released by Rentals.ca and Urbanation that analyzes monthly listings from the former's network. The findings show while October's annual rate of rent growth in Canada was down from the 11.1 per cent jump in September, it still marked the second fastest annual increase of the past seven months. On a monthly basis, average asking rents increased 1.4 per cent in October, a slight decrease from the monthly gains of 1.5 per cent in September and 1.8 per cent in August, which was attributed to seasonal factors.

Continue Reading.

Tagging @politicsofcanada

I saw this on Twitter and honestly felt a bit sick just thinking about it. The sheer determination some people have to keep anyone from getting any sort of help, any sort of benefits, to kick down someone who has such a big heart to help those around her?

Here's the Tiktok where the woman, Carly Burd, talks about it. She shows the salted state of the land. This video was posted 21 hours ago at the time of posting this.

Another video where she discusses it, this one was posted 4 hours ago. Over 5 kilograms of salt, she estimates, was put into the soil of her allotment. She'd already planted onions and potatoes with her kids, which are now ruined. She's working to find a solution, which I genuinely hopes she does.

From what I can tell, this is a GoFundMe that she runs--not just for this tragic occurrence, but to generally support the work she does. It has a goal of £4,000 pounds and at the time of writing this, it's raised over £54,000 pounds, but by all means if you want to donate and help her out I'm sure she wouldn't turn any help away.

I genuinely hope all the help she's getting with this lets her grow a lot more food and help a lot more people.

[Photo ID: a scrrenshot of two tweets of a Twitter thread by Elsbeth Tashioni @THISisLULE, with 6,102 retweets, 2,345 Quote retweets, 28.1K likes, and 1,597 Bookmarks. The leading tweet was made at 4:24 AM EST on 4/12/23 (April 12th 2023). "Some UK woman on tiktok has been making videos about how she’s been feeding people (partly through an allotment) in her community who are struggling due to the cost of living crisis and then yesterday she posts that someone went and salted her land so she can’t grow food anymore" The second tweet has 25 replies, 1,391 retweets, and 14.5k likes. "Do you know how evil you have to be to sneak out at night, not to even steal to benefit yourself, but to destroy the possibility of people in need getting help?" End ID]

Today on Normal Island the meat is in GPS enabled security boxes.

Royal mail are out on strike today for better pay that reflects an actual, inflation adjusted living wage. Please spread the message and show your support for postal workers across the UK.

We want a living wage and to protect the universal postal service! We will not be made into a gig economy or into amazon with different branding!

Stand with the CWU!

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An update for everyone to see