I listened to the rain and it told me a story about Margaret Thatcher

The beauty of the water cycle and the violence of it's privatisation under neoliberal policies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notification screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q U O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last? And if you're worried about after hours leads slipping through, QUO's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free. Plus, get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/tech. That's Q U O dot com slash tech.

• 1:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Press your breast against the kestrel's nest, you bare-chested enders. Do not molest the shell of an egg with your vinegary areola. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast.

• 1:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  If it's okay with ye, we're going to be joined this week by my good friend, the rain. Because for the past year, I've been recording in an office that has a tin roof. I didn't factor this in when I was choosing the office, and this has brought us a little bit closer to nature. I don't want to mask the sound of rain. I don't want to pretend it isn't there. So instead, I've mic'd my ceiling with two stereo mics so we can worship it in all its majesty.

• 2:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a bit of a regal or colonial projection there on the rain. I think if the rain was sentient, it wouldn't want to be worshipped like a rile. So I take that back and I'd like to apologize to the rain. You don't worship the rain.

• 2:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  You don't.

• 2:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ah, listen to that country boy.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  The rain a country boy.

• 2:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have a plane in my ears here on my earphone, so I've got wonderful stereo rain. Look, if I had a guest on this podcast, I'm gonna give them their own microphone to speak into. And the rain, the rain happens to be stereophonic. So that means two microphones at an X Y axis pointing at the ceiling. And I nearly broke my fucking neck trying to get the mics up there. But I'm not gonna worship the rain. I'm not gonna worship its majesty like it's a king.

• 3:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Doesn't feel right calling the rain a country boy. It does a bit.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  It does a small bit.

• 3:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I'm not gonna call the rain a country boy.

• 3:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  The best way to acknowledge rain and to be present with it and invited onto your podcast is to not even think of the rain as a thing. The rain is a flux. It's a transfer of energy and matter across systems. The rain isn't a thing, an object. It's just, it's a phase in a never-ending cyclical event known as the water cycle. So I'm not taking an objective view of the rain there. That's a relational view. Rain can't be a thing because it never stops. It just flows from one place to another, down from a cloud into the air,

• 4:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  into the soil, up into a plant, return to the earth and the air by the plant, back up into a cloud, back down to the air. And those little drops that you're hearing there hitting off my tin roof.

• 4:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Those drops could contain water that's a couple of weeks old, could contain water that's sixty years old, a hundred years old, or it could contain water that's hundreds of thousands of years old or longer. Some of that water there could be primordial, as old as the earth itself, and arrived here on comets. Water absorbs down into rocks and into groundwater. Water is bound in minerals in the earth's mantle. So it's entirely plausible and scientifically possible that if I stuck my head out that window, stuck my tongue out,

• 5:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  that I could get a hop off some water that's water that a dinosaur once used to wash its cloaca. A cloaca is the genitals of a bird. Dinosaurs evolved into birds, so they probably had cloacas. And like birds, they also probably wash themselves. Birds love washing themselves. I'm trying to make a point about the relational nature of the water cycle, what we call rain. It's a phase in this continuous relational cycle that operates across deep time. It doesn't reset, circulates through the oceans into rocks, air,

• 6:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  the bodies of living creatures, evaporates up into a cloud, down into a puddle, back into the rocks, a cycle that goes on and on and on continuously. Listen, that, I'm not gonna call it rain,

• 6:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  that piece of wet theatre that you're listening to, those drops could contain water from a fucking puddle in Litrom last week, or a splash out of a swamp that dribbled across a stegosaurus's gant in the Cretaceous era. That's the wonder of the temporary flux that we call rain. And why is this shit even important? Because when you objectify it, you turn it into a thing, then you can commodify it. You measure it, you sell it, you decide who owns it. But when it's viewed as part of a system, a phase, relational part of the ecosystem,

• 7:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  then owning it, privatizing it, selling it, that becomes unthinkable. When you objectify and own something like, like rain, like water, then you end up with what's happening in fucking California and the wildfires. Virus fires in California, Pacific Palisades, Bollywood, they sometimes make it under the nose because it impacts a famous person. It's not just a hotter climate that does that. See, in California, water rights are privatized, highly contested. You can purchase the rain in California. You can purchase what happens to the rain after it falls. You can sell it, you can sell those water rights by treating rain as like an object

• 7:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  and turning it into water units or rights. It's purchased by the highest bidder and California is massive. So agribusiness, huge, huge corporations that have farms that grow things, almonds, almonds are huge, almonds require massive amounts of water to grow. So the almond industry is a huge one. They objectify rain, they purchase the rights to it, then they divert it miles and miles away to grow almonds. And they take that rain, they take that water out of the cycle, that cycle that's millions,

• 8:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  billions of years old, they take it out of that cycle, doesn't return to soil, it doesn't, plants don't use it, so then the plants disappear, it doesn't go back into the mountains that it's been in a cycle with for years and years and years, it doesn't go back into the rivers, groundwater, and then you get drought, you get more than drought, you get an entire collapse.

• 8:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Of the ecosystem in California, the ground moisture drops, the plants dry out, the forests stop, recycling water back into the air. So then that lowers humidity. You get longer dry seasons, you get a tinderbox. And then before you know it, Mariah Carey's house is on fire. Not Mariah Carey, I'd hate for her, I love Mariah Carey. I don't wish a forest fire on any celebrity's house to be. There's a few I could think of, but California's water, because it's privatized like that, it ends up just being exported as almond milk. Eighty percent of the world's almonds are grown in California. I can walk across to

• 9:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  the shop there and buy a pint of almond milk and drink it. And I'm drinking some California rain. Similarly, in Ireland, most of our rain goes into grass. Now, we have loads and loads of fucking rain, it goes into our grass. Our grass gets so much rain, the grass produces beta carotene. It's what makes carrots orange. It's what's in tanning tablets. It's what used to be added to Sunny Delight years and years ago, and if you drank enough that your face would go orange. We have lots of beta carotene in our grass because the grass just gets so much rain. And then cows eat this. And that's why Irish butter is golden,

• 10:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  is yellow. Kerrygold. Kerrygold Irish butter is fetishized as a luxury item in the same houses in California that are burning down because of forest fires caused by the commodification of rain. I've watched posh, yank influencers sit in their car, eating miniature sticks of Kerrygold like it's a fucking Mars bar. That's what Kerrygold Irish butter is. You're eating Irish rain. You're eating my country by. Now, I suppose what I find ironic about that is, even though the system has objectified water and rain and extracted it from its

• 11:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  natural ecosystem and made it a thing, it's still relational in a very fucked up way, in an unnatural way. It's actually getting quiet on the roof now. It's gone quiet. I think it's settling down.

• 11:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can call it a conti by now again. Now that it's gone.

• 11:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  You see, I like that now, actually.

• 11:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Speaking about the rain with such respect when it's present, then as soon as it fucking goes, I start talking shit about it. I like that. That's pagan shit. So it's not reducing the rain to being an object that can be commodified under capitalism. And it's not necessarily the science evidence-based approach where, you know, rain is a flux. It's, it's not a thing, it's an ever-changing transition of energy. This is the pagan thing. Where rain is something to be feared, something conti by. It's the god conti by. Or in Ireland, I don't think we had a god of rain. There was Bridget. Bridget the goddess.

• 12:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the goddess Bridget,

• 12:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  she wasn't necessarily a goddess of rain, but she was definitely associated with moisture and fertility of the land.

• 12:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  And there was loads and loads of sacred wells named after Bridget. And not just Saint Bridget, but the pre-Christian goddess Bridget. And holy wells were a huge deal in Ireland because, and again, like,

• 12:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  you know, the rain isn't the rain. It's just one phase in a system. Well, it's a movement in the water cycle, where this time the water is springing out from the rocks and flowing. The water that came out of holy wells was, you know, the rain falls, it seeps into the soil, it goes into the rocks.

• 13:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then it emerges again through natural springs, filtered, filtered through rocks with minerals in it. And the, the veneration, the worship of water as it appeared in this phase, coming out of a, of a sacred well, that was hugely important in Ireland. And Bridget had a tonne of wells. And there were rules and laws about how these sacred wells were to be treated. They were never to be privately owned. There was communal access to these wells. They were for the people. When the British came and started to close off land in estates, and all of a sudden the, the local holy well is stuck inside some,

• 13:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  some British landlord's land, that landlord was cursed now. You can see this in, in the folklore as it's written down. You never fucked with a holy well or a sacred well. And, and just to illustrate the point of a, a people who viewed the, the wells as, as relational and things to be venerated, Irish people. I read an American archaeological paper a few years back. I actually did a podcast on it, maybe twenty twenty. But there was this archaeologist, and she was saying that she could tell when an old area of a city was an Irish slum. So I'm talking seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds. She could tell

• 14:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  when, if she was digging up a city in America, New York, Philadelphia, whatever, she could tell when a part of it was an Irish slum. Because the Irish used to collect bottles of sparkling water. When Irish immigrants went to America in, let's just say, eighteen, eighteen forty, eighteen fifty, they'd have been confronted with glass bottles of carbonated water that were being sold in pharmacies or as soft drinks in the eighteen hundreds. Because this sparkling water had a, a mineral-like zing to it, the Irish people assumed that this sparkling water must have been from a sacred well, that it must be holy. They didn't understand it as capitalism.

• 15:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  The sparkling water on sale in America in the 1840s or 1850s, it was artificially carbonated. They used to put mixed marble with phosphoric acid and that's how they used to carbonate water back then. So it was artificial, but the Irish didn't. The Irish didn't confront sparkling water in the 1850s as purely a commodity. They tasted it and went, this reminds me of the sacred well back home. The zing of this carbonation reminds me of the shool well, which means the eye well, which would have contained zinc in it. This reminds me of the zing of zinc on my tongue. This sparkling water must be sacred.

• 16:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can't just throw the bottle away. I can't just dispose of it. That would be like disrespecting a well. This bottle now becomes sacred. So the first generation Irish immigrants in the 1800s in like New York and Philadelphia and Boston, they would collect and worship and create shrines in their houses out of all bottles of sparkling water. And I'm sure the Yanks thought they were mad. But what you're seeing there too is it's a very different relationship with water. It's relational. It's not objective or disposable. And that's a real thing. The archaeologist Meredith B. Lynn was her name and the paper she wrote, I think it was fucking 2010.

• 16:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But it was about, she's digging up old slums in the east coast of America and she knows when she's come across an old Irish slump because there's like little altars to sparkling water. You weren't allowed to wash your clothes in a sacred well or bring your animals there to drink or dispose of waste in a sacred well. And it wasn't just illegal. If no one saw you do it, it was bad luck would fall upon you. Like with, the wells were a portal to the other world. You fuck with a well, you offend the other world. I mean, the rivers of Ireland. You look at the stories of the rivers of Ireland and where they came from, the Shannon,

• 17:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  the Shannon which is just up around the corner there, that was a sacred well that water came out of. And poets used to go to this sacred well up near Sligo. And the poets would go there to get inspiration from the water. And then one day, a poet called Sinan, she said, fuck that, I'm diving into the well and gonna swim to the bottom to get the most amount of knowledge from the bubbles that come from the bottom. And she did. And the holy well, the sacred well, rejected her and killed her and carried her body, the flow of it, all the way down Ireland into the Atlantic. And that became the River Shannon. And Sinan, she is the goddess of the River Shannon. But that story is important because A, it gives you the origin of the River Shannon. And it tells you not to fuck with holy wells. These

• 18:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  are sacred things. And there'd be retribution if you fuck with this communal water. Most importantly, don't fuck with water. Don't fuck with water, because your life depends on this. You must view the rain, you must view the well, you must view the river as relational, as part of a system. If you do that, then you're respecting it, you're fearing it. Like, here's the crack. Folklore, mythology, indigenous knowledge, and science. They always tend to agree with each other. Irish mythology, this water is part of a system, goddesses, fear it, respect it, don't fuck with it. Science says the exact same thing. The outlier

• 18:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  is always capitalism. Capitalism. And certain capitalistic readings of Christianity, that's the one that steps in and says, actually, fuck nature, fuck ecosystems. We must control, extract, and profit. God created the nature and animals for us to exploit. Look where that's gotten us. What other rules were there around sacred wells? People could only take a certain amount of water from the well. And there was a community obligation to maintain sacred wells. They were viewed as relational. They were part of a system. They were part of the system of fertility, of nature. They weren't objectified and owned and commodified

• 19:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  and sold or bought. And I was just talking about the rain there because it was present. So I had to invite it onto the podcast as a guest, but it's gone now. But this stuff is relevant, I suppose, because... Whatever about California and almonds using up all the water. The big one that's coming is artificial intelligence, data centers. AI uses massive amounts of water. Data centers use huge amounts of water. And there's a lot of them in Ireland because we have not privatized our water in Ireland. There were water protests 10, 11 years ago. They tried to privatize the water and people went no fucking way.

• 20:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  But now multinational corporations are coming here with their big giant data centers to take advantage of our free public water. And they're using loads of it. And even today, the UN released a report where they said that the world has entered an era of global water bankruptcy. And I think they've had to use that terminology bankruptcy. So that the UN report reaches powerful capitalists. They have to speak to them in their language of money. They refer to aquifers as underground savings accounts.

• 21:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now aquifers, it's layers of rock and sediment that holds water in its pores. And it's the aquifers that can hold the water for years and years and years. And aquifers then they release filtered nutrient-rich, fresh water via the springs, via springs or into rivers. But what's happening around the world today, especially in urban areas is that that water cycle that I mentioned earlier, the flux, it's not rain, that's just a phase that it's in because it's part of a cycle. Well, we're removing water from that cycle.

• 21:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, we're removing water from that cycle faster than it can enter the aquifers.

• 21:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Mostly through agriculture, not just agriculture, concrete, paving, these all create barriers. So when the rain does fall, it doesn't absorb into the aquifers, into the soil, into the rocks. It doesn't purify. It doesn't do what nature wants to do with rainwater. Instead, it hits the concrete and it drains off down into the river. They're pumping water directly from aquifers. If nature says that some rain needs to stay down there for a million years, that it needs to fucking stay down there for a million years to do its thing. Its thing there is maintaining the ecosystem.

• 22:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can think of aquifers really as a sponge, a big sponge under the earth, and it holds that water. And if you take that sponge away, you get fucking floods, floods that aren't supposed to happen, destroy plants, destroy animals, destroy ecosystems. So because we're taking water out of the water cycle, the aquifers, the sponges under the earth, they're not getting enough water and now they're drying out and they're crumbling and turning to dust and dying. They're desertifying. They're not a living thing, but they're crumbling. And once they crumble, they can't go back to being aquifers. And I suppose the literal impact of sinkholes,

• 23:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  you know, sinkholes, just all of a sudden the earth opens up and a car falls down in a city. That's happening all over the world. It's because the sponge that was there is dry and then it crumbles. So that UN report had to describe this as, "We're losing the underground water savings account." The savings account, the money that you think you have in the bank, right, that you think is there, that you're safe. Well, imagine one day you just walk up to your ATM and the money's depleting and you don't know where it's went. Well, that's where we are with aquifers. And the UN report had to, I'm really annoyed about that. I'm pissed off they had to use that language. That's the United Nations going, the people who have the power and money

• 24:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  to do something about this, they actually don't give a fuck. And they're not curious people. And if you mention something, something to do with ecosystems or biodiversity or water cycles, they're gonna switch off. So let's, let's use the metaphor of a savings account and maybe then they'll fucking listen. It's no surprise, of course, that this, this comes out today. And today is, is Davos, the World Economic Forum. So they're trying to reach those people, world leaders. The other thing that the report says is causing this water bankruptcy is glaciers melting. Glaciers are quite useful, again, to store water. Water is stored in glaciers. They freeze, they melt, they supply rivers.

• 24:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's part of the ecosystem, but now glaciers are melting quite fast because of the warming climate. And then the other one, wetlands. Wetlands are amazing.

• 24:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're, they're like,

• 25:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  not nature's fertilizer, they're like, nature's gardener that decides when to fertilize. So when we were talking about the, the rain, the rain phase of the water cycle.

• 25:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  When the rain hits the ground, it, it washes off nutrients from soil, decomposing leaves, decomposing animals, dung, dirt. Rainwater hitting the ground washes the ground and carries all that waste with it. And that waste contains nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, nutrients. And then this water collects ponds, lakes, rivers, okay? And then near a pond or a lake or a river, wherever water collects, that's where you find your fucking wetlands, which is marshy, bulrushes, reeds, ducks. You know a wetland.

• 25:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wetlands are incredible because, so all the, the rain comes down and washes all the nutrients, okay? And then that goes into the lake or the river. The wetland holds those nutrients and then releases them gradually as the ecosystem needs it. Like, look at the lakes that are going toxic everywhere. Uh, Loch Né up there in the north of Ireland, lakes that are going green, green, fully green, toxic, dead lakes because of too much nitrogen, too much nitrogen. That's only one factor, but too much nitrogen will fuck up a river and fuck up a lake.

• 26:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wetlands hold the nitrogen, hold the phosphorus and work within the ecosystem to release it gradually as the ecosystem needs it. I mean, what, what, what's the financial metaphor for the fucking wetland? It's just like putting your money in the bank instead of getting a paycheck and going, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend all of this now on sweets and give myself a sore tummy. Instead of that, I'm gonna put my money in the bank and take it out as I need it to meet my needs and pay my bills. That's what a wetland is. But everything I've just spoken about there, everything that's in that UN report about water bankruptcy, the Bardshit District in Limerick is actually a microcosm of all of that.

• 27:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, if you're a regular listener, you know the crack with the Bardshit District. It's a street in Limerick City where in the summertime, it becomes overwhelmed with starlings. It's a pedestrianized street, there's only a couple of trees on it. The starlings do profound, massive amounts of shits on the, that's why it's called the Bardshit District. They do loads of shits on this street every evening and then people slip on the shit and the whole street stinks and it just simply doesn't work as an urban street. I drew attention to it over the summer. It caused international tourism to the street. There were a number, a number of journalists showed up, there was articles about it.

• 28:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I really pissed off Limerick City Council and I'm glad I fucking pissed them off because they deserve to be pissed off. Did this solve the problem? No, they did not. Uh, two months ago, they brought someone in to, to prune the trees severely. So the trees are about 75% less than what they were over the summer. So we're gonna have to wait a couple of months to see how this, the starlings are gonna come back. The same amount and they're just going to concentrate into a smaller area and shit in a smaller area. That's all that's gonna happen. Limerick City Council did something lazy, cowardly, not very smart, boring, predictable, disappointing. They took the

• 28:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  battery out of the fire alarm to stop it beeping instead of putting a new battery in. And if they end up responding to this, because I've mentioned it on the podcast, they're just gonna say, oh, we consulted some experts and they said to prune the trees to solve the starling problem. Here's what's going on with the starlings in Limerick City and why it relates specifically to this new UN report about water bankruptcy. And this is what I figured out over the summer through months and months of research. So very simply, why? Why are thousands of starlings descending on this one street in Limerick City to shit every single evening? Why is that happening? Because I looked at the maps. I looked at what was there before it was a city street.

• 29:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what was there before it was a city street, it was a riparian zone. It's right beside the river. It was... A riparian zone is a little forest that's supposed to flood by a river. It's a forest that is supposed to flood. Riparian zones have the trees like that their roots go into the ground and riparian zones again are like sponges. They prevent flooding. They're buffers between rivers and land. Before there was a street or a city in the Berkshire district, the starlings would come to roost in those trees in the riparian zone and they'd shit. They'd shit every single night, loads and loads

• 30:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  and loads of shit. Their shit comes from all the food they ate in the surrounding area. That shit is incredibly nutrient rich. So what the starlings are doing, every night they're pumping that riparian zone with shit, with nutrients, with fertilizer. Riparian zone floods as it's supposed to do and then washes all this shit and nutrients upstream, right? Or up river, up the Shannon, across the way to the fucking wetlands that are across the river, the Westfield wetlands. The wetlands then hold all those nutrients and then release them gradually. So if you view it relationally, that's why people called me a lunatic, but I start,

• 30:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I refused to call that flock of starlings birds, and I started calling them a book, because they are a fucking book. They are a book that tells a story of what was there before there was concrete. They're a flux in a cycle. The starlings are taking nutrients from all around the countryside and then distributing that to a wetland that holds onto it and then releases those nutrients gradually. But now what do you have? Concrete, paving. The bird shit lens stays on the concrete. People slip on it. That's the big one. People in the bird shit district, you slip and people hurt themselves because there's so much bird shit on concrete. But back to nature. The rain washes that bird

• 31:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  shit down, okay? It's not held in any repairy and zone. It's not given time. It goes straight into the river as pure fucking nitrogen. And now we've broken a cycle. Now the wetlands upriver, it isn't getting its delivery of starling shit that it has evolved to receive. So that's just one little street with starlings in Limerick where you can, that's a microcosm that represents everything that this UN global report is speaking about. The solution that I, what I proposed over the summer on this podcast and to the council was that in the bird shit district, you install bioswales. And bioswales are brilliant. They do this

• 32:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  in Asia. They do it in China. A bioswale is, it's an artificial wetland. You turn a city street into an artificial wetland. It just looks like planters, like big planters in the street, but they're designed to mimic what a wetland does. So then it would be holding the starling shit and releasing the nutrients gradually and mimicking nature. And I also proposed like a starling worship festival, a bird shit festival, to go in conjunction with this, where we recognise the flock of starlings as a book. We recognise it as a novel that can fly to the sky. I got called a lunatic of course, but I guarantee you if they'd have done that, if they'd have found the money to turn that street into

• 32:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  a bioswale and go ahead with the fucking bird shit festival, you gotta think of the bigger picture. You think about the cultural footprint of a move like that. You demonstrate to the world a way to, for a city to operate within the ecosystem that that city has disrupted. That would have gotten international attention for a fucking Limerick city and everyone up in the council would have looked brilliant. I guarantee you that's what would have happened. There's already bird shit tourism. It's already there. People coming for the wrong reasons to watch people falling down. We could have flipped that on its head really fucking easily. No, that's not what they did. They, they pruned the trees pathetically to ghettoise the starlings. The starlings are coming back. They're not gonna leave.

• 33:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  This is their ancestral home. I think the starlings are gonna show up and go, oh, the trees are looking skinny this year, lads. Better fuck off and find somewhere else. They turned the trees into hostile architecture. They turned the trees into, do you know what they fucking did? There used to be benches on the bird shit district and they removed them so homeless people couldn't sleep on them. And they've done that now to the starlings. So the starlings are gonna come back and I'm gonna fucking record it when it does. The starlings are gonna come back and they're all gonna huddle together on skinny fucking trees and they'll be ghettoised. They've made the trees into hostile architecture. All they've done is penalise the starlings. The same amount of starlings are gonna return.

• 34:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're gonna do the same amount of shit. They're just gonna be huddled together in a smaller space and the shit will be concentrated. It'll be concentrated into a smaller space. If you saw the state of the fucking trees. They've pruned, they're mature trees. They've pruned them back as much as possible. So it's, it's just a, a single trunk and then a few spiky bits sticking out the top. They look like fucking Bart Simpson if he'd no arms. Like that, just spikes. Silly, silly men with no imaginations. They recorded a video, they, they recorded a video over the summer, the council did, down in the bird shit district, saying that they were addressing the problem because

• 35:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd raised it on this podcast. And, and someone slipped on bird shit in the video and they didn't even fucking edit it out. That's what we're dealing with here. I'm sorry to get emotional now about the fucking, uh, the bird shit district.

• 35:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  But those starlings will return. They'll return in about, about four months. And I'll be here. I'll be here waiting if I don't get Charlie Kirk.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  By the fucking council.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Oh, imagine this.

• 35:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  An opportunity was missed. An opportunity was missed there to, to not only improve the situation for the starlings, to stop people slipping up, but to put Limerick on the map internationally with a Bioswale and a Bardshit Festival and to lead the way, to lead the way internationally. Only good things would have come of that instead of turning to hostile architecture. And again, hostile architecture is,

• 36:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's part of the privatization of public spaces. It's,

• 36:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's part of a fairly disgusting artificial ecosystem, the ecosystem of neoliberalism.

• 36:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  When housing became financialized,

• 36:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  then you've got the rise of homelessness and then you've got all these people trying to use what used to be public spaces to, to, to camp. So then cities started to build ways to stop homeless people being homeless. They put spikes on the ground in any sheltered area where the homeless person could shelter or park benches, benches in public spaces. They put dividers in the middle so you can't lie on them. Or in the case here in Limerick, they just took, they took the benches out of the street. And I don't know why they did it. Did they do it because of the homeless people or because they don't want the people to get shat on? That rain, the country boy. Now that the rain has returned, I think,

• 37:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  let's, let's let the rain decide when we have the Ocarina pause. The rain just came back there naturally. Lovely gentle rain today, freezing fucking cold outside. Let's have a little pause. You'll hear an advert.

• 37:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I think silence is in order for this. Let's just let the, the rain do its thing or the flux or the event, whatever you wanna call it.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notification screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q U O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, "Wait, who talked to this customer last?" And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, QUO's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free. Plus, get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/tech. That's Q U O dot com slash tech.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready-to-cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Hi, this is Dr. Shoshana from TED Health, and today's episode is sponsored by Kashi. Say hi to new Kashi Gut Health Granola, a straightforward, delicious way to fuel your gut. Made with prebiotics, fiber, and cultures. My favorite flavor, blueberry almond, has perfectly crispy clusters, delicious almonds, and bursts of whole blueberries. It's an easy fit for a daily routine, whether that's for breakfast or a snack. In a world of overwhelm, it's a straightforward, delicious choice. Try new Kashi Gut Health Granola.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Hi, this is Dr. Shoshana from TED Health, and today's episode is sponsored by Kashi. Say hi to new Kashi Gut Health Granola, a straightforward delicious way to fuel your gut, made with prebiotics, fiber, and cultures. My favorite flavor, Blueberry Almond, has perfectly crispy clusters, delicious almonds, and bursts of whole blueberries. It's an easy fit for a daily routine, whether that's for breakfast or a snack. In a world of overwhelm, it's a straightforward delicious choice. Try new Kashi Gut Health Granola.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad, and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 41:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindvilepodcast.

• 41:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider becoming a patron and supporting this podcast directly, because this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills, pay my rent, it's how I rent out this office, pay for all the equipment to record this podcast. It's how I have the two microphones hooked up to the ceiling to record the rain. It's how I have the time to do that. And most importantly, directly funding this podcast gives me the time and space to write and record and deliver a podcast to each and every week. The news cycle at the moment is fucking mad. I mean, three weeks

• 42:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  ago, I said I was gonna talk about Venezuela, but I said I don't know what's gonna be in the news the week after that. Then fucking Iran. Now Iran isn't in the news anymore. And now it's whether or not Trump is gonna invade Greenland. And that's just in the space of three fucking weeks. It's very overwhelming. And I think it's overwhelming by design. You know, to quote Steve Bannon, who was a Trump advisor, flood the zone with shit. The Trump administration appeared to be acting with absolute audacity and controlling, uncontested, because of the amount of confusion that they create. Confusion and uncertainty.

• 43:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, the Greenland shit, it's just words that he's saying. Same with the threatening of tariffs. He threatened France with 10% tariff. They're just words that he's saying, but it doesn't matter, because you don't know whether or not you have to take them seriously. Shock, confusion, uncertainty, chaos, destabilization of information, because you don't know what's true or false anymore. You don't know what, even know what's a fucking deep fake anymore. Cacophony, overload.

• 43:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  We appear to be living through a period of that to stifle any type of response, any type of resistance, any type of critical thinking. This is what Putin did this, Putin did this in Russia in the 2000s. This exact thing, creating chaos, confusion, uncertainty of information, so that there's no resistance. And Trump is doing it, and I know Trump is the president of America, but it bleeds into all of our lives. And it's fucking exhausting. And I don't know what tomorrow's news is gonna be. Haven't a fucking clue. I think that's why I focused on the rain.

• 44:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's nothing more certain than the rain in Ireland. That's why I love the rain, the comfort of it.

• 44:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Told you the summertime gives me anxiety. I don't know whether to... A hot day comes out and you feel guilty. Am I enjoying it properly with the fucking rain? I know what to do with the rain. I can expect it, it's on time. I know the crack with the rain. And I gravitated towards the rain this week. I think because I'm looking to, I want to be grounded by it. I want the certainty of it. But something that's very important to me with this podcast. I know that all of ye listening, you're swimming through the same sea of uncertainty that I'm swimming through. You're dealing with that same chaos, that same overwhelm of information. We're all dealing with it. And if there's one thing I want this podcast to be,

• 45:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  this year in particular, I want to deliver the, the comfort of consistency. Whatever chaos is in the nose cycle, every Wednesday morning,

• 45:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  you can be guaranteed that an Irish fellow who wears a plastic bag on his head is gonna show up and talk out of his arse. And if that stops, it's because Limerick City Council have assassinated me.

• 45:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  But until that happens, I'm gonna show up every fucking week and deliver a podcast. And it's gonna be focused on whatever I'm curious about and whatever I'm passionate about. That's what it's gonna be. And all I need from ye is to fund the podcast directly in order for that to happen. If I'm, if I can do that as my full-time job, which I can, then I'm gonna show up every fucking week and do it. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free. You can listen for free. Cause the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model. And it means I'm not beholden to advertisers.

• 46:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Advertisers don't get to step into this space and objectify and take ownership and commodify my imagination. They can fuck off. This is listener funded. And in this listener funded space, you're funding curiosity, passion, playfulness and failure. Now, some contractually obligated gigs that I have to call out. This Friday, I'm in Waterford, sold out gig, can't wait. I like Waterford. It's like a slightly more depressing limerick and the Waterford accent is gorgeous. It's like, it's like a tipper airy person doing an impression of a Dublin person. So I look forward to Waterford this Friday.

• 47:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thirty first, I'm up in Kildare at the Spirit of Kildare Festival. Fuck all tickets for that, like 10 maybe. But earlier there, I was mentioning Saint Bridget or Bridget the goddess. And I'm actually gonna be talking to at this festival, Dr. Neve Witcherly. Oh, she was a contributor on my documentary. She's brilliant. She's an expert in Bridget and Saint Bridget. She's fantastic. So I can't wait to chat to Neve in February the 4th, Vicker Street, Dublin.

• 47:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Think it's fair to say that that one's sold out. I might release a few tickets on the night, a few guest list tickets, but that one's sold out, but I have added a second Vicar Street date.

• 47:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is that in April, is it? 20th of April, I have a second Vicar Street date there. 12th of February, Belfast at the Waterfront Theatre, I fucking love Belfast. Load tickets for that one. I have a wonderful guest for that gig. Galway, Leisure Land. I'm gonna go up to Galway and get jealous, because that's what Limerick people do when they go up to Galway. We walk around Galway and go, why do you have so many tourists? Why do you appear to have a functioning economy? Why is your city doing so much better than our city, even though we're larger? So, much love to Galway for that. Killarney, Ainech on the fucking 28th of February. Then, Carlo, is that even announced, is it?

• 48:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Carlo in March, the Visual Arts Centre, Cork, fucking podcast festival on the 26th of March. Then, April there, Limerick, on the 9th, is that the 9th? University Concert Hall, Limerick, my home city. Let's do it. Let's do that. Then, England, Scotland and Wales, I probably have a bunch of shit in the summer as well, right? But England, Scotland and Wales, October 2026. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London at the Barbican, almost sold out. Glasgow, that's nearly sold out too. Gateshead and Nottingham. That tour's a long way away, but those tickets are really going fast. A lot of people bought them over Christmas, so don't be disappointed if you wanna come

• 49:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  and see me in England, Scotland and Wales, you glorious cunts. So suppose this week's podcast is about water systems. I listen to the rain. I listen to the rain on my fucking tin roof. Instead of being frustrated by it, annoyed by it.

• 49:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, it's not ideal to have rain bashing off your roof when you're using microphones. That's not ideal to record a podcast. I like to lean into failure. If something is going wrong, don't fight it, bring it into the process. So I mic'd the ceiling and we got the beautiful, beautiful stereophonic sound of rain and tin.

• 49:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I listened to it and let it inform my research and my writing. So we're talking about rain and water. And it was just a strange coincidence that the UN happened to release that report today about water bankruptcy, as they call it, that terrible term water bankruptcy, which the world is facing. If you're angry and furious and you're saying to yourself, how does this happen? How do you get to a point where water is privatized? Where they decide that water is something that that a corporation or a person can own? How do you get to a point

• 50:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  where the environment is exploited and damaged in the interest of profits, even though it's causing widespread harm? How the fuck does that happen? Neoliberalism, it's neoliberalism, that is how it happens. Economic policies first tested out in South America as the test tube in Chile in particular, economic policies brought in by Reagan and Thatcher, which are now globally widespread. Neoliberalism is why we have billionaires. Neoliberalism, it's a way for very wealthy people to steal taxes. That's what it is. You pay taxes so

• 51:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  that there's infrastructure, sewage, water in your taps, education, healthcare. I mean, taxes are, it makes you a part of the ecosystem. You know, it's for, it's for the public good, it's for everybody. You pay some taxes and you see it benefiting society all around you and you go, well, I want to live in this society. And that's what taxes are supposed to do. Neoliberalism is a little sneaky thing that happened where

• 51:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Private individuals are able to put a tall boot between the tax that you pay and the public service that you think it's going to. A rich person has gone, I'm down the middle here now and I'm taking 90% of that. And you don't really know this is happening because it's so confusing. So water, water's not privatized in Ireland yet. They tried to privatize water by bringing in a company called Irish Water 11 years ago, 12 years ago. The civil disobedience and the protests during the recession, I might add, were so large, so wide scale, that it worked and the government stepped back.

• 52:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Unfortunately, and this is just anecdotal based from what I can see, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of lads that I knew who were fucking really into the water protest movement 11 years ago have now been absorbed by the far right. If the government wanted to privatize water in Ireland now, you, the, the type of unified protests that we saw in, in 2014 or 2015, that could not happen now because of polarization, left versus right polarization, which was algorithmic, purely fucking algorithmic, came about after Covid. Polarization. It's why we can't have unified housing protests now. It's like, well, which type of housing protest are you?

• 53:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are you the racist housing protest or the not racist housing protest? Which one? So I'm not going to talk about Ireland because we don't have privatized water in Ireland yet, but we fucking will. I'm going to chat about the UK instead. Margaret Thatcher, the neoliberal, privatized water in the UK in 1989. So drinking water, sanitation, sewage, which used to be publicly owned, went into the hands of private interests, private corporations. You still paid for it with your tax. Your taxes still paid for it, but now you're paying a private company to look after a public service. That's neoliberalism. What was there before 1989?

• 53:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  You had regional water authorities, right? Public sector companies. The water in the UK was owned by the people as a public good, a public resource. It's, it's not privatized. There's not profit here. The regional water authorities provided employment. The public sector workers who worked for these companies, right? They had very strong job security, right? Job wasn't going anywhere. They were civil servants effectively. Job isn't going anywhere.

• 54:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  They've got a pay scale, national fucking pay scale. So guaranteed wage. They had unions to stand up for their rights. They had pension schemes, proper fucking pensions. You take this job working for the regional water authorities. And when you can't work anymore, this pension is going to pay you a wage until you fucking die. So you've got a highly skilled, long-term workforce, heavily invested in the job. They're not afraid of getting replaced. There's no zero hour contracts. They don't have to meet quotas. They work for the regional water authorities. Also, career progression. If I stay in this job, there's pay scales. I can climb up the ladder. I can plan my life out.

• 55:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can have a sense of certainty. I'm happy here with the regional water authorities. Who paid for that? The taxpayer. The taxpayer paid for that for sewage and drinking water, right? But what you're paying for is this institutionally robust system.

• 55:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Whose only job is to treat water, maintain it and not to run it like a business or a revenue stream or something financialized. It's not profit driven. It is not profit driven. You're taking tax money to maintain water because it's publicly owned for a, it's a necessity. It's a, it's a human right. Money that was made is reinvested back into the public good of providing water. And the, the regional water authorities over in the UK. They manage like entire fucking rivers, catchment areas, right? So that's, we've got the water supply, sewage, flood control, the quality, the quality of the water.

• 56:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's relational. It's systemic. It's relational. It's a way of managing water which reflects the way that fucking nature does it. 1989, Thatcher, what does she do? Well, her government takes.

• 56:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Water, this, this public thing that everyone should own and privatizes it, gives it to rich people, gives it to capitalists. So there was ten of these regional water authorities, right? They were sold to private investors. All of the assets, millions and millions and millions, the assets of these companies, paid for by the public, which were debt free, all of these assets, they just get sold, transferred, transferred to, to, to some fucking multimillionaire. And then water, your drinking water, the sewage is no longer a public system, publicly owned. It's, it's now redefined as, as a commercial service.

• 57:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you're still paying for it with taxes. Except now, instead of your taxes going to this not-for-profit regional water authority with fully employed people, instead of your, your money going to that, or that type of diligence, it's going to a private company who's focused on making profit. Your taxes are going to a company that wants to make money from your taxes, which means that they're going to try and cut corners at every opportunity to maximize profit and to keep their shareholders happy. These new private owners, they don't invest in sewage, in treatment. They don't invest in infrastructure, improving the pipes. Why? Because that costs money. They want to make money, they don't want to spend it. What are you gonna do? Not have water in your taps, not flush your toilet?

• 58:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Right, what are you, you're gonna go to the water company and say, I don't want this anymore. I want, I want a competing service. That's not how it works. Now a private company has the monopoly, you're fucked, you don't have a choice. And they know you don't have a choice. So now they want all of your money and to give you a shit service. All of those employees that had pensions and that had full-time jobs, that's fucking gone. Unions are gone, rights are gone. People are being hired on a contract basis, no pensions. You're paying more money, more and more money. But it's like, why am I paying so much money in tax, in tax? But the service is getting worse and the rivers are more polluted. And there's boil water notices. What's going on?

• 58:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm paying all this tax for sewage and water, why is it shit? Because it's about profit now. It, it's not about giving you the best service, it's about funneling tax. Public money, it's about stealing public money and putting it into the hands of a small amount of millionaires who are now billionaires. And then another tenet of neoliberalism is what's called deregulation. A regulation is a law, but it's a law that applies for a business. Let's just say I'm a criminal, right? My business is stealing houses. My business is breaking into houses and stealing people's things, okay? That's my business.

• 59:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  I earn a living by breaking into strangers' houses and stealing their things and selling them. That's how I earn a living, right? Unfortunately, there are these pesky things called laws. And when I break into a person's house and steal their stuff, that's actually illegal. And I can get arrested and go to jail for doing that because it's a crime. These laws are very toxic to me as an entrepreneur. As someone who's in the business of breaking into people's houses and stealing their things, these laws are very toxic, a very anti-business for me. I can't earn a living if the police are gonna show up and arrest me just because I'm breaking into someone's house.

• 1:00:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd like to see deregulation so that I, as an entrepreneur, can succeed. So then Margaret Thatcher comes along and makes it, it's no longer illegal for me to break into houses and steal people's shit. So now I become very wealthy very quickly because of deregulation. But that's what deregulation is, except it's for businesses. It's for the crime of polluting rivers, the crime of destroying ecosystems, the crime of charging poor people way too much money for sewage and water. The crime of charging them so much that they're in poverty.

• 1:00:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  That crime, the crime of a person's bills being really, really high that it pushes them into poverty and what they're paying for are things that should be a human right, such as sanitation, sewage and drinking water. And for these really, really high prices to be charged, not because that's how much it costs to provide the service, but to charge that high so that you can have huge profits for your shareholders. That fucking crime, these things that are clearly crimes.

• 1:01:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like they're crimes, like that should be illegal. Like I know, I know I'm sticking on water here, but I, I, I'll tell you a fucking crime, a neoliberal crime, just to, just to deviate slightly. In Ireland, we've got a housing crisis. There's a lot of people who can't access housing, can't afford rent, so they're homeless. A lot of these people end up in the streets. Some of these people don't, they end up in a system called emergency accommodation. What's emergency accommodation? It's if a person's homeless, they get a roof over their fucking head temporarily, okay? And it's paid for by the taxpayer, by me and you. That sounds fair, that's brilliant, that's, I want my taxes to pay for a person to not have to sleep out in the cold. Brilliant.

• 1:02:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  However, in Ireland, most of these services are provided by private fucking hotels, private hotels. So the money that you're paying, so a homeless person doesn't have to sleep out in the street tonight, a massive hotel chain is now after stepping in the middle and going, you know what? I'm gonna charge market rate, I'm gonna charge three hundred and eighty quid or four hundred quid a night to the government, to the taxpayer, for that homeless person to have a roof over their head tonight. That's a crime. That's a crime there. That's as harmful as breaking into someone's house and stealing shit. That's a crime. We've also farmed this, the hotel system out to children that are in residential care, okay?

• 1:02:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  These are kids who may not have parents, kids with, let's just say, complex needs. I don't wanna go labelling children, children with complex needs who are in state care, the care of the state, under eighteens, they're living in hotels. So, again, with this system, hotels are charging the taxpayer, full whack, full whack for a hotel room, and kids who are in care are living in hotel rooms. But because these kids have complex needs.

• 1:03:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're trashing their accommodation. These are children who might have been through abuse, lived through addiction. Their brains aren't fully developed. They don't have the capacity to emotionally regulate. They're dealing with trauma. They're 12, they're 13. And what happens to be working for them in the moment, in their little bodies and their little brains, is to smash up their accommodation. Some of these children in Ireland are now being criminalised.

• 1:03:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the system has put them into a fucking hotel room. The kid gets in because they've been through god knows what. They smash the fucking hotel room up. These kids could be autistic as well, had any number of problems. They're smashing hotel rooms up. These children are being criminalised. They're being charged with property damage, property damage to a hotel. I know about this because the children's ombudsman is warning against criminalising these children, to not prosecute these children because the hotel rooms, the setting, the set, a fucking hotel room, they're not designed for kids that are going with complex needs that are going through trauma. They're not designed for this.

• 1:04:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  The environment is not designed for this. What it's designed for is to maximise the fucking profits of hotels under a neoliberal system, where the ombudsman had to say, children who've already experienced trauma should not be treated as criminals for behaviour that would likely be handled with care, support or understanding in any other family home. So that, that to me is a crime. That's a crime against children. I mean, why are there no adequate services, locations, places, purpose-built accommodation for children with these complex needs? Or if it's an autistic kid who's having a fucking meltdown and smashing the place up, somewhere that meets the sensory needs of that kid.

• 1:05:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Why doesn't this exist? Fucking policy, policy. The state does not want to take on that financial responsibility. So instead what it does is it takes taxes. You're still paying to, to meet the needs of vulnerable kids, which is the right thing to do. You're still paying for it. But instead, one of the big hotel chains comes in and says,

• 1:05:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna jump into the middle there. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm talking big names here, big hotel names in Ireland.

• 1:05:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna step into the middle here, between you, the taxpayer, and this vulnerable, traumatised child. I'm gonna step into the middle here, and I'm gonna take 90% of this money. Because hotel rooms are 400 quid a night now. And you know why? Because so many hotels are taken up with emergency accommodation, kids with complex needs who are in residential care, and international protection applicants. So, not only are we profiting massively from this public service, but we're creating scarcity too, and that's driving the prices up. This is fucking great. That should be criminal, that needs to be illegal, that's a crime. But it's not a crime. That there is neoliberalism.

• 1:06:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  The funneling of public money into private hands, and what should be a public service, privatised for fucking profit, instead of the public good, instead of doing what it's supposed to do. So, back to Thatcher, 1989, and the privatisation of water in England. So now the private companies control sewage and water in England and Wales.

• 1:07:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're focused only on profit shareholders, extracting wealth from the taxpayer. They're not reinvesting in infrastructure. They're polluting rivers. They're not fulfilling their obligations to maintain the health of rivers, fucking wetlands. They're making shit of the gaff. Where are the government environmental protection organisations, who step in and go, "Wait a minute. You can't do that, that's a crime. You need to be disbanded. You're committing a crime against nature." What happens? Thatcher and successive governments underfunds the Environment Agency.

• 1:07:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the agency that's there to stop the water companies doing this damage...

• 1:07:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  They can't do their job because the government are going hands off and not funding those organisations. So now the private companies can just go fucking nuts. And that's not just, this is global, that's America too, that's California. This is what's causing the water bankruptcy. This is what's causing the water bankruptcy, as the UN calls it. Rampant profits and privatisation and stripping funding away from organisations that are supposed to stop it. Deregulation. Every time you hear deregulation, a criminal has successfully lobbied the government to remove the names of crimes so that they can continue doing crime. That's what the fuck it is. That's what it is.

• 1:08:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Regulation is just a law, but it's a law for a business. You're seeing things every, every day of your life, just, just existing. You're seeing things that should be illegal. Homeless spikes would have at one point just have been considered unthinkable, barbaric, criminal. Spikes on a bench so a homeless person can't sleep? You get to fucking jail. Just gonna give you a few stats now about, since the privatisation of water over in the UK, so since privatisation, eighty-five billion, right? So that's eighty-five billion pounds a taxpayer has paid in order to get sewage and drinking water.

• 1:09:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Eighty-five billion has gone to shareholders, right? That's stolen money. That's money that didn't go to improving water systems, protecting the environment. It's money that went into people's pockets. It's stolen. It's a toll booth. That should be illegal. Those people should be in jail. That's a crime. It shouldn't exist. The fucking.

• 1:09:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  The CEO saw these water companies in the UK that are privatised. The average pay for the CEOs is 1.7 million a year. Since privatisation, your bills have gone up by 40%. Since privatisation, only 14% of English rivers are considered to have good ecological status. In Scotland, Scotland didn't privatised their water. Scotland kept the water publicly owned. So in Scotland, water that is in public ownership and the bills are lower, rivers and seas are cleaner, and Scottish water has spent 35% more reinvesting back into water services. And the big one in England and Wales, the Environment Agency says that since, so since

• 1:10:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  privatisation, because of the impact of privatisation, by 2050, rivers in England and Wales are going to have 50% to 80% less water during the summer months. And those, those statistics are from weownit.org, which is, it's an organisation in England that's just like trying to bring services that used to be public, public services that are now private to try and bring them back into public ownership. It said in 2011, Paris, in Paris, they brought water back into public ownership. I want to finish by talking about a snail. A wonderful, wonderful snail.

• 1:11:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mentioned earlier during the Ocarina pause about the chaos that Donald Trump is unleashing on the world, the fucking bullying. The Trump administration hates Europe. They hate Europe because Europe means regulation. The EU means regulations. It's not fucking perfect, but there's regulation in the EU. America wants to sell chickens dipped in bleach.

• 1:11:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they can't do it, they can't sell it to the EU because of regulation. The EU is like, no, health and safety, we don't want to be eating chickens that are dipped in bleach. And we think it's not safe. And Trump is like, fuck that, get rid of the regulation, deregulate it. America released some foreign policy document about a month ago, I can't remember the name of it, but it explicitly said that America is worried about Europe, that Europe has lost its way, and that America will directly support, I'll paraphrase it, America will explicitly support far-right parties, far-right parties in Europe, if they want to come to power,

• 1:12:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  America is going to step in and support those parties in any way it can. Do you know why? Because fucking fascism and capitalism go hand in hand. So whatever far-right pricks that are out there, whether it's Reform or Nigel Farage, they all love neoliberalism. America knows that if they get far-right governments into France, into Italy, Ireland, whoever, the first thing those governments will do is kowtow to industry. They'll deregulate and they'll let big business do whatever the fuck it wants to maximize profit. That's what, that's what fascism and the far-right does, hand in hand with capitalism.

• 1:13:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  You want to trace the roots, roots of neoliberalism, they go to Chile. All right. Chile had a fascist coup in the seventies, Pinochet, and when he took over as a fascist dictator, Chile explicitly was used as a test tube for neoliberalism via a group of economists called the Chicago Boys. They were South American economists who went to a university in Chicago and trained underneath. I think it was Milton Friedman, yet was trained underneath Friedman. And they brought neoliberal economics to Chile in the seventies. And this was the test tube. And all the shit that we live with today, the fucking dystopia that we live with began in Chile. And it was America.

• 1:13:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  America helped that coup that got Pinochet into power. Cause there was a socialist there called Salvador Allende, who believed that public services should be owned by the public. And the Yanks went, fuck that, put in Pinochet, put in the fascist. He's gonna deregulate everything and American companies can come in and absolutely plunder the place. That's why Trump is a prick about Europe. It's regulation. It's regulation and trade. I don't like these fucking rules. I don't like these rules that says that I can't sell you bleached chicken. I wanna finish by talking about a wonderful little snail, a hero. A tiny fucking snail, smaller than your fingernail, standing up to Donald Trump.

• 1:14:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Trump owns a golf course in Clare called Dunbeg. In Clare in Ireland, like Dunbeg Golf Course, and it's a Trump resort. And Trump wants to build a giant ballroom on this golf course in Clare. He wants to build a huge ballroom. But part of this golf course is on a wetland. And on this wetland is a tiny little snail called Vertigo and Gustiar. And this little snail is a protected species under the EU habitats directive. There's your regulation there. That's environmental protection, regulation, biodiversity regulation.

• 1:15:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  The EU has a law that says, sorry, Donald Trump. This tiny snail is more fucking important than you are. And you can't build your ballroom because this snail here is endangered. And it's really, really important. And it's way more important than profits. And Trump hates that, but that's fucking regulation. That is regulation. For Trump.

• 1:15:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  To build over these wetlands and to destroy this snail, this snail that's going extinct. That's a crime. That would be a crime. That's unthinkable. That should be illegal. He should go to jail. It is a fucking crime. The regulation says you can't do that. It's illegal. But just to... This little snail is so magnificent.

• 1:15:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Snails in general are great because they're indicators. They tell us about the land.

• 1:16:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  This snail is in... Do you know why this snail is in decline? Because if this snail isn't present on a wetland, it means that the wetland is dying. Its habitat is disappearing.

• 1:16:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  That UN report about water bankruptcy, wetlands are going. Like I said, there in Limerick, the Bardshit district, the starlings are shitting. It used to be a riparian zone, but their shit is no longer flowing up to the wetland. It's not going there anymore because it's going on concrete. So the wetlands are dying because the ecosystem has been interrupted. This is a sensitive little snail, lives in wetlands. It lives in permanently damp, calcium-rich wetlands. Especially where there's dune slacks and fens, wet grasslands. It can't survive a dry wetland, an unhealthy wetland.

• 1:17:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  The numbers of this snail have been declining rapidly in Dunebeg. This snail is already at the cusp of being extinct, but its numbers are declining rapidly in Dunebeg. And what that's telling you...

• 1:17:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not necessarily telling you about that snail. It is, but it's telling you about the ecosystem that it's a part of. You see, you can't commodify that snail. It's not one little thing.

• 1:17:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's telling it that the wetland is dying. That snail is the UN report. Why is that snail a protected species that's on the cusp of extinction?

• 1:17:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because the wetlands are going. All over Europe, that's that snail is is is declining all over Europe because the wetlands aren't healthy anymore. And the wetlands aren't healthy because the aquifers aren't healthy, because the cycle has been interrupted because of neoliberal capitalism, because of the complete extraction of wealth from the environment and the defunding of the organisations that are supposed to stop it. So that snail is an indicator species, just like regular snails are. You know, if you've got a bunch of snails on your lawn, it means that there's calcium in the soil. If you don't have a bunch of snails on your lawn, there's no calcium in the soil. It's an acidic soil.

• 1:18:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  So snails are wonderful because they're so close to the ground. They can tell us about soil chemistry. Well, this little snail tells us about the health of wetlands. This year, I think they only found 53. In Duneberg, only 53 of this tiny little snail. Like, that's fuck all. 53 of a few little snails. This little snail is standing up to Donald Trump. Its existence is triggering regulation that says, no, Donald, you can't build a fucking ballroom. That's illegal. That would be a crime. And if I'm leaving you with a positive note, and again, this is, it's so fucking frustrating.

• 1:19:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm leaving you with a positive note to go, what the fuck can you do to help wetlands? Almost all of the solutions I can offer, again, fall underneath neoliberalism. So I promise you, if you live near wetlands or riparian zones, your local council has commissioned a report on those wetlands. Like, there's the one for Limerick. I read it all the time. It's PDF. It's a wonderful fucking document, all about the health of the Limerick wetlands and fens. Fens I didn't even fucking know about. Chances are, if you go looking, there's going to be a wetland group.

• 1:19:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who dedicate themselves to trying to rewild and re-wet wetlands. And they go there to pluck out invasive weeds, to do a bit of digging, to keep that wetland healthy. So a very constructive thing you can do is join one of those groups and get stuck in. Groups that they build ponds and they build wetlands. Like Callie Ennis, who I've had on this, who's the bio, chief biodiversity officer up in Trinity College, he's been on this podcast about four times. Callie is constantly building ponds and helping with wetlands. And another really constructive thing you can do, and this is a highly neoliberal suggestion.

• 1:20:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you work in a large office, right, or a huge company, you go to your HR department. I fucking hate HR because HR replaced the unions. I fucking hate HR, no disrespect if you work in, in HR, because generally people who work in HR tend to be incredibly approachable, friendly, lovely people, but unions used to be, used to exist. Unions were a form of collective bargaining where the fucking workers could have their demands met. And it was about the rights and needs of workers. Then fucking u- unions got kicked out because of, because of neoliberalism and then replaced with HR.

• 1:21:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  HR mediate worker disputes, always in the interest of the fucking company. And they replaced things like healthcare and pensions and full-time contracts and job security. They replaced these things with ping pong tables, a fridge full of beer, casual Fridays, and team building exercises, team building exercises, a lot of fucking bollocks. Wouldn't you much prefer to have some job security? But anyway, if you're in a large fucking company, go to your HR department.

• 1:21:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And suggest that all the workers as a team building exercise, because I've seen them, who does a lot of this in Limerick, Regeneron? So you get these huge companies and they do these team building exercises, but they often often do it for the community good. So go to your HR in your big company and say, why don't we have a team building exercise where everyone goes out and helps rewild a wetland or build a giant pond? And your HR department are going to get a fucking, a boner that'd drive the farmers out of tarless when they hear this, because they get to be all performative. The company now can be performative and have a team building exercise and they might get some carbon credits out of it.

• 1:22:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  They get to publicly perform how much they care about the environment. But that's a nice little neoliberal solution there about something you can do for wetlands or for fen's. A fen is great. A fen, fen is a wetland, but it's not, it's fed by groundwater. It's fed by like a spring. So the nutrients that like the natural fertilizer that a fen gets is from deep, deep underground in the rocks. So it gets a lot of micronutrients, weird minerals, zinc, calcium, magnesium. It depends on what rocks are underneath the fen. And that what, the nutrients come up via a spring in the groundwater.

• 1:23:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then the fen is a wetland, but of course it then holds these nutrients and distributes them slowly. But what you get then, you get a lot more biodiversity and plant variation in a fen, because there's just more, more diversity of fertilizer, of minerals that are coming up from underneath the ground. And I didn't think Limerick had any fen's, but I read that report, the report on Limerick wetlands. And there's actually a fen out by South Circular Road. I used to know, I've never been there, but I knew lads who, during the Celtic Tiger, fucking hell.

• 1:23:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  These were the type of lads who used to steal cars so that they could drive them like lunatics and then set them on fire. And then during the Celtic Tiger, they all got jobs out in Dell.

• 1:24:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what they used to do on a Friday, because they had money, they would purchase a shit car, like purchase a car for 500 quid between them, so they legally own it. Then they'd go to this fen and drive it around and set it on fire. They'd managed to deregulate stealing cars. I'm not suggesting that that's a good thing to do in a fen. I'm just saying, I didn't know that was a fen. I now do know it's a fen. And this is what lads, who I knew about 20 years ago, that's what they used to do. They used to purchase cars and set them on fire in this fen. That was a podcast about water. All right. Very important.

• 1:24:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'll catch you next week. Rub a dog, genuflect to a dun-begged snail, rewild a wetland. Dog bless.

• 1:25:06Speaker 06

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet? No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay. Bye-bye.

• 1:25:31Speaker 07

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  Hi, this is Dr. Shoshana from TED Health, and today's episode is sponsored by Kashi. Say hi to new Kashi Gut Health Granola, a straightforward, delicious way to fuel your gut, made with prebiotics, fiber, and cultures. My favorite flavor, blueberry almond, has perfectly crispy clusters, delicious almonds, and bursts of whole blueberries. It's an easy fit for a daily routine, whether that's for breakfast or a snack. In a world of overwhelm, it's a straightforward delicious choice. Try new Kashi Gut Health Granola.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  You.