Thread. #Covid19 is exposing the dark side of Irish work, economics & society. We class people as "essential workers" then we treat them as if they are disposable. Our meat workers were "essential" yet look at their working & living conditions.

We need to take a long hard look at what and who we value. We need to look, especially, at the precarity facing our workers as they age and the political determination that they work at hard physical jobs past 65.

I had hoped, politically, we would learn lessons from the virus about what is of intrinsic value. We did not. Politically we seem gung ho to go on looking for the external pat on the head and to get back to 'normal' as quickly as possible.

Only there is no more 'normal'. Only the cheap political swizz to convince people there is. The lives we are living are unsustainable. In our obedient consumption we are only consuming ourselves and in particular our vulnerable and already marginalised.

We must do better, but above all, we must do things differently. Our planet is heating, our ice is melting, our flora and fauna are dying. But still the politicians urge us to go further, faster, consume more on the road to extinction.

We need to reimagine life and how we live it. Now our planet is at risk there is nowhere safe to run to. We spin the globe to find our place of refuge, but we have simply run out of world. The Blue Dot is all we have. Alpha and omega of every life and moment in human history.

It's time to take a stand for it & to stop listening to politicians who have nothing to offer except their vanity & vapidity. Because despite their ego & arrogance, the future - the kind of future we have - is not up to them. It's up to us. #Covid19 #climatechange #ferragosto