LOOK, WHO AMONGST us can claim we’ve never harboured a desire to approximate what it must have felt like to be part of the convoy from the song Convoy by CW McCall? Lord knows it’s an impulse I feel a few times each year. But not like this. Not like this.

When discussing the direct civil action that has rocked Ireland this week, referred to by most as ‘the fuel protests’, it is tempting to rely on gross over-simplifications. And I know what you’re thinking: ‘Carl, isn’t gross oversimplification for humorous effect basically the entire mode of this column?’ Perhaps, imaginary reader whom I talk to in my head. But that’s usually because whatever I’m writing about is already simple, and I’m just making it even simpler. 

At the risk of pulling an Adam Curtis on it, I fear that the matter of the fuel protests may in fact be multifaceted. It is my grave concern that there may indeed be many layers of nuance to what is happening right now. Every columnist’s nightmare.

On the one hand, fuel prices going up make it very hard for people to do things that hitherto have been essential to their way of life. That’s true, we all know that’s true. Anything that unexpectedly makes your life harder and leaves you feeling unsupported by the powers-that-be is a universally understood grounds for protest. 

There is also the crazy-making contradiction of seeing prices surge ever upwards, even as Tánaiste Simon Harris insists that Ireland is unaffected by global fuel shortages. That is true in the most literal sense, but a bit misleading when you consider that oil wholesalers are increasing their prices across the board because they’re freaking out over an imminent energy doomsday scenario. It’s also, quite crucially, only true for now. I’m not looking out my window at the Strait of Hormuz at the moment, but something tells me that bad boy isn’t returning to the halcyon days of when........

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