From the ugly protests held outside IPAS centres last year, the fuel protesters have learned the importance of non-violence. 

They urged their fellow protesters to keep a lid on things, so that although their blockades cause fuel prices to rise and damage the economy, there’s no reason for the gardaí to move against them or for mainstream support to drain away.

Perhaps the next ad hoc protest that springs to life on social media will in turn learn a lesson from the fuel protests. 

Like having a coherent leadership to negotiate with Government and, if desired, prevent the protest being hijacked by outsiders.

The fuel protesters are a disparate group and avidly egalitarian, in that there’s no hierarchy. 

On O’Connell Street, the gleaming lines of trucks and top-of-the-range tractors look straight out of a dealer’s brochure at the Ploughing Championship, rather than a hard-working farm or quarry.

Dressed in fleeces and jeans, the men hanging around the Spire are a disciplined and prosperous-looking lot, who are civil to the gardaí and pedestrians.

The online mob could not be more different. In TikToks and X posts, blokes whose brains have been fried by Covid conspiracy theories – and who would struggle to attract an audience beyond the vicinity of their bar stool – enjoy the thrill of social media stardom to spout vicious and expletive-ridden diatribes.

Such is their anti-everything, anti-everyone anarchic fervour, it’s hard to imagine them sustaining common cause for long with John Dallon, Chris Duffy or James Geoghegan (the latter who had almost €550,000 in tax judgements against him and a conviction for animal cruelty), spokesmen for the fuel protests.

The grassroots protest was unified on answering a call to action on social media to meet on Tuesday at 7am at various assembly points around the country.

As it brought the country to a standstill, prominent right-wing activists amplified the invective of online fuel protesters. 

Meanwhile, on O’Connell Street amid the carnival of tricolours, Gavin Pepper, Eddie Hobbs and Aontú’s Peadar Tóibín were made welcome while PBP leftie Paul Murphy was run out of the place.

John Dallon didn’t blink when a woman passed on Conor McGregor’s good wishes. Mr Dallon, a farmer from Co. Kildare, can’t control who admires him or retweets in his favour.

But if he, or anyone, was in a position of authority − he could disown them. 

He could stress the protests are a single-issue campaign against crippling fuel prices and deny the suspicion, suggested by the protesters’ Ireland First rhetoric, that it has a nascent anti-woke, anti-green and anti-immigrant agenda.

With two by-elections imminent, the lack of a figurehead may be good news for the political parties. 

As long as this protest fails to mobilise around a leader, the chances increase of it being a flash in the pan, unlikely to follow the path of US Republicans who morphed into MAGA and the British Tories who followed Nigel Farage into Reform.

But even if MIGA is averted, the spirit of MAGA’s founding father is everywhere, from the foul-mouthed protesters whose most anodyne remarks are littered with the F word, to turning the Taoiseach into a hate figure to insult him in the vilest terms, to bullying and social media savvy.

Regardless of the outcome, these protests show that many of the unsavoury ingredients that created MAGA are here in spades, just waiting to be harnessed for the cause.

 I can think of one way Melania would be more convincing in her quest for the 'truth' about Jeffrey Epstein

AFTER Trump’s almost starting WW3 seemed to consign the Epstein files to the dustbin of history, along comes the First Lady to put the scandal back in the spotlight. 

Melania’s unprecedented speech denying any involvement with Epstein has invited speculation about the existence of a ticking time-bomb set to destroy her carefully guarded reputation. Melania also called for congressional hearings for victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking, claiming ‘only then we will have the truth’. 

A cynic might suggest that Melania’s commitment to the truth would be more convincing had she demanded the release of all the Epstein files. 

Will AI be able to reassure us about all those recession-proof jobs it's going to be stealing? 

THE Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report into job losses caused by AI makes for grim reading. Accountancy, telesales and administration jobs are the most likely to take a hammering, with almost 200,000 highly paid jobs at risk over the next few years.

The process is already under way. The slowdown in graduate recruitment by professional services firms or the Big Four – the tried and trusted route to the professions − as well as layoffs in the tech sector, are apparently just a taste of things to come.

The ESRI did not explore the somewhat greyer area of job creation by AI innovation, in cybersecurity and other areas designed to prevent AI having unintended consequences or being leveraged to advance the dark side of humanity.

Reports about how Anthropic’s recently developed AI software called Mythos went rogue, took on a life of its own and bragged about its exploits on public websites, give an idea of the surveillance, expertise and good faith that will be required to keep AI in service to mankind, not the other way around.

Mythos was considered such a national security risk, its creators handed it over to a group of tech companies including Apple, Google and Amazon to create powerful cybersecurity defences.

But it’s not all doom and gloom – not according to AI enthusiasts anyway. They highlight the ground-breaking scientific discoveries enabled by AI and the likelihood of their creating jobs in health and research. And that’s before we get to AI’s revolutionary effect on business.

Good news. All we need now is for AI to assure us that these new cutting-edge jobs will be plentiful enough to cure the mass unemployment caused by the revolution in formerly rock-solid and recession-proof industries.

Only four in ten parents have anything AT ALL to say about the Church's role in Education. What does this tell us?

THE results of the parental survey of primary schools are, depending on who you listen to, a resounding endorsement for the Church-dominated system or a rallying cry for secular education.

Far more interesting, perhaps, is the fact that only 41 per cent of households took the time to complete the short survey. The Department of Education considers this an ‘exceptionally high level of engagement’, yet surely in the age of helicopter parenting, it is markedly low? Contrary to the impossibly high standards supposedly demanded by modern parents, it seems the majority either don’t care or are happy enough with the status quo.

Is Drinkaware even aware of the cost of drink?

 RESEARCH by Drinkaware shows that drinking culture has changed since the pandemic, with four times more adults having a tipple at home today compared to 2019. No word, however, from Drinkaware – a charity sponsored by the drink companies – of the knock-on effect of spiralling pub prices on home drinking.