No more Protest

It was a long time ago but thankyou.

Yes doubtless i would feel different but sentences shouldn't be decided on by the victims of crime or we'd have a very different and probably bloody justice system.

imho generally speaking, we shouldn't be sending non violent people to prison, some exceptions of course, fraud for example, can have huge life changing impacts on their victims.... but protestors? no... taking their house from them would have a very strong deterrent effect... i don't to see the M25 closed.

Yes sex/violent offenders should get longer sentences & have a better experience once there, one reason they don't is the lack of prison capacity because we send non violent people to jail.

I sit here and think what actually has juststopoil achieved? I’m all for clean fuel etc , as I think most people are but am limited by my own resources (can’t afford solar energy, heat pumps etc, can’t even afford bloody insulation) and infrastructure limitations.

mostly they make headlines for all the WRONG reasons - causing ambulance delays, parents delayed in dealing with kids, and not allowing people who work actually get to their work causing them big problems. Misdeeds is right to point out and list the harm they are doing.

they piss a lot of people off to make the headlines - and the headlines aren’t that supportive.

in short they are bullying people, they are forcing people to participate in their action irrespective of the harm that results. That isn’t protest. It’s bullying. It’s not peaceful either - they might not be agressive but their action are in terms of impact it has on people with real immediate needs.

There are more effective ways to get the noise level out there re carbon fuel and with their intelligence, logistics etc they could do something that would bring focus without disruption . They can still do eye catching stunts etc, just not by putting ordinary people through stress and difficulty . At the end of the day ordinary people aren’t going to fix this. Governments will . And governments need to unified voice of electorate to force it to happen. Juststopoil are not unifying the electorate. At all.

however, I think the sentences are outrageous. This is more than rapist. The governments bought Timpson in to deal with prisons, and these are classic case he’d be advocating community sentencing orders for. a few years of community work would have exactly same effect on these people of disrupting their lives in turn and making them realise that bullying other ordinary people to make your point isn’t the right way or effective way to win supporters.

right that they are convicted. Wrong sentence. Completely. But also entirely wrong action and strategy by juststopoil.

@XChrome some may agree. Others won't. It wasn't in Canada though was it.

@Alexandra2001 I'm sorry for what you've experienced. But how would you feel if a relative died in an ambulance on their way to hospital for emergency care because of these attacks on public infrastructure. I suspect you would be less forgiving. The fact that sentences should be longer for sex offenders (on which I agree) is not material to whether the sentence for JSO is appropriate (it was).

Sorry, not a valid argument. The definition of terrorism is no different to people in the UK as it is here. How people feel about it does not make it terrorism either.
Terrorism is a strong word. IMO, it's not to be used lightly and that applies no matter where you live.

No reasonable person can compare JSO to 7/11 or the IRA campaigns.

Infact as someone who lost a close family member to an IRA killing, its very insulting, you're a fucking idiot if you think the two are in anyway comparable.

As i said earlier, i don't really support their cause.

Its the sentence, how can anyone defend 5years when we routinely sentence men who have committed violent attacks against women & children, inc rape, less harsh sentences?

... plus at a time when the prison estate is in such crisis that convicted criminals are being released from their already lenient sentences early?

Where are peoples moral compasses on this?

@XChrome respectfully, I don't think you get to tell us from Canada what we in the UK experience as terrorism or not.

That's not relevant to my point about terrorism, which is general, not specific to this case.
But yes, I do know the basic facts. None of the things you've outlined make it terrorism.
There is no such thing as passive violence. That's a contradiction in terms.
Unintended harm is also not terrorism.

Whether or not it's criminal is a matter of UK law, which as you say, I am not familiar with. I have no opinion on that.

@lightinthebox thinking of your comments, I'm reminded of that wonderful line from Lord Farquad in Shrek:

"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!"

@XChrome are you actually up to speed from Canada on what these people did? And what they were planning to do? I'm not sure you grasp that this was no minor protest but a sustained attack on the transport infrastructure of the most densely populated part of the UK. I think you've come to this with ideas on protest that don't fit the facts. People's lives were on the on line. I'd call that passive aggressive violence even if you wouldn't. Do you even agree that what they did was criminal, and do you understand that the sentences reflected the severity of the crime and their constant reoffending and escalation with attacks against the public?

If your moral compass is not to cause harm then you cannot support this behaviour

No, Canada. I 'm not talking about UK law and customs. I'm talking about the definition of terrorism. Surely we can all agree that, since we speak the same language, the word has the same meaning.

Okay, so your moral compass is not to actively cause harm.

But if it is clearly foreseeable that someone could be indirectly harmed by your actions, and is then so harmed (because they die in ambulance on the M25), that's okay is it. Not your fault. Not your problem. You've got clean hands. Because their sacrifice was for your cause?

Give your head a wobble. And learn the difference between north and south. Your compass is broken.

Thanks for the clarification.
It's never okay, no matter who does it.

@XChrome are you in the US? If so, what do you know about UK, specifically English law and custom. Our concepts of free speech and lawful protest are different to those in the US.

XChrome · Today 04:52
Punishing non-violent protesters criminally is what fascists do.

Communists also, but maybe it’s ok when they do it.
Sorry, I don't follow you. What do you mean about communists

Communists also punish non-violent protesters.

It can only be dubbed terrorism if you do something to intentionally cause deaths, injuries or at least some sort of physical harm. By your definition, everyone who drives recklessly could be considered a terrorist. Terrorism isn't about potential for harm and unintended harm. It's about inherent harm and directly causing it.

I'll give you an example of when a protest becomes terrorism. We had a protest near where I live, the infamous trucker convoy, where for three weeks they belched out choking fumes and ear splitting noise 24/7, making the entire downtown unliveable, disrupting the work of a lawful government and causing people to have breathing difficulties and illness from the carbon monoxide. The also attacked people, tried to burn down a building, and had a cache of weapons because they intended to try to take down a lawful government by force. In addition they did intentionally block ambulances by blocking the entrance to a hospital. That was terrorism, albeit not on nearly the scale of a suicide bombing. People were intentionally harmed and they used violence.

No I can't. But I never said it was the same. You, or someone like you in thought, has used a false comparison between the two to downplay criminality of the JSO leaders who were sent to prison.

I accept they were tried as a public nuisance and not as terrorists. That's right and proper. But in a non legal sense, they set out to terrorise British people.

Now, if they were disrupting slavers from taking their chattels to market, or pr eating pills from trafficking women, in a targeted way, you might have a point about non violent civil disobedience.

But they weren't were they.

They were stopping kids getting to school, they were stopping people from attending medical appointments and receiving emergency care. They were targeting the livings of working people.

And they were doing it on an indiscriminate basis because they were indifferent to the needs of these people. Or the harm they caused.

And I'm being generous. I think they knew the harm they were causing to those people and that was the point (fuckers that they are). Because in their twisted way, they thought that brought attention to their political demands.

And if you can't see that, and the difference with legitimate protest and free speech, you need to reevaluate your life choices and find a moral compass.

They were planning much worse, but were stopped by undercover information.

You're invoking the largest mass casualty terrorist attack in history. Of course what they've done isn't on that scale, but it doesn't mean that they're not using terrorist tactics to achieve their aims.

Outrageous sentences.
I am hoping there will be an appeal.
For a functioning democracy we need to preserve the right to non violent protest.
Sometimes civil disobedience is what it takes - and some of the more effective protests have succeeded with the use of non violent direct action.
Yes, if you participate in nvda you expect consequences - but this is disproportionate.
I despair that some people are so apathetic about the world they live in that they cannot even understand why others are not.