No more Protest

Is it such a disaster if the world ends?

Oh, get real. It isn't terrorism. It has to instill widespread fear of bodily harm in order to be terrorism, not inconvenience.
It's still not okay, but let's not get hysterical and call it terrorism.

Ugh. Not this rancid bullshit. Look, the facts just aren't with you. You don't have some special insight that scientists do not have.
The arrogance of the ignorant knows no bounds.
You just don't want to change your carbon heavy lifestyle, so you make up this kind of nonsense to make yourself feel better.

I've just read the sentencing remarks. These people were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to terrorise every single person reliant on the smooth running of the M25. That's millions of people. They should have received longer sentences IMHO, because we shouldn't tolerate terrorism in any form. This idea that supporters have that it is non violent and okay, don't understand the very real impact and misery that it caused.

Heroes in their own stories, villains to the rest of us.

I have always found that it is the wilfully ignorant who are most like that. Think of Trump, for example. That's a complete ignoramus who nonetheless thinks he knows more than anybody else and thus can challenge fact with his fantasies.

You are actually denying the science on this? People still do that? Not only that, but using the "weather" argument, the worst one of all. Weather is not the same as climate. Haven't you picked that up yet?

Of all the posts on here yours are the most divorced from reality.

Sorry, I don't follow you. What do you mean about communists?

@Alexandra2001 more bollocks and muddled thinking. People lawfully attending football matches don't set out to cripple infrastructure and cause gridlock for circa 15 million people in the entire Greater London area in pursuit of extreme political aims.

Honestly, give your head a wobble and wake up!

You should have left this way of thinking in the Sixth Form Common Room like the rest of us grown ups.

Would you not lock up serial burglars? Or people who run gangs of (adult) pickpockets, or persistent vandals?

Why is mayhem affecting dozens of thousands of people so acceptable?

Football matches bring huge disruption before and after the match, fights running battles, drunken thugs... all of which can't really be planned for and cause massive disruption & violence to innocent members of the public who cannot plan not to be mixed up in hooliganism.

I'm not batting away anything, you just chose not to read what i wrote: that other punishments should be considered, i suggested financial, i'm sure losing their homes would be a strong incentive to obey the law and campaign differently.

There is no possible excuse to put in jail, at huge cost to the taxpayer, these protestors, jail should be for those that pose a violent threat to ordinary people, instead we have a topsy turvy world where violent (inc sex) offenders get less than 5 years and non violent protesters get longer sentences..... & we all cheer along.

@JustAVeryWeirdWoman there's no coherence in your response at all. Britain and Russia are not the same when it comes to protest and are not even close. It shows a lack of understanding to suggest otherwise. I'm also pretty sure that the criminals jailed as leaders of JSO are British (so Westerners as well). Not really sure what that has to do with the price of tomatoes.

It's better by a very thin margin. I remember when the Ukraine invasion started, it was everywhere in the news that Russia where arresting people standing outside with blank signs, and everyone was tutting about how horribly authoritarian Russia is (and they are!). But the UK behaves very similarly to protesters now. The JSO sentenc is OK to you because Westerners think they are good, and second and third world societies are bad. Different standards.

Just wrong / conspiracy tosh. It's a court of law. An independent judge. These offenders repeatedly break the same laws so the sentencing becomes steadily more punitive. It is how criminal recidivism is tackled in every democratic justice system. In China or Russia, they would simply disappear...

Our system is better is it not?

Excessive punishment for people like JSO is all about keeping the pretense of Business as Usual. "Yes, things are fine. Some climate change, but we can fix it with small incremental measures. Yes, it will all be fine if you sort your garbage and buy an electric car. Yes, sustainable airline fuel is totally a thing and not an imaginary scam! Please continue commuting to your corporate office job, the bad protesters tried to stop you from getting there on time. Important meetings await!". But Business as usual is on its last legs. It will end during your children's lifetimes.

We, humans, have fucked up our habitat beyond repair. This is not debatable, nor is it doomerism: the scientific consensus is clear. Our current society and its structures are basically running on fumes. We'd be screwed even if we stopped doing everything we're doing today, because there is so much carbon in the atmosphere the Earth can no longer absorb it (see recent news about this), but we are even more royally screwed by the fact that we're not doing anything at all. The only solution would be radical degrowth, and nobody is talking about this because it would be extremely unpopular. So it won't be done. Enjoy your Business as Usual while it lasts (not much left now).

It's possible that Just Stop Oil are crazy fanatics, but the authoritarian drive to shut them up is even more terrifying because it comes out of a fear of facing reality.

@WishIhadnotcome read it again. I said their tactics were aggressive.

And, in any case, causing people to suffer needlessly is to inflict violence on them. They merrily inflict physical and mental hardship on people by their methods. People have problems at work, miss medical appointments and are unable to be transported to hospitals in real emergencies because of these self righteous muppets.

They may think they are saints, but they are not comparable to suffragettes or the like.

Direct action taking against working people, for what?

We all fecking know that the planet is boiling and we have to change, but it has to be achieved at an international level and thru the deployment of tech. These people are fucking idiots.

I demand change now! All the billions of people in the world must comply immediately! Or I will sit here on the M25!

What a joke.

These are the kind of morons that thought soviet communism was good back in the day.

They've just latched onto environmentalism as it is the contemporary dissenters' cause.

They harm the very thing they claim to care for.

They weren’t aggressive.

I agree 100%. They are people that understand the threat to us, have seen governments ignore campaigns, protests, lobbying, hard science presented clearly over decades, and they are deeply concerned for themselves, their children or grandchildren and us all. They saw no other choice than to make a massive raucous noise and make big bold statements.

They have been given longer sentences than some sex offenders get. It’s an utter abomination that protesting can land you with a criminal record. It’s a serious threat to our freedom.

We should be worried.

I think Op is well into the fanatic side. It’s really obvious but they can’t accept the facts. It’s not about the right to protest. And every person there has a string of convictions. If you keep committing the same crime and keeping intending to commit the same crime, your sentence will increase.

In all honesty, I want to know what happens if someone climbing a gantry fell off and died. Would Roger be financially compensating the family? Would he be taking responsibility would any of his pals?

I work in an industry that works at height. incredibly dangerous and no one should be doing it after an 8 hour climbing course. Non of the people organising this gave one shit about people risking their lives or risking the lives of anyone caught up in it.

It’s really clear RH has delusions of grandeur and people following him have been sucked into what is an exercise in stroking his ego.

And @lightinthebox you appear to have a poor grasp of why it’s a good idea to inform and liaise with the police. I was recently stewarding on a march. In the small city I was in, there were six other political gatherings/ protests going on, some of them for conflicting causes. The job of the police is to ensure conflicting protestors do not come into contact, which is why you need to agree times and routes with them. They also stop matches accidentally disrupting someone else’s event by seeking to march where it’s taking place. They also walked along side us to keep us safe from protestors who may have tried to attack us. Their job is to maintain public safety and order.

Yet every week, in the actual real world, marches of a huge variety of conflicting causes take place, with the police enabling them and protecting the marches.

Your fantasy of the police arbitrarily preventing marches just doesn’t exist. If anything the police give too much leeway to the right to protest and allow people to be intimidated and harassed by protestors

There are limits to the right to peaceful protest. Yes the Tories used JSO as a rather convenient basis to shift the line in government's favour, but perhaps JSO bear responsibility for being so aggressive in their tactics towards ordinary people.

People hate JSO and they have damaged their wider cause because they have no regard for the impact of their actions on others. Indeed the impact on others is the point. They are zealots, fuelled by their own self righteousness (basically engaged in mild forms of terrorism). They've achieved nothing but the tightening of legal controls on the right to protest and prison sentences for their leaders.

You would rather hope they would reflect on that; but of course they won't. They think it's just the machine oppressing them in their morally justifiable crusade.

@lightinthebox have you actually read what sort of things they are saying?

They are clear this is not about the right to protest. But a war

Or are you affiliated to them?