To wonder if a lot of the Just Stop Oil protesters are not very nice people on a personal level

She screwed it up all by herself. 22 is old enough to make your own mind up. The video her mother made was (unintentionally I'm sure) hilarious.

A strong appeal to extreme activism for some is the desire exert authority over others. These people generally lack real political or economic power, so they seek to assert their, usually utterly blinkered, “moral” power.

I was friends at uni with someone who went on to become an activist - real extreme behaviour, living in trees, travelling the country to protests, unemployed etc. He went down a strange route of conspiracy theorism and despite studying a science at uni, doesn't believe in vaccines etc. Then started personal vendettas on social media with his friends, including me, who were living what he decided weren't valid lives. I'm actually very environmentally conscious, but got all sorts of abuse one weekend about my life choices. Anyway, we're no longer friends...

I think you may be right! Esp middle aged men .Roger Hallam the leader of recently jailed quintet JSO expressly broke the law ,and has basically got himself imprisoned .Fair dos you may say .however 22 year old Cressida Gethin who was also imprisoned, had a bright future as a Cambridge Student .She is young (only 20 when on protests) and was a talented Musician .Her mother spoke yesterday about her DD and how proud she was of her .Maybe he should think about the law and how we are all obliged to obey it! He has taken a young person just embarking on their life and screwed it up!

Did you read the Judge's sentencing remarks, because I would highly recommend them?

It's possible to have strong principles and not cause deliberate harm.

All the JSO/XR protesters I know are 70 year old vicars who wouldn't hurt a fly or retired old ladies who are doing it for their grandchildren's futures. And a few very idealistic young people (those have always existed). But if it helps to dehumanise them to make you feel more comfortable destroying the planet, you might as well go ahead.

Really? Thats odd as a paramedic friend spent their entire shift sat in an empty ambulance on the M25, I didn’t realise it was Tory voters sat on the road, how odd that the press reported that it was just stop oil members on the road.

I think especially in the current financial climate people are worried about the future if yhe planet and thus their children's future....but the most pressing concern is the near future eg next week!

Lots of people can't afford to take 2 days off to glue themself to a train, sit in a road, climb a motorway gantry. They are worried about paying bills, keeping a roof over their head and feeding their children now

Although I do have to disagree about protesting about China etc being the biggest polluters, when we in the uk are the consumers. People in the UK are using, buying, ordering cars/tech/clothes/other stuff from China and the Far East we just don't manufacture very much here (which causes problems of own)....but we can't look away and pretend all the pollution is nothing to do with us

Most people aren’t even doing that but JSO is clearly not making a difference is it?

Just realised what the statement from the protestors mum reminded me of

I can't understand why we're even having this debate. Most of us with half a brain cell agreed that something needs to be done but nothing is being done.

All these conferences that achieve nothing and people fly to get to the conferences and then places like China don't even turn up so they achieve absolutely little.

And the government and the big organisations and the bureaucrats do very little.

in the meantime the little man on the street does his best. is now arguing over with Cresida and her antics.

But little man is doing his recycling and not going on holiday and trying to do the right thing. and making very little difference.

so why we having this debate?

I used to work with an animal rights activist. Very vocal about her veganism and critical about everyone who ate meat or wore leather.

We once had a conversation about her three huge rescue dogs. I asked what she fed them. The answer was cheap supermarket tins of meat. I asked if she found it awkward that she consumed more meat than the vast majority of us and she was so angry. ‘It’s not their fault they need to eat meat’. Yeah but don’t go lecturing other people.

I find that a lot of protesters are seething with hatred and intolerance and just want to punish someone. The extremes are terrorists who are generally foul people who have found a cause that lets them feel good about themselves while acting on their hatred and violence. Lee Rigby’s killers. The IRA. Pick a cause and hide behind it.

They believe the planet is absolutely fucked and are doing all they feel they can to prevent that

in some respects, I can sympathise to be honest! What is everyone else doing? Recycling tin and and driving a brand new EV whilst planing a tree after a long haul flight?

I don’t think she can be that intelligent if she thinks that their publicity stunts are doing anything positive about climate change.

No body talks about it as a result of what they do, they only focus on the behaviour of the protestors. JSO is literally just a name, if they called themselves the wet bandits or the purple people eaters the effect would be the same. People would think they were over privileged dickheads.

If they wore hemp trousers you'd probably call them weird hippies who should get a job, instead. How do you know whether their jeans came from the charity shop?

Give over.

She is 22. Which means she is an adult.

I have a 20 year old daughter. I was a 20 year old. I made mistakes. Consistently doing things like organise mass disruption wasn’t a mistake. She knew what she was doing and did it anyway. Because she chose to.

Its not anti feminist to point out that a 22 year old women is responsible for her own decisions and the consequences that come with them.

She believed she had the right to do whatever she wanted. And faced the consequences for it. She is an adult. Not a child.

I always find it funny when they have mobile phones and wear jeans. Mobiles are terrible for the environment and the production of a single pair of jeans uses so much water. They want to protest about how we should all live, whilst not really doing that themselves.
I agree climate change is pressing, but getting cars to queue up (and use more gas) is counter productive like spraying building that then have to be cleaned with chemicals . It’s all nuts really.

also edited to add, why do they protest here in the uk when our pollution is far less than other countries. If they were serious they should start with china.

I know one personally. She is generally a nice person, goes out of her way to help people, does a lot of volunteering. She is intelligent and has a full time job.

I think they do think about the effects on ambulances, but believe that the millions who will be killed by climate change outweigh that.

Eh? They literally block roads and refuse to let ambulances through.

I agree with a lot of the other posters here, their strategies just aren’t working. All they’re doing is making people angry with them, no one who wasn’t interested in environmental matters before this is changing their views because JSO are doing their crappy A-level drama show stunts. Big oil companies certainly don’t give a shit because while JSO are doing their over privileged and disruptive flash mobs they’re distracting people from the actual issues. It’s utterly ridiculous.

They tend to be very privileged people. They don’t need to fear arrest, because they (usually) don’t need to worry about employment. They think nothing of immediate damage they are causing to people, usually less privileged than them. Such as not being able to get to work. Missing pay or trying to make up hours somewhere else. It’s not something good people do.

I think Roger Hallam, appears to be a narcissist, if you read the judgement from when he was jailed.

I have seen 2 of the families who did statements about their family members. Who banged on about how awful it was that their jailed family members were going to miss family events. The hypocrisy of moaning ‘my daughter will miss her brothers wedding because she did something illegal and stopped thousands of people missing things that are important to them’ is astounding. And I can see how the 22 year old has turned out that way and just smacks of ‘but we are so important’

I don’t think they are good people. I don’t believe that all them believe their caused. It’s a way to cause disruption, damage people’s lives while still claiming the moral high ground.

I have mentioned this in a thread before but pro JSO ignore it. I work in an industry where our people work at height. An 8 hour climbing course doesn’t cut it. What they did was extremely dangerous. RH and another woman didn’t go up, because of previous arrests. But happy to send people up, inadequately trained to do so.

Would Roger, and the other organisers, taken responsibility had one of them died? Would they have accepted it was their fault?

JSO aren't the reason ambulances take so long to reach people, that's because people voted Tory.

As a slight aside, I know of one of the founders of a national group for father's access to children after divorce being an abuser. Hence why he couldn't see his child! And another on a local level who supports single mothers but wants no contact with his own child.
There is quite possibly a character trait that attracts certain types to activism whilst being quite hypocritical in private v public life!
(Great name by the way OP!)

Extremist. Narcissistic. They are just a bit dumb. Do they honestly think that gluing themselves to the motorway etc and thus making us late will then make us support their cause? Or we will just be irritated. Or their mum saying they now can't get to the wedding? Deluded.

Cressida is only 22. Please remember that. I'm about 20 years older than that; and the mother in me feels very protective, and I have been upset by some things posters have said about her. On one thread she was described in absolutely horrendous terms. By presumably older women, who should know better. Very unfeminist.
I really don't agree with JSO's actions (I am an environmentalist though) but the bile directed at them has been horrific.
Didn't we all do things in our early 20s that we'd never do now?
I realise many of JSO folk are much older, but I'm purely talking about Cressida here. I think people should try to understand more.

They can't understand how you are prepared to sacrifice milllions of lives by your inaction - how selfish uncaring and down right nasty and evil anyone is who isn't making real efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and the general society footprint

What gives Cressida, the right to judge people with less privilege than her?

How dare Cressida assume people aren't making real efforts to reduce their carbon footprint?

And how about selfish, privileged, nasty, degree educated twits stopping for just a nanosecond to realise that the general society they despise so much is doing a hell of a lot more for their felllow citizens than they ever will.