Protestors climb on train

[omikron]

What on earth to ER hope to achieve this morning?! Such arseholes

Rosie So XR are lying then when they say it wasnt sanctioned by them

Why the targeting of working class people?

We need to degrow the economy. That involves ordinary people doing less work and different work (producing food instead of working in offices).

So the suggestion is people give up good paying jobs to grow food, to sell I imagine? That will pay the mortgage and bills. How many of XR follow that logic ie grow their own food and don't work in any other industry? Ludicrous.

I think someone in Cambodia had a similar idea once.

I wonder if anyone stopped donating to XR as a result of this.

They are at work. They get £400 per week from XR

Those involved yesterday are from Bristol. One assumes they walked to London after watering their allotment. One of them works in accounts, wonder if he's self sufficient the side… UTTER HYPOCRITES

We need to degrow the economy. That involves ordinary people doing less work and different work (producing food instead of working in offices).

Growing veg rather than office work is a ridiculous suggestion. BUT, the idea is sound. I'd prefer a move towards far more localism, i.e. having the opportunities to work and shop more locally to where people live to reduce travelling. Also, get back to growing and making "stuff" closer to where people live. It'll take decades, but it's a more realistic aim than expecting office workers to take up gardening! Far better to discourage big firms from centralising in London and other big cities - get them back to having local/regional offices. Find ways to get manufacturing/production back into the UK and spread across the country. Encourage farmers to farm a wider range of crops and animals, make more use of currently unused countryside, etc. Centralisation of everything in London, backed by manufacturing nearly everything abroad is slowing killing the country and it needs reversing. The balance of payments deficit (quietly forgotten about by politicians) is a major financial problem and also needs to be tackled rather than forever borrowing more money.

@Rosiejaune we need to fix economic inequality first ie bring in universal basic income. Telling people on the minimum wage/subject to benefit sanctions/relying on food banks that they should stop work and grow vegetables is never going to go down well and simply boosts the idea that eco-activism overall is the concern of comfortably-off middle-class self-righteous tossers.

We do grow a lot of our own veg, but it’s weather dependent. Some years we have a really good yield, other times we get nothing. Last year we had a glut of pumpkins and marrows - this year we got one single pumpkin (admittedly a beast, but just one) and not one single marrow. Thank goodness we can buy in food to compensate for what we can’t grow! This idea that we’ve all got to go vegan and that will save the world is ridiculous - the sort of intensive farming that would involve would be terrible for the environment. The amount of pesticides and fertilisers that would be needed are terrifying, not to mention the loss of habitat (who needs grass when there are no animals to feed? Bye bye meadows!), and the sheer amount of imported food we’d need too. We haven’t been self-sufficient in food in this country for centuries - perhaps not even since the Bronze Age. We certainly aren’t about to magically become self-sufficient now.

They had to manage in the 2nd WW . If mixed Farms were run organically it would be doable , since when were pesticides neccesary? They are contributing to the degradation of the world, the killing of the bees and other wildlife. Their manufacture creates methane too.

In WWII we had the Atlantic convoys bringing in extra supplies, e.g. powdered milk.

They had to manage in the 2nd WW

1. It was relatively short term;
2. Millions of men were abroad fighting, so we had fewer mouths to feed;
3. Population was a lot lower;
4. Food supplies were imported;
5. Food was controlled through rationing;
6. There were all kinds of health issues relating to poor diet.

Much of out food nowadays comes from abroad brought either by plane or boat. If we were going to really try going down the path of fending for ourselves more then it would be a return to rationing, lots of root veg and other restrictions (most fruit was unavailable). The population has increased since then so there are even more of us to feed. It would soon be at the stage where we'd still be importing as much just to cope. Also few modern housing schemes could cope with people keeping their own pigs or rabbits for slaughter as they used to do.

They had to manage in the 2nd WW

I think we have moved on a bit since then.

rosiejaune
It's a bit tough to grow enough food to feed yourself & your family when you live in a council flat with no outdoor space. I wonder if you get a reduction on the bedroom tax if you keep a pig in the spare room?

Ok, so people are actually suggesting a return to subsistence farming????

We need to degrow the economy. That involves ordinary people doing less work and different work (producing food instead of working in offices).

They had to manage in the 2nd WW

The intelligent thought behind those two statements is truly outstanding - I'm being sarcastic in case either of the posters who made those statements are wondering.

The arrogance and lack of coherent understanding how others live, think or experience life is breathtaking.

As I said, they did that in Cambodia.

Pol Pot, anyone?

We need more tech in farming, not less.

Ok, so people are actually suggesting a return to subsistence farming????

No sane person would suggest that.

I suspect a lot of people would expect others to do it, and for themselves just to carry on buying stuff from Tesco and justify it by growing a carton of cress on their window-sill. Virtue signalling at it's finest!

As I said, they did that in Cambodia.

Pol Pot, anyone?

Yes, truly horrific

They had to manage in the 2nd WW

36,000 sailors and 30,000 members of the Merchant Navy died in the Battle of the Atlantic to bring food and goods in during the Second World War. And 28,000 U-boat crew. Do you think they were doing that for shits and giggles?

You may also wish to read up on the history of farming, in particular the development of fertilisers and pesticides. Again, not something done simply for the lols.

Bloody hell.

XR isn't controlled by one person; it's a distributed movement. So nobody needs to approve it. If it's in keeping with their aims, and labelled with their name, it's an XR action.

I am serious. And why are you assuming anything about my class/income/privilege etc? Our disposable income is in the lowest decile, and I'm a member of multiple social minority groups. It's people like me who will suffer first and most if we don't sort this out, stat. And the government isn't doing it; hence the protests.

I didn't say office workers should go straight from the city to the farm.

But we do need more people to work on the land again; we need to be realistic about this, even if it doesn't sound particularly appealing.

And we do need fewer people consuming resources for the sake of it. Which busywork contributes to.

Which is why their banner read "Business as Usual = Death".

I think you'll find it difficult getting UBI without PR first. But some people can change how they live and work without co-operation from the government. So they should do so. Which leaves more choice of jobs for those who remain, so they may be able to work closer to home, and also travel less.

Oh yeah, everybody 'work from home'. Perhaps the Glorious Leaders of XR have a magic spell to enable people to change dressings, clean floors, serve lattes and transport crops from one place to another by... er... asking Alexa? Interpretive dance?

More smug wankery, really.

I think someone in Cambodia had a similar idea once.

@tumbleisatwat That is exactly what I thought when I read the laughable comment that we should “degrow the economy and travel less” comment.

Forced subsistence farming and evacuation of densely populated areas by a Marxist regime went swimmingly, didn’t it? Well, if you look past the deaths and political oppression, obvs.

I was in St Thomas’ in a ward that overlooks Westminster Bridge while XR were occupying it. I spent much of the summer on said ward as well. As other posters have said, they totally failed to let ambulances through on a route that normally sees umpteen of them - loads blue lighting people in - 24/7. As XR were also, IIRC, on Lambeth Bridge, ambulances will have had to detour & even a few minutes can be the difference between life & death, or limb loss & retention, or generally just how bad an outcome is.

I’m hugely opposed to violence of any kind, but plenty of people up in Canning Town will have seen the XR protestor booting the commuter trying to get him down as starting a fight. And think you don’t start a fight unless you’re willing to finish one. Not a mindset I agree with, but I know people whose only issue would be that they didn’t let him up off the floor, deck him & THEN kick him.

Notice they didn’t try it down at my end of the DLR. Maybe because we don’t have the tube. Maybe because we have the largest police station in Europe close to the train station. Or maybe because we make Canning Town look like Kensington

Really don’t understand how they thought disrupting a green public transport method, being used by lots of people on 0 hour contracts, would be anything other than disastrous. Indeed they were TOLD it would be by people who actually know the area & people with 2 braincells to rub together - it takes a special sort of arrogance to ignore that & it’s definitely lost them a lot of support from the general public.