Protestors climb on train

[omikron]

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

@clearaschristal I have a job and I work for a living. I spent some of my leave and some of my spare time at the protests, because this is so important to me. I want my children to live on a habitable planet.

Look, whining, tantrumming tosspots are never going to be the solution. There is absolutely nothing positive or useful about XR. It's all attention-seeking wank. XR's 'achievements' are bullshit - you got the UK government to say your magic words 'Boohoo, climate change is a bit of a problem' and... er... that was it.
Among useful things a popular movement to prevent further ecological damage could do would be:
Encouraging more people who have the resources (given that XR is overwhelmingly people who are fairly comfortably off - and all those little Tarquins and Moonchilds should at least be putting this idea to Mummy and Daddy) to install solar panels or otherwise invest in renewable energy.
Setting up community groups to do stuff like picking up (and recycling where appropriate) litter.
Spreading the word about eco-friendly gardens (for those who have garden space) and window-boxes or planters on your balcony that support biodiversity.
And I'm sure there are other initiatives that would also help: if you give people positive actions they could take rather than fucking up their daily lives and bawling at them about how eeeevil humanity is, you make more progress. But very few of these self-righteous, fame-hungry wankstains can cope with doing sustained hard work to change things for the better. Much more satisfying to identify as Saving The World while doing nothing more than performing for Twitter likes.

@Hmmpop
squeekums I am fully aware that you and many others like you dont care about environmental issues and won't make any changes that inconvenience you. If any at all. Which is why we need legislation

And do you think that by pissing of the voting public is the right way to go? The voting public wont vote for XR if all they do is piss people off, they will vote to have them shut up for good.

Its not about not caring, i dont need extra stress in my life with doomsday like rhetoric or extra costs for basic items cos of a marketing claim. That dont make me a bad person, that makes me one looking out for my family in the here and now

As always, the infallible way to spot a wanker is that they are screaming about how no one cares apart from them - while offering nothing coherent or practical that could be done. 'Caring' is useless. What those idiots mean is 'Baww, click on our Facebook page, retweet our performances.'

I have to say, the doomsday language does no favours. Societal collapse and total extinction? Well in that case, if only the government can solve it with radical actions (which they won't because they'd never get voted in), and everything we do as individuals is a waste of time, it makes me think "I may as well enjoy this while it lasts".

If it's all really going to end in us drowning or eating each other, it's such a ridiculous scenario to fathom that part of me is like "well, bring it on, I have to die of something in the end".

I don't think the average person thinks their office 9-5 life with 2 cars is suddenly going to turn into Lord Of The Flies. It makes XR sound a bit mad when they use the end-is-nigh language, even if it's the truth. Which I'm not convinced about. Humanity managed to solve most other problems, like Y2K and ozone. At the end of the day we are just a species of clever chimp and every species faces its end - I don't think we're particularly special.

I don't agree that it's 'peaceful protest' when it deliberately and pointedly tries to screw up the day and work routine of hundreds and thousands of people. That's not the same as holding signs and making a noise.

@ReanimatedSGB As always, the infallible way to spot a wanker is that they are screaming about how no one cares apart from them - while offering nothing coherent or practical that could be done. 'Caring' is useless. What those idiots mean is 'Baww, click on our Facebook page, retweet our performances.'

What they mean is 'I'm so caring & wonderful, I'm so deep & sensitve, I'm so much BETTER than any of you'.

Their total & utter silence about the fact that the Jewish community & other minorities in this country are under serious threat from both the far-right & far-left is really telling.

Both the Brexiters & Corbyn's Labour have stirred up & continue to foment a toxic racist environment in which both minorities & working class people are suffering.

These white overprivileged self-important tosspots don't care about any of that. Just about virtue signalling & preening themselves in the mirror.

I should add - this is not just an online argument for me. I've confronted these people face to face on mor e than one occasion, most recently on Saturday when trying to take my kids into town (for an event we had tickets for, & had saved up for) became an absolute nightmare in which my 5-year-old was nearly crushed & we were trapped inside a tube station in an overwhelming crowd for a long time - I genuinely feared we might be in a Hillsborough type situation. (And I'm a lifelong Londoner who is not intimidated by crowds in general)

They DO NOT give a shit

ReanimatedSGB there are hundreds if not thousands of groups and charities and movements across the country helping people live more sustainably and reduce their environmental footprint.
It's great, but it won't turn things around quickly enough.

The whole point of XR is to do the alarmist disruptive direct protest divisive shouty objectionable end of the spectrum.

Then XR can fuck right off because everything they are doing is counterproductive. They are just pissing people off and making many people more inclined to believe that actually there isn't that much of a problem with climate change - because how can you take this bunch of screaming wankers seriously?

So why are they going to do with all the money raised? I saw that proceeds from Michael Stripe’s new album is heading their way.

Are they going to fund research or green initiatives? Or pay for more shutdowns?

If they put effort into funding research and renewable energy supplies, or tree-planting strategies etc that would be far more productive.

But have you ever noticed how celebrity-friendly 'activism' or charitable organising is nearly always either useless or damaging? It seems like celebrities tend to pick the groups that will appeal to their vanity rather than the ones which have a good track record of actually achieving what they aim to achieve...

XR have been the equivalent of a sixth form drama group expressing their angst through the medium of interpretive dance ...while behind the scenes are some rather unpleasant people with a very disruptive agenda which would hurt the poor and working classes the most . Plenty of highly intelligent , well educated people have fallen for cults (Shree Bagwash anyone?)and this is another that has given the superiority bug to a class of people who look down on another class of society ...rather like the women who decry Primark and get their clothes at mighty expensive eco signalling shops ..or online ..think of the pollution from all those deliveries !
This is a classist cult with no real answers because some of the real answers include things such as nuclear power and more condensed living in cities which are anathema to the warriors .

ReanimatedSGB I do agree that XR's impact is probably counter-productive because they are pissing people off and looking ridiculous to most people at the same time, so they could well be harming the cause we're all fighting for instead of helping (in fact I wonder if there is any sort of independent audit or evaluation of their impact ).

I just don't think it's valid to criticise them for not choosing a different method of activism, when XR is the label for exactly this sort of thing. I'd bet my bottom dollar most of them are involved in other grassroots movements like slow food, tree planting and so on - XR is the shouty protesty branch of their activism.
And most people in this country don't respond to shouty protests delivered in the form of interpretative dance and getting glued to trains.

If anyone does want a company to plant trees then Ecosia is good. You just have to use it as a search engine and they’ve worked with people to plant 71 million plus so far.

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/extinction-rebellion-protesters-plot-further-action-in-london-during-christmas-period-a4266581.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1571652735

I found the behaviour of those commuters incredibly offensive - beating the shit out of someone and filming it on their mobile phones. Thugs in business suits. Sure, the guy shouldn’t have been standing on a train. How stupid. Let’s just kick the living daylights out of him.

Speaking as someone who pays £4,600 a year to commute to London and just yesterday completed 4 delay repay claims for the last 2 weeks for one suicide, one delay because nobody turned up to drive the train, and two delays for unfathomable reasons, on none of these occasions did my fellow commuters suddenly decide to behave like a bunch of thugs. Canning Town looks like a nasty brutish place to avoid.

I wonder how much of this crap XR removed from Trafalgar Square and check out the plastic/vinyl banner. Shitload of plastic here. Hypocritical much?

Figmentofmyimagination.

Apt user name you have there. The guy on top of the train kicked out

A lot of those commuters will be on low wages and zero hours

dont turn up dont get paid.

My sister works next to Trafalgar sq - she says they left behind loads of rubbish and loads of plastic waste.

@Figmentofmyimagination I found the behaviour of those commuters incredibly offensive - beating the shit out of someone and filming it on their mobile phones. Thugs in business suits.

What a very apt username you have. I didn't see a single person wearing a 'business suit' travelling from Canning Town at stupid o'clock in the morning. I saw exhausted, mostly black/Asian, casually dressed low-paid workers whose frustration and distress very understandably was taken out on the people who were causing it.

And seriously - what did they think would happen?

A rousing rendition of ‘Kumbaya’ followed by ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’? Not very bright.

A rousing rendition of ‘Kumbaya’ followed by ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’? Not very bright.

And they weren’t the stereotypical ‘City chaps in suits’ (sorry you don’t really get these anymore) but men and women trying to get to their work, school, doctors appointments... they weren’t trying to cram into a crowded, dirty, smells and overpriced tube train for the fun of it.