To think this is awful? (Just Stop Oil protesters throwing soup over Van Gogh painting)

[TheCatsPyjamas1]

Just read that some Just Stop Oil protesters have thrown soup over a Van Gogh painting in the National Gallery in London. AIBU to think this is unacceptable?

I fully support the message of the group (investing in environmentally responsible energy rather than fossil fuels, and helping to make society more equal for everyone), but I find their protest methods are awful and risk alienating people who would otherwise support them.

They keep on doing crazy things, and seem to be escalating their action each time they protest. I don’t really know when or how it’ll end.

thedancingbear
Due to the deliberate actions of UK solicitors Hugh James (Roman Kubiak) I have regular suicidal thoughts and have been told by the Legal Ombudsman that I may as well kill myself because they don't care (valuing my life at £100). So the idea of some idiots suffering for ill thought out 'causes' hardly bothers me. The police are aware of my 'condition' but can't/won't make a real difference. MN, mods, don't bother reporting me the 'authorities' already know.
The 'stop oil 'protestors are happy to wear Hi vis vests made of oil and carry banners made of oil and will have used oil (car/bus) to get to the protest sites.
Not to mention that everything they do and wear depends on oil.

My issue isn’t that they targeted a so called masterpiece, it’s that they used food at a time when people are sick and dying of hunger in one of the richest countries in the world. Many have said elsewhere the protest was about the cost of the painting and what that kind of money could do for hunger but wasting food isn’t the way to make that point about hunger. Im guessing this was an arsecovering after the event comment when they realised what a poor decision food was.

Us little people could make all the changes humanly possible to our lives and it would make a minimal impact on the environment because we require corporations and the elite to be making the changes to their practices. They cause the majority of the damage.

I see different generations with different opinions on what these two did but they’re all missing the class reality. At least one of the protestors is from a highly privileged
background who will inherit a lot of wealth and conveniently live a rather comfortable life after all this debacle dies down. Parents will hire an expensive lawyer and they’ll get some community service is they’re unlucky. Had they been black working class kids it may have made more of an impact but then the justice system would crackdown on them in a way these two can never expect. What they have done doesn’t really help anyone. Most of the population are aware of the climate crisis and we’re also aware we’re farting into the wind if we think we can make the necessary changes. As with recycling it’s all smoke and mirrors designed to keep us fighting among ourselves while the big corporations keep
churning out their crap and causing all the damage.

It was a symbolic act rather than one of pure vandalism. The painting is behind glass and was not damaged.
We are currently at the mercy of Russia and Saudi Arabia for oil, with our current Prime Minister wanting to cancel green initiatives and restart, pointlessly, fracking.
What does it take to get people in charge to do something about the energy and climate crises?
People used to think the Greenpeace anti-whalers were fools too.

What foolish comments.
You sound unpleasant, and that's something I rarely say on Mumsnet.

We are currently at the mercy of Russia and Saudi Arabia for oil, with our current Prime Minister wanting to cancel green initiatives and restart, pointlessly, fracking

Fracking and offshore drilling will help you in the medium term so should be started now. I recall this very argument deployed ten or so years ago wrt nuclear — well, that would really have been helpful right about now!!!

It's short-term, we're talking 10 years at best. And think of the costs involved.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but in all honesty, do you trust anything the government says anymore?

fuck the painting.

I agree. They get criticised for using protest methods that inconvenience people trying to get to work, so they use a method that is attention grabbing but doesn't cause disruption to the public and people are still pissed off.

Keep you car, yes, the one powered by petroleum fuel, because the manufacture of and the extraction of precious metals for a new electric vehicle uses more energy, and causes way more damage to the planet than keeping your 20 year old petrol vehicle going.

@BigWoollyJumpers I don't believe that's true. I'm sure that it's been calculated that the tailpipe emissions from an older car (not just CO2 but all of the other nasties) are so bad that buying a new car (even a petrol one) will quickly recoup the embodied emissions through tailpipe savings. Unless of course you only do tiny mileages.

Not that I think that most people should be running cars anyway. There are a lot of people who could easily do without their car if they really had to.

I'm sure that a tabloid journalist is at this very moment digging around their Instagram accounts for anything incriminating.

Twillow
(What foolish comments.
You sound unpleasant, and that's something I rarely say on Mumsnet.)
It stems from waking up 4 mornings a week feeling suicidal, which was deliberately caused by Alice Morgan of Chattertons (Lincoln) and Roman Kubiak of Hugh James(Cardiff), (both solicitors) who have taken my life and health away. Their abuse has caused me some brain damage as well as physical problems. As an interesting 'aside' despite the horrors of Auschwitz, very few attempted suicide. She solicitors just named have caused this in me so where does that put them on the spectrum of humanity? Reading this thread in general it suggests that more needed to study stem subjects to understand the physics of 'global issues' then of course politics and capitalist manipulation.

All these twats do is make it harder to fight climate change.

We already have an issue of conservative types dismissing environmentalism as "woke nonsense"--and now, lo and behold, a pair of spoiled brats with weirdly dyed hair throwing a tantrum in an art gallery. This kind of stunt is actively slowing progress.

They get criticised for using protest methods that inconvenience people trying to get to work, so they use a method that is attention grabbing but doesn't cause disruption to the public and people are still pissed off.

Are you for real? Of course these things are disruptive to the public.

I also had the animal extinction story in my head when I heard this.

Good on them for doing this. We do need to interrupt our lives and force crisis action on climate change.

It's funny you say brats.

I seen the story about the 'animal extinction activists' going into Waitrose and throwing milk all over the floor and I thought complete brats looking for an outlet. Who do they think is going to clean that up? Dairy farmers? What will they do if someone falls and breaks a bone/splits their head on that.

I'm vegan, I deplore milk especially after breastfeeding but that milk was on the shelf. Don't throw it all over the floor in complete disrespect. Go to the dairy farmers and make your point. They probably wouldn't dare.

The extinction rebellion brats threw themselves to the ground tripping over an elderly lady in my local shopping centre. She was left shaken and a bit bemused. They lacked the common sense to even look around before they dropped. The were clueless to what they had done, all lying there with their eyes closed and silly smirks on their faces. They were barely out of their teens.

All of these groups are targeting the wrong people.

Most of these 'protests' in the UK are a TOTAL waste of time and space and are simply entitled idiots because climate change and extinction are GLOBAL effects and the UK is only a little island. If the whole population of the UK died (or stayed in bed for months) it would make next to NO difference on the global issues. The UK needs to rapidly learn how insignificant it is in global terms.
The gas 'liberated' by the sabotage of Nord stream pipeline would run UK industry for decades. Because of Brexit the UK is dropping out of the worlds list of serious economies but you have to stand outside the UK to actually see this.

Because of Brexit the UK is dropping out of the worlds list of serious economies but you have to stand outside the UK to actually see this

It may in the future, who knows? But still, in 2021, UK was one of the top economies in the world, by several measures.

It's drawn the attention of millions of people worldwide. All the other peaceful nations don't. That's why they did it. And the pa9nting is unharmed.

Meanwhile millions of people are dying in floods and heatwaves, don't have food or shelter and diseases all due to man caused climate change. Our governments keep burning fossil fuels.

Yet idiots like you don't care about that but some soup is thrown at a glass and you care?? Instead of applauding them for getting the worlds attention and talking about what we can do to help??

Vikinga

How does throwing a tin of soup help those that you have mentioned?

The truth is that it doesn't, if these people cared about those "millions of people are dying in floods and heatwaves, don't have food or shelter and diseases"

They would be doing something other than virtue signalling, patting themselves on the back and going home to warm dry beds.

Attention seeking is all it us, as well as just getting off on destruction. The worst are the elderly. How pathetic, to be at an age in your short life, where you want to sit in the middle of a road, to deliver a message. There are a few on this thread, whose aggressive posts reflect why most people just laugh at them.

colddayinhell · 14/10/2022 17:59
BigWoollyJumpers · 14/10/2022 13:48
We have energy crisis. We have cost of living crisis. We have fuel crisis.

None of which will be solved in the short term by stopping gas and oil exploration/extraction. What do they expect people to do? Burn logs in their living rooms? Twats.
This. They are incredibly naive and misinformed middle-class muppets who have never experienced real hardship. Do they think that world governments can suddenly magic-up a new special form of energy that will be magically cheaper and cleaner than oil and gas and all abundant? They are just causing problems for people trying to get to work and get to hospital. I wish the police would treat them with the same uncompromising urgency as they treat football thugs“

nuclear has been the obvious solution for decades.

When a driver snaps and actually runs them over for blocking traffic. I won't feel too sad about that and can't imagine many others would either.

perhaphs go back and read the attitudes of woman surrounding the suffragette movement.
I doubt they’d be concerned about getting run over by an angry driver - it’s for the cause and raises there profile

reflect why most people just laugh at them.

do you not feel sad though that these people are protesting for other generations future and you think it’s funny?

these people want free insulation for those in poverty and protest for this and you laugh 😂

where is your post complaining about road traffic crashes causing more congestion and disruption than these groups ever cause. Crashes caused by a lot of illegal driving. That’s ok but if some sits in the rd then that’s not ok yet causes a lot less congestion

I was horrified by the Tom Moore stunt, but having seen it explained I could see why it was done and what it represented

Am I going to listen to these people?

A man dressed as a woman
A woman with a t-shirt declaring a non-binary future
A woman, 19 years old and pregnant, bemoaning her child's future
Vegans dressed in plastic clothing wasting precious natural resources (milk)

No.

Watching these spoilt children made me despair for activism.Thry took zero risks for a high publicity stunt which raised everyone's awareness of the other futile glue stunts going on.
I support fighting climate change and do my bit but as someone up thread says,if this is alienating people like us what about those who still don't get it/think it will affect them or their children's future.

They would think twice about glue if they were in France where the police are quite happy to move protesters by leaving the skin off their hands on the pavement