To think the judge was right to throw the book at Just Stop Oil?

[StripedPiggy]

Five Just Stop Oil activists, including leader & XR founder Roger Hallam have been sentenced to up to 5 years in jail for blocking the M25 & other main roads.
Their intention was to cause gridlock on roads in the South East. The disruption they caused resulted in people missing medical appointments, flights & business meetings.

Well done to that judge. The criminal justice system is right to pass serious sentences on these fanatics which will act as a strong deterrent to others who might try to cause mass disruption, and put people’s lives in danger, to further a political agenda, whatever it might be.

I presume all the protestors, I mean criminals, walked and didn't drive? to get there

If they were let go with a slap on the wrist, their next action would be even more spectacular. And all those laughing at those idiots daring to put their livelihood or hospital visits over the Cause, might change tack if it's their mother denied a lifesaving operation or their child unable to get a heart transplant or just take their exams, or their house gets robbed in a continuing blackout because of a "peaceful protest" disrupting a power plant operation, government networks, or some other lifeline services deemed a worthy target by JSO

Doctors strikes caused all of that and more, in far greater numbers too, my local AE is overwhelmed after a home footie match, that has caused me a great deal of inconvenience in the past, should football be banned or drunken fans jailed for 5 years?

The point here is that their protest was peaceful & that should still be allowed, regardless of the impact on peoples lives, these sentences have effectively stopped this... who on earth is going to risk any sort of protest, when a jail sentence is hanging over them?

presumption is idiotic.

For sure people use whatever means are available to them to live their lives. And i don't think the "Target Audience" for JSO are necessarily the regular Joes like us who live our lives and (hopefully) do what we can to limit/restrict our impact on the environment.

Their target is the Government. And they hope to influence government actions/policy by making big loud statements that grab people's attention. Etc etc. None of you have really read and inwardly digested Noisy Protests 101, have you? 😀

I guess it doesn’t matter if protest is a cornerstone of democracy or that governments can create ever more restrictive and harsh laws to prevent people from affecting change in the systems they live in let’s get rid of it!

And the new Labour government has indeed now pledged to stop new oil, so the protesters have arguably been effective. Not to say that the fight has been won because of course it hasn’t but they have achieved a core objective, which is very impressive.

Unless the JSO all walked or cycled then they are being hypocritical. I have sympathy for them to a point ,like most people I imagine .However when they hold a major road up for several days ,and cause hard working people great distress then its too much.Presumably this will be a deterrent for others seeking to emulate them in the future .There was a picture in the paper of all 5 smirking smugly .One of the protesters is 22 ,and music student at Cambridge University .Even if she serves half her sentence ,what orchestra is going to employ someone with a prison record ?

Don't be daft

Of course but privilege cuts both ways, if the protests disrupt your day it's probably because you drive

Nobody has been jailed for Grenfell, or Covid, or Horizon or for filling our rivers with shit...but a bit of protesting...absolutely.

People really are idiots, and I'm not talking about JSO here.

Until relatively recently at least, JSO did have the “financial leverage” of the “very rich” Mr Dale Vince, multimillionaire owner of green energy company Ecotricity. And I am neither dense nor ignorant. As the green lobby must learn, hurling sneering insults is not the way to win an argument nor get people on side. If JSO aren’t bothered about popularity, they’re doing brilliantly. On effecting political change, not so much. Perhaps they might want to change tactics by winning hearts and minds to cause a groundswell of demand for change from the wider pubic, or just carry on making themselves mocked and disliked? I support their aims, and think the sentences were unduly harsh, but surely these naive protesters must see that the way forward is to win the public over and not to alienate them on a regular basis? That includes insulting their intelligence.

Well, that’s completely persuaded me.

You’ve helped me see the light. I’m off to dye my hair pink and sit in the road up the high street.

🙄

Hurling sneering insults??

Have you read how the protesters are being described on here?

@Collexifon yes, I was there,
And yes, the police were doing that. And there were also some protesters being t**ts as well. It was an absolute melee on the day. But a significant number of protesters weren't arrested. I wasn't. Were you? And if you were, was it just because you were holding a placard and shouting?
Not saying there wasn't police brutality. There absolutely was and I don't condone that. Nobody should.

@Perfect28 Stopping ambulances getting through and basically killing people (patients) imo, is violent.

And yet the Labour party committed, before the election, to Just Stop Oil’s core demand: an end to new gas and oil exploitation. There was once a solid political consensus around “maximising economic recovery” of the UK’s oil and gas. I believe Just Stop Oil played a in changing this.

What they did wasn't peaceful though, it was designed to cause maximum disruption. Holding a sit down protest in Trafalgar Square, for instance, would have been peaceful. Blocking the M25 is not.

Brefugee
presumption is idiotic.

For sure people use whatever means are available to them to live their lives. And i don't think the "Target Audience" for JSO are necessarily the regular Joes like us who live our lives and (hopefully) do what we can to limit/restrict our impact on the environment.

Their target is the Government. And they hope to influence government actions/policy by making big loud statements that grab people's attention. Etc etc. None of you have really read and inwardly digested Noisy Protests 101, have you? 😀

Their actions aren't causing the public to get behind them and demand change though, they are just pissing people off and damging their cause, as I said before, they are fucking idiots.

To put it simply walking around with a few placards equals acceptable and there is precedent of peaceful protests along agreed routes having taken place for many years.

Grinding the whole of the south east to a halt for hours equals not acceptable.

How you can fail to appreciate the difference in magnitude and intention I‘ve no idea.

You are confusing peaceful but disruptive and not peaceful- violent

I agree. I would rather the few prison places left were filled by people who committed violent or sexual offences.

A woman died and they held up emergency services, I'd call that violent.

That’s a horrible incident that came as a result of deliberate road closure by JSO , have I got that right? any planned road closure which makes it harder to get from a to b could cause exactly the same incident.
so your argument is that Anything that might cause disruption to traffic is inherently violent?
what about disruption to routes caused by Royal weddings or roadworks? Disruptions cause increased risk, we tolerate them all the time.

It wasn't just blocking traffic, they put their own lives, the lives of motorists and the lives of emergency services personnel in danger just for a publicity stunt, which also lost them a huge amount of support from the general public. Own goal.

Edit: This wasn't a planned signposted closure, it was a load of individuals walking about on a busy road and even super gluing themselves to the road, there could have been very serious accidents.

When people deliberately cause a situation they carry responsibility for the consequences. Again, if it were a different cause would you be defending the method of protest so vigorously?