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.

Meanwhile if you’re the boss of Thames water and flood our waters with shit, no jail for you, instead you get £159k bonus for 3 months.

https://inews.co.uk/news/thames-water-boss-195k-bonus-bill-hikes-3160764

Maybe the JSO lot should have sexually assaulted someone for their protest instead. They would have got off.

Are you really suggesting that someone who believes we need to take urgent action on fossil fuels will decide, ‘actually I didn’t like those JSO guys so screw climate action, let’s burn the planet’?

No one is turned off climate action because of JSO if they actually have 2 brain cells.

If we stop oil, then no cars, lorries, freight, aircraft? No trains? Is that what we're required to sign up to here?
For everybody, no exceptions?

5 years for peaceful protest is obscene.

I agree.

But what JSO did wasn’t ‘peaceful protest’. It was illegal mass disruption which stopped ambulances getting to patients, patients getting to hospital, essential workers getting to their jobs etc etc. That level of disruption is one step away from fascism and the legal system is right to punish it properly.

‘Just Stop Oil’ = fine.

‘Just Stop Ambulances’ = not fine.

In one case an ambulance was trying to get through as their patient had had a stroke I don’t know if you are aware that in stroke cases time is one of the most important factors in reversing/limiting damage. They were asked to let the ambulance thought at least, the patients family begged them. Those fucking arseholes refused to let it through, I can’t remember the exact outcome but it was devastating and it was determined that if she’d got through their road block then the outcome would have been significantly different. Refusing to move for an emergency vehicle is reprehensible, how would you feel if that was your childs life hanging in the balance because some fanny has glued themselves to a road? If someone dies due to their actions I want to see manslaughter charges brought!

They don’t have a right to get their cause into the headlines or get the attention of decision makers though, the same as people with other specific interests don’t either.

What?! The vigil for Sarah Everard is in no way comparable to the actions of Extinction Rebellion.

Agree wholeheartedly

do you know who is a bigger menace, and are regularly let off with probation and no jail time: paedophiles who have downloaded countless vile porn featuring the abuse of children. They aren't seeing any jailtime.

This is facism.

Just copy the Baader Meinhof. This cause is so important that a spot of armed robbery, bombing, kidnapping and murder would be totally justified, surely? That’d get them the attention they crave.

No? Well, why don’t you tell us what level of criminality is too much.

You do know that ground mounted solar panels cover about 0.1% of all land in the UK, right?

Even with government plans to significantly scale up solar that figure is only expectee to rise to 0.3% of all UK land area, which is the equivalent to around 0.5% of the land currently used for farming - or roughly half of the space taken up by golf courses.

So it's not solar farms that will cause us to starve...it's those bloody golf courses.

Ps if you're concerned about the impact net zero policy will have on crop yeilds I wouldn't read any of the papers published that examine what climate change is doing to crop yeilds right now and I certainly wouldn't look at the ones that model the impact of the 2-3 degree rise that we are on course for.

Agreed. And what's happened to the right to protest is frighteningly authoritarian. They were even forbidden from explaining their motivation.

My gut instinct is to agree. That the protests are in the wrong place and affecting the wrong people. That Stop Oil are a bunch of up their own arse twats who love the drama and attention.

dd has told me that’s a very right wing view for someone (me) who says they’re left wing. She’s given a big speech in how the environment is fucked (I’m not saying I disagree) and that the end justifies the means. I’ve tried pointing out that nobody in govt is listening to them and just considers them a bunch of idiots so it’s pointless. They need more dialogue, etc. dd says they tried that and it didn’t work. I think dd is full of the arrogance of youth.

but then Chris Packham has popped up saying pretty much the same.

maybe I’m wrong and they are a bunch of heros 🤷‍♀️

I didn't say it was.

I'm just pointing out that the government can now jail people for peaceful protest. While you might celebrate this because it's happening to people who support a cause you don't agree with, doesn't mean that you won't face the same punishment if you decide to protest for a cause you do care about in future.

No I'm suggesting that protesting in this way like a bunch of dicks achieves precisely nothing and it certainly doesn't stop climate problems.

Indeed it's more likely to cause people to be belligerent and turn the heating up to spite the protesters even though this makes precisely no sense but people have been pissed off and do weird shit.

There are better ways to protest and to engage which might actually do something meaningful.

This is not it.

They weren’t peacefully protesting.

@AccidentallyWesAnderson the opposite of peaceful is violent. Please explain how their actions were violent.

Do any of you think you're even going to make it to old age (let alone your children) before a major catastrophe happens in the world with climate change? I'm talking gulf stream to stop flowing, seas will rise by meters, sea will become stagnant and all sea life will die. And you are complaining about people causing a traffic jam. Try to listen to what they are saying. The point of protest is to inconvenience people.

To all critics, please tell us how climate activists can 1. Get their cause into the headlines and 2. Get the attention of decision makers and try to get them to understand the severity of the issue

Britain is a Parliamentary democracy with free independent media. Activists who seek influence need to do it within the law and within existing democratic, lobbying & campaigning mechanisms. The Green Party are doing well, building support & won 4 seats at the election. Good for them. They are democrats.

Small numbers of single issue fanatics are not allowed to hold the country to ransom. That’s not how British democracy works. If JSO don’t like that, tough shit. Maybe Russia or China would suit them better?

Jail time is totally disproportionate. Especially in a country that barely puts rapists behind bars, gives a slap on the wrist to people who are in posession of utterly appalling images of serious child SA. As pp have mentioned British rivers and the sea is full of shit, because the water companies are so busy paying bonis to their executives rather than invest in infrastructure.

and there are 700 places in UK prisons. Far far far better would have been community service cleaning up beaches or something.

I’d have thought a better protest would be blockading oil tankers, etc. less disruption of ambulances, etc and stops oil being distributed. I’m sure there’s probably a reason why they don’t do this?

It's not binary.

Protesting that causes widespread disruption, preventing those from getting to life saving appointments, jobs, the list goes on, and possible death, isn't peaceful.

I'm sympathetic to their cause but, if they've broken the law and the sentencing is within guidelines, then no complaints from me. If you choose to break a law as an act of protest, then you have to accept the reprocussions.

The only thing that bothers me (and this is anecdotal and based on my social media circle, not saying it applies to anyone in here) is people celebrating this verdict when they previous supported the Freedom Convoy in Canada. A lot of people seem to think that laws are all well and good and should be enforced, unless the law-breakers were supporting a cause they were sympathetic to.

And I do think that's something people should bear in mind here; if JustForOil had a mere slap on the wrist, would that give the green light to other groups (with different agendas) to adopt similar tactics? Would you be upset if anti-abortion or anti-immigration protestors got off scott-free for a similar protest?

@WildLemur the law they broke was a law created by the corrupt Tory government. Not all laws are just.