General Chat

The Just Stop Oil terrorists appear this morning to have shut down much of the entire M25, climbing up onto gantries at 15 locations including the Dartford crossing. They will be removed by the police, of course, but I still can't see any evidence they are directly changing the public's mind to do what they demand.
M25 users are mostly working people and families with places to be at certain times - especially those with urgent appointments. Holding them up for an hour or three just makes them angry. I have not heard of ANY motorist saying "You know what? I've changed my mind and will lobby my MP and government to immediately do whatever Just Stop Oil says."
I get their point, but don't believe we are currently not doing the best we can, given the economic circumstances particularly forced by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I wonder why they don't just blockade the Chinese embassy - or even the American one - who are the world's worst polluters: ie China: 14.366 microns (greenhouse gasses) per year. USA: 6.315 m. India: 3.382m. Russia: 1.982 m. Japan: 1.170m. UK: 421. (source Climate Action Tracker via Times.)
I expect Sunak will agree to speed up the switch to renewable energy, and transfer as much money as we can afford to bolster emission-curbing plans in poorer countries.
But it won't be because of idiots on gantries over the M25.

Inky1, I have posted before about these protestors, and I wish the police would do what they did at the Queens Jubilee celebrations when protestors lay on the mall. They just dragged them away by the hands and feet and put them in a police van and took them away, no messing.

These protests won't make 1 iota of a difference as you said, all it does do is stop people going about their daily business including the emergency services! Preventing them from doing their jobs should be a criminal offence and carry a jail sentence.
How would they feel if they were dying and an ambulance couldn't reach them in time because the road was blocked by protestors, what then I wonder?

Yes, protest outside the Chinese Embassy as they are the biggest polluters in the world and see what happens then.

In other countries, the police would have locked them up and they wouldn't get treated as well as we treat prisoners. I know we are a civilized country but really, we are too soft on people sometimes.

This whole thing really makes my blood boil!!; grrrrr

Florence in the Hebrides

the one yesterday, crying crocodile tears, kept going on about not having a future
Well, if she had fallen off she definetly wouldn't have a future and she may have wrecked someone else's future.

I suppose more of them will now lose any jobs they may have had and we will be paying for their benefits. :-P

The protestors in Germany were lef tin an empty car factory complaining they hadn't been given food and water and also not give a pot to ..... in. I hope no one was standing under the gantries ;-) ;-)

:-D :-D :-D :-D@Joan yep that would sort them out!

Florence in the hebrides

As much as I think the protesters are wrong and some need to find gainful employment instead of adversely affecting the lives of other people, I am not certain that any protest outside the Chinese Embassy would be the right thing to do because they have absorbed an awful lot of the world’s dirty industry that, once upon a time, caused dreadful pollution in now-cleaner countries such as the UK.

It really is a Catch-22 situation for nations like ours. At the expense of jobs, we hived off blights such as smogs, grime and overhanging palls of smoke and the deaths that they brought with them but we also lost the capability of our citizens to produce the many goods we require or use, as much of our machinery went east too. The need for us to produce our own goods was lost to ‘westernising’ nations willing to get on the economic ladder by cheap production so once the stranglehold is complete I expect the price of everything manufactured by those nations will increase and the reason given as cleaner production to avoid pollution.

Perhaps the protesters ought to be arrested and ordered to learn a skill in order to go a little way in increasing the self-sufficiency of our country? You never know, some of them might have it in them to invent cleaner manufacturing methods instead of their non-constructive constant bleating about pollution.

A police officer has been injured on the M25 amid climate protests which closed parts of the motorway in Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.

The police motorcyclist was hurt in a collision which also involved two lorries at a rolling roadblock.
Officers had been called after a person was spotted on the carriageway, and a rolling roadblock was put in place.

Two people were then arrested as they tried to access gantries over the M25, an Essex Police spokesman said.

i have no sympathy with them at all and hope they do jail time but that would only make them a martyr

In my opinion, the protestors are getting peoples backs up, not doing their "cause", any good at all. And if any of them get hurt, they will blame everybody else.
Hope they do not harm anybody else.

Liz