Motorists are getting increasingly annoyed with Just Stop Oil protestors blocking the roads. With police action often delayed or absent, members of the public have been taking matters into their own hands and dragging the protestors from the road. This happened once again on Tuesday following protestors blocking the path of an ambulance. Michael Deacon in the Telegraph has written about the incident, and said this is only the tip of the iceberg.
It isn’t only an ambulance they’ve blocked, however. They’ve also blocked a fire engine, and the cars of several people who were attempting to drive sickly relatives – including babies – to hospital. When one member of the public told Just Stop Oil to clear the road because “somebody is sick”, an activist retorted: “If they’re sick, they shouldn’t be driving.” It must have taken superhuman reserves of patience to explain to this sanctimonious nitwit that the invalid was the passenger, not the driver.
By now, of course, we should be used to these activists’ pigheadedness. This time last year, Roger Hallam – the founder of Extinction Rebellion – declared that he would willingly block an ambulance, even if it contained a patient at risk of dying.
The activists’ argument is that the ‘climate emergency’ will end up causing millions more deaths than a delayed ambulance. For this reason, one activist from Just Stop Oil told GB News this week that doctors and nurses should actually join their roadblocks. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. At least then they would be on hand to treat any patients who’ve been prevented from getting to hospital.
Either way, these activists clearly aren’t going to stop blocking our roads – unless they’re forced to. So the question we should be asking ourselves is this: Why aren’t the police doing their job and removing all these self-righteous ninnies immediately?
Like anyone, supporters of Just Stop Oil have a right to protest. But they should do it with a march or a rally. Not with a roadblock that could threaten public safety. The police, therefore, should haul them upright the moment their buttocks meet tarmac and send them on their way.
If the police don’t do it, after all, the public will. This week we’ve already seen furious drivers remonstrating with activists, grabbing them by the limbs and dragging them off the road and to the pavement. Clearly this isn’t safe and could easily lead to violence. An outcome that could be comfortably avoided, if the police would stop hovering timidly in the background like trainspotters at an orgy and clear the roads straight away.
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I firmly believe that plod are under instructions not to do anything to remove these eco nutters. The hope by central government is that some serious violence / incident will occur and provide the excuse to pass some truly draconian laws.
It’s all part of the Reset. Simple as and no need to overthink this issue.
No other interpretation fits the story.
The Police have for some time, been making decisions about what laws to enforce and which to ignore. Minor offences against the person, and especially against property have become ignored, while any internet based indiscretions against people in minority groups have felt the full force despite not being criminal offences, but just ‘offences’.
Witness the disgusting kneeling for BLM, and yet baton charges against former servicemen who wanted to protect the Cenotaph from further random vandalism and graffiti. We absolutely have a politicised police force. The left wing ‘social justice’ narrative is assumed as being ‘correct’ and every other view is ‘wrongthink’. For certain a time has already come when they arrest people for ‘not thinking the right way’. They serve not the people, but the ideology of Woke. Another public institution captured.
Spot on Neil.
Well, a lot of people would have been saying the same about anti-lockdown protestors.
I think we need to stick to supporting the right to protest, whether we agree with the protestors or not, and regardless of what agendas they may be following.
We should stick to attacking their message, and perhaps highlighting the different treatment from the authorities with respect to the anti-lockdown protests. I suppose an argument can be made for attacking the method – you can protest without the deliberate intent of causing inconvenience, and there’s a line somewhere between protest and antisocial behaviour. But how many posters here were advocating for civil disobedience or something stronger should more covid restrictions have been imposed.
Happy to hear arguments to the contrary.
Hmmm. Everyone has a right to protest, that I agree with. How you protest is important, that I agree with. The implied equality of motives for protest is where we disagree. Big time disagree. You cannot compare the removal of basic civil liberties – the discrimination of an entire group of people because of their right to exercise bodily autonomy – with some adolescent lefties who believe the highly questionable notion of climate change. These two are incomparable; like comparing the fight against the Nazi’s with the fight to uphold religion – one is based on basic human decency, the other based on blind faith.
The difference is that anti-lockdown protestors were arguing against state tyranny while these cretinous hypocritical tossers are supporting state tyranny, which is why the police are so tolerant.
The 8 anti-lockdown, anti-mask and gene therapy mandate and anti-discrimination protests I attended in 2021 in London were all announced, organised, huge and very, very peaceful.
So very much in contrast of what those thugs are doing.
I was and any sensible person would be civilly disobedient. But that would generally entail not adhering to pointless and authoritarian restrictions and rules which have no justification whatsoever or scientific basis. I’ve never been at a protest march against the Covid restrictions where we blocked ambulances. Even the Canadian truckers were careful not to block lanes for emergency vehicles. These loonies gluing themselves to the road or property have totally lost the plot and there is no comparison. And the thing is, they’re not making a blind bit of difference to their cause, only making people more and more irate and liable to take the law into their own hands if the bone idle police aren’t willing to do the job they’re paid to, possibly because they’re too busy out and about rounding up people who’ve offended somebody on social media.
Sorry, but if I go to my neighbour’s garden and start to trample down the plants to voice discontent with king Charles III hairdo or forcibly stop his children from going to school in order to articulate that I really disagree with the decisions to allow people to take showers and flush their toilets despite England is currently in drought and about to turn into a sand desert in just a few short hundreds of years, that’s neither protest nor civil disobedience. It’s vandalism or compulsion (in Germany, that’s – forcing someone to do something he doesn’t want to do or stop refrain from doing something he did want to do – a crime called Nötigung) and it victimizes random members of the general public who happen to be at hand and who have no direct influence whatsoever on political decisions.
Aside: A less cumbersome way to remove this would-be roadblocks would be to kick them (or step on their hands and legs) until they start moving. Probably wouldn’t take very long. Presumably, generously drenching them with cold water from buckets would already accomplish that.
They aren’t protesting; they’re blockading roads and preventing people from going about their lawful business.
“police would stop hovering timidly in the background like trainspotters at an orgy”
Perfect!
Not that I would know, ahem. I prefer rather different “rolling stock”.
I didn’t know the police weren’t even doing anything. Being outside of the UK now I’m a bit out of the loop too apparently. Knowing very little of the ins and outs of the law myself, isn’t a basic law that they’re breaking, just off the top of my head, ‘disturbing the peace’? Then there’s ‘inciting violence’, because if loonies like that are going to be in the path of people going about important journeys or just their general day to day lives then tempers are going to rise if people start dragging the nutters out of the way and they start fighting back. I’m sure there’s other laws they’re breaking too but that’s surely enough to justify the police starting to make arrests if they don’t heed a warning. This isn’t the way to protest. This is just people who are deluded attention-seekers who have lost touch with reality. Besides, the bloody jabs are well on their way to killing millions before any sort of fictional climate calamity!
Agree entirely. Presumably most of the eco loonies swallowed ‘safe and effective’ so sadly……
Never mind.
Yes. Looking on the bright side, a certain number of them appear to have made a few donations here, by the look of it. They must be able to afford it, even after paying their fines!
Highways Act 1980 (since amended multiple times)
” 137Penalty for wilful obstruction.
(1)
If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to [F1imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks or] a fine [F2or both].”
They aren’t protesting, they are committing an offence and the police are standing by and letting them do it. It’s about time a Chief Constable was prosecuted for Malfeasance in Public Office for allowing/encouraging his Officers to ignore a crime when it is being carried out.
Well done.
What nonsense! The police don’t have time or officers to deal with these people as they are busy raiding the houses of innocent people and taking their IT equipment on the says of a troublemaker.
The problem is also one of repeated offending. The police and courts seem supine in the face of this. A charge of obstruction doesn’t carry a prison sentence. What does is conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. After a first arrest there must be a bail condition that no further occupation of roads will occur. On second arrest they are then remanded in custody. This system has worked well for years. Why is it not being applied today?
To these people everything humans do affect climate. Today they are going after fossil fuels, dairy products, beef and SUV’s but tomorrow it will be daring you to go on that plane to Tenerife, or hauling products they don’t like out of your shopping trolly. There will never be an end to this cult , but to be fair government and media must take responsibility for having brainwashed them with endless tales of a “climate emergency” for political purposes. It is hardly a surprise that if you are convinced there is an emergency you will do stuff that you think is necessary to stop it. This is why biased reporting that presents a particular narrative with no mention of the doubts and uncertainties, or the fact these claims of “crisis” are mainly based on projections from computer models covering a wide range of scenarios, that have mostly been wrong so far are almost certainly going to lead to irrational behaviour from easily manipulated people.