Just Stop Oil plan massive disruption at airports to heap holiday hell on Brits

27 comments

1. Do they need to? Isn’t it the same news story every year ‘Easter Break Chaos’ ‘Summer Holiday Hell’, ‘May Day Madness’. Gotta go for that alliteration.

   It wouldn’t surprise me if the airports hired people to pretend to be protestors so they have a scapegoat for their usual mismanagement of a totally forseeable increase in demand.

2. I get they want the coverage. And aviation is a fair target in lots of ways… but I still think they go after the wrong people.

   Target Farnborough and Northolt airports, where the ultra rich fly their private jets from, every day of the year.

3. I honestly don’t understand why they keep going after ordinary people when it’s the massive corporations like BP that cause most of the pollution issues. Most ordinary people recycle, those that can have electric or hybrid cars. Until massive corporations stop pushing people to use fossil fuels ordinary people can’t and won’t.

4. As opposed to climate change, rising seas, etc which won’t affect Britons because they are protected by the magic of right wing media rags

5. Trust fund entitled posh kids plan to ruin family holidays. Got it. Cheers.

6. I think people would be more behind them if if it didn’t seem like it was a group of upper middle class people telling the lower classes what to do.

   I remember one of the JSO people who climbed one of the M25 gantries had spent a year travelling the world before doing it. It feels hypocritical that they were allowed to do it but now that they’ve stopped it’s the wrong thing to do.

7. [removed]

8. On the “JSO are posh wankers” thing….

   Yes, they are. But there is a reason, and its not “only posh wankers care about the environment”.

   It’s because the anti-protest laws of the last decade have significantly increased the costs of protesting in any way that is not a state approved get your permit and line up quietly not causing trouble. Being arrested is expensive. For many minorities, it is actively dangerous.

   The police now deliberately detain protesters far beyond what is reasonable under PACE – we’re talking people being picked up at 8am and not released until 3am, with no valid investigatory reason for it. This was a favourite trick of the Met during the Republic Protests leading up the coronation.

   Legal costs are no longer reimbursed should you be found not guilty (and the police are very often charging people with no realistic prospect of conviction and the CPS are not weeding out these cases as they should – see Greta Thunberg’s recent acquittal – that case should never have even got to the charging point, let alone court) so defending a false charge will leave you £2,000 out of pocket at least.

   As a result, any form of direct action, even if that direct action is lawful (such as a Zeigler defence, or not even a nominally criminal act that needs a defence in the first place) is impossible if you;

   a) have any form of caring responsibility

   b) can’t afford to privately fund a defence

   c) don’t have friends that can pick you up at 3am from a police station (although usually activist groups will organise this).

   d) are not actively endangered by contact with the police (black people, trans people etc)

   So when you wonder why only rich young white people are doing direct action in this country, its worth looking at the systemic reasons that make that the case.

9. Why can’t they go after the government? Go into whatever buildings/protest there. Stuff they do now upsets the public all the time.

10. This will totally rally people to.their cause!

    Morons

11. Do as I say, don’t do as I do. I imagine they all ski at the same resorts every year.

12. I bet they’re going to get in the way of budget airlines rather than private jets then wonder why no one seems to be getting on board with their message 

13. > Protestors want to halt flights by glueing themselves to runways, storming terminals and climbing onto jets

    If true then they are going to end up getting some hefty punishments.

    Not to mention just how dangerous running aircraft are for people who don’t know what they’re doing around them.

14. Rather than stripping more protest rights, can’t we just give the public more rights to remove people forcefully who are blocking their paths like this?

15. These twunts again. Do they think any of their stunts previously have achieved anything other than making hard working people wish they’d just fuck off?

16. It’s one thing pissing someone off who’s going to work, it’s another pissing someone off who’s going on holiday. Can’t see it ending well for JSO.

17. Sorry but fuck these dudes, I haven’t been abroad in 5 years and booked to go away in July, my 8 year old son has severe Autism and it’s already going to be a challenge without potentially a massive delay cos some arsehole glued them selves to a run way, they will never get the sympathy of the masses with these tactics

18. I cannot understand how this organisation has supporters. Its a circus show of “we want government to do something so we’ll make sure public hates us for everything we’ll do to make their lives worse”

19. This LBC article is massively misleading. There has been no mention of any proposed action at UK airports. The Mirror article that LBC acknowledges is the source of the story, makes it clear that there was discussion about protesters halting flights by storming terminal buildings, gluing themselves to runways and clambering onto jets IN TOURIST HOTSPOTS LIKE SPAIN, GREECE AND TURKEY. However, the LBC article omits this info and goes on to talk about previous protests in the UK, Of course action elsewhere may cause problems at UK airports but that is very different to direct action at UK airports,

20. Look up “the forest man of India”. If ONE man can plant a 550 acre forest over 30 years, imagine what 30 people could do in one year. Perhaps they should consider this kind of activism, instead of supergluing themselves to runways like morons.

21. Bored Trustafarians with nothing better to do.

    Probably killing time, they’ll be off to Koh Samui and Goa come Autumn.

22. People are just going to start beating the shit out of them. Imagine you’re from a humble background, grafted all year to save for a week abroad somewhere with your family and you miss your flight because Tarquin got a bit carried away after watching Greta speeches.

23. The airports could take a leaf out of the VW playbook. Give them a space in one of the terminals to let them glue themselves in peace and then just lock up that terminal and leave them to it.

    Terminal 5 at Heathrow would be a good sacrificial lamb for the cause given it usually causes misery for passengers

24. Yeah I don’t think they have thought this through, as soon as you try to stop a bunch of people going on their one holiday they can eek out a year after working bloody hard it’s going to go bad for them.

25. Brings memories to people given street justice by normal people after attempting to disrupt the jubilee line at Canning Town

26. JSO can piss off. Would not urinate on them if they were on fire.

27. The U.K. is 23rd for oil production and 19th for oil consumption. It is #4 for wind and gets more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels.

    That said, it’s literally impossible for us not to use any fossil fuels as the tech is not there to deal with the intermittency problem of wind and solar. These people are protesting for something that is simply impossible with current tech. They might as well advocate for “Just Stop Cancer”.