Great Western Coffee Shop

Apparently XR are staging four days of protests in Bristol over the August 2020 bank holiday weekend.

According to the Bristol Post (https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/live-xr-protest-updates-two-4464409), two protesters have been arrested for blocking Clifton Suspension bridge to cars - they were allowing non-motor traffic across. It appears that the police have responded by closing it to all traffic for the rest of the weekend

XR have also blocked Prince Street Bridge to motor traffic. Some readers will be surprised to hear that motor traffic was allowed to start using this busy pedestrian and cycle route again after the recent refurbishment.

Presumably XR won't be present at Bristol Bridge. It seems that their protest here last year that proved this could be closed to cars without causing major problems.

The divides between protest, pulling in the same direction and partnering are sometime wafer thin, even where the common objectives are initially approached from different angles.

I think this is more than just Bristol - I understand there are likely protests in that there London too. Hopefully they might spend some money while there in the shops that badly need it

Not sure if something is going on North bound on the M5 at the Stroud turn off junction 13.

My thoughts: if you are or know any one making a short journey,keep well away from ANY Motorways.

It'll be interesting to see how it's Policed, given the way events in Bristol at the recent BLM protest were (non) Policed.

Indeed, wider and over the next few days too.

From Faresaver Buses on Twitter:

The recent BLM protests in Bristol were policed. In point of fact, they were policed very well. 'Policing' is not synonymous with 'breaking heads'.

Allowed an act of vandalism of Colston's statue to take place while they stood by and watched and later had go hunting to identify the culprits.    Whatever one's opinions or the cause it was still a crime

Kye Dudd, the city council's head of transport, cited XR's closure of the Bridge as having proved it was possible, when the official closure was announced a couple of months back.

Policing is synonymous with "maintaining law and order", which is somewhat at variance with standing by and watching a howling mob commit premeditated criminal damage.

I have considerable sympathy with the concerns and aims of ER, but feel that some of their protests are ill advised.
One of the worst IMHO was the action against a LUL train, in which they were forcibly removed by passengers.

They should be encouraging electric public transport, not disrupting it.

Hopefully this latest round of protests will be a bit better thought through.

I have met a number of ER supporters, and their fervour and determination was undeniable. Less impressive was a general lack of basic scientific knowledge, especially with regards to fuel, energy, and electric or other power.
I refer here not to differing views over political, religious, or moral issues, but a lack of basic science.  

The other extreme is Trump's sending in of federal troops to deal with the BLM riots - which did nothing to reduce the violence it only made things worse. Once unrest has started the police are in a very difficult position. This was not on the scale of the riots of August 2011 that cause huge damage.  It only damaged a controversial statue.

It is always better to try and deal with the injustice that leads to unrest before the unrest happens rather than always expect the police to come and pick up the pieces afterwards.   

......which to your final and (very noble) point is ironically exactly what the Police eventually had to do in the case in question, in Bristol and elsewhere.

It is not a choice between doing nothing and "breaking heads" or "sending in federal troops", this is not America, our societies have very little in common in this context. It's not a good comparison. We can be a bit more sophisticated.

The covenant is, the Police stop crime and maintain law and order, and in return we don't take the law into our own hands. Once we do, whatever the perceived righteousness of that cause, things start to break down.

Actions have consequences.

The direct result of the non policing of events in Bristol was that it sent out a message to the much larger mob in London that they had the green light to behave in similar fashion - hence we had statues and monuments vandalised, Police (who were similarly doing their best to hold back until the mob made it necessary to intervene) assaulted and hospitalised and their horses attacked, and a few weeks later we had the grotesque spectacle of the "Soccer Lads"/"Britain First" and Antifa/BLM squaring up to each other in London........and guess who was stuck in the middle?

All these streets of course thronged by the irresponsible forces who had decided that their right to protest trumped the risk of the  further spread of the worst pandemic to affect us since the Spanish flu.

So rather than expecting the Police, NHS, and Local Authorities to "pick up the pieces", maybe, just maybe, a slightly more assertive attitude to the unlawful events in Bristol may have prevented some of the violent disorder in London and elsewhere - no-one's heads needed to be broken, no militia needed to be called for, just the Police stepping in and stopping crime, as they generally do - I absolutely get however that much of the (in)action was driven by Politics rather than straightforward Policing.

Of course it's always easier to do all that from a standing position, rather than being on your knees?

Avon and Somerset police were there on the ground, accountable, and did not have the benefit of hindsight. Their assessment was that any intervention would have caused a limited situation focused on a single statue to escalate.

Short of using significant force, it is difficult to see how they might have prevented the statue from being toppled.  Had they used force, and had (as is probable) greater disorder ensued, it seems very unlikely indeed that the London protests would have been smaller.

Inaction has consequences.

For years Bristolians had asked for a plaque to be fixed to Colston's statue, acknowledging the source of the wealth he lavished on his home city. As awareness grew, so did people's revulsion that a slave trader be celebrated as 'one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city'. But the process became bogged down in politics, and time dragged on. If certain local organisations and politicians had agreed to a simple plaque acknowledging Colston's role in the slave trade, we possibly wouldn't be having this conversation.

Ironically, that 1895 plaque with its praise of Colston is still in situ.

Indeed.  But its future now needs to be decided one way or the other.  It can't just be ignored.

The root problem of the Colston affair was a very few highly influential people put up barriers to lawful solution.  Now it is down I notice one of these organisations has apologised for these actions.  Our leaders need to get out there and listen to what other people think rather than just the people they know.  The people I know all think like me so everyone must think that is a very dangerous assumption. 

The arguments that we can't rewrite history don't wash if the so called history is in fact a lie - and one that oppresses a minority.  Slavery happened and Bristol merchants like Colston made a huge amount of money on the back of the suffering of black people.  That is history we can't change that.  What we can change is a plaque that was erected many years after his death that tells a lie for political reasons (at the time). 

Getting back to XR. There is an injustice coming in that millions of people are going to be killed or forced out of the place they live in because of sea level rise and flooding; many more millions will starve  as crops fail.  And some of us are worried that we will not be able to fly somewhere nice for a holiday and we might have to change our lifestyle to mitigate this.  An injustice is brewing and our leaders (many of whom will be dead before the worst comes) ignore it or pay it lip service.  A generation who will have to live through those consequences much more than us have pointed out the injustice and want action and influential people are too worried that our fossil fuel investments might lose value or wind turbines might ruin the view they have from their country mansion, or they might have to travel on a train rather than their gas guzzling luxury car.  The super rich are still building luxury yachts and buying into a future of space tourism.  They don't care, so people have no other way to express their views.

Covid has made many of us (employees and employers alike) seriously consider that the sometimes long daily commute, which no matter how we do it is part of an unsustainable way of living, is not necessary and that there may be another way. This will disrupt our economy just as, a few years ago, the start of commuting has took the heart out of many of the local economies of the places we commute from.  Yet our leaders want everyone back to their commute to preserve this unsustainable economy.

The longer our leaders ignore peaceful protests against real injustices, the more likely we are to get violent ones.       

I wandered down to Prince Street Bridge today to see what was going on. Not a lot, really. It was pretty much like any Saturday on Wapping Wharf, with people milling around, eating and buying, except everyone was crossing the bridge on foot, bike or electric monowheel. There were a couple of XR people visible, chiefly a man singing really bad (my opinion, I'm sure some people liked it) folk music. I wanted to ask someone, but didn't get a chance, if they were hoping Kye Dudd would follow this weekend up in a year or so by closing the bridge.

But I did get a chance to look around the Matthew.  :)

We're arguably already getting it but it's not, and probably won't be, from the XR crowd. It's in Africa, the Middle East, India and other parts of the world where the line between famine and feast is thinner and frailer.

Edited to sort out the missing quote.

I agree.
The loss of life and destruction of property due to climate change has started, and will get a great deal worse, without drastic cuts in carbon emissions.
If we are serious about climate change, we need to fly, and drive a lot less, and use a LOT less fossil fuel for other purposes.

August is now over, and nothing much happened.
There were some protests but all very low key if compared to previous XR protests.

Although the BBC are reporting within the last few minutes at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-53987662
and
So sounds as though it's only just starting.  :-\

They've certainly captured the national mood when it comes to HS2!  :)

https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/hs2/hs2-sites-targeted-by-extinction-rebellion-protests-01-09-2020/

The national mood. How do we know what the national mood is?  I know what I think, and what the people I know think, and I will of course assume that as the national mood, but I have been very wrong in this assumption on different issues many times before. So do we have any objective evidence as to what the national mood is on this issue? 

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2020/05/18/31266/2

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/poll-post-election-future-hs2/

Hope that helps. Not difficult to find similar.

Fine, we just need to evidence such statements about the national mood.

I still think the national mood as evidenced by this and XR are wrong on this one. If we are to decarbonise the economy and reduce air pollution we need to reduce domestic air travel and car travel and provide capacity for more freight on the classic rail lines to the midlands and the north that will be made available by HS2. We will also need more capacity elsewhere, but that is another matter.

Even if Covid reduces the demand for people to move around as much it will not go away and the need for freight transport will not diminish. Local delivery vans can be made electric but I see no carbon free long distance HGV soon. 

If we were to have a proper informed debate about HS2 the capacity need for it and the fact that the money to pay for it cannot be just converted into revenue expenditure then I think the national mood might change. 

Informed debate?  Crickey, that's asking a bit much! ;)

I very largely agree. There is considerable opposition to HS2, much of it very ill informed.
Whilst I have considerable sympathy with XR, they are not in my experience very well informed. Many XR supporters are opposed to HS2 on the grounds that it will be a very expensive way "of allowing a few rich business people to travel a bit faster" whilst completely missing the very valid points about increased capacity for low carbon transport of both passengers and freight.

And yes, as above, LOCAL transport of goods is achievable by electric road vehicles, or even by horses in rural areas, but an electric HGV seems unlikely.

I'm mildly surprised at the arrests. There doesn't seem to have been any trouble in Bristol last weekend.

.....especially when so much of the information is withheld.

https://www.ft.com/content/d8165ec0-1d61-4208-95ad-bb5c9b212407

Can't read that as it's behind a paywall.

https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/parliamentary-committee-issues-scathing-report-on-management-of-hs2/

Thanks, and fair enough - I assumed it was something new, not from back in May when you quoted the same report on the HS2 thread.

No problem, happy to help.

Looking back at that previous article you quoted in May, it was actually a much better one as there was right of reply from the Transport Secretary explaining how they would ensure information wasn't withheld going forward.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52695156

We will see over time whether that is the case.

https://twitter.com/SocialM85897394/status/1301094908149800960?s=20

Some of the scenes from the Extinction Rebellion protests in London yesterday.

You should be able to view them even if you don't subscribe to Twitter.

(I should add that I was not one of those doing their best to waste Police time!)  :)

I was expecting a keynote speech followed by a full horizontal from TG at least!

Sorry to disappoint........I can manage a full horizontal if I drink enough Tribute, but in a gymnastic context it's virtually impossible with the state of my knees...........in either scenario, I'd need a considerable amount of assistance to rise again, quite possibly utilising a block and tackle! 

I also. I avoid lying down except in or on a soundly constructed bed.

3 local climate change activists were observed to be lying down in a public place. Seemed a rather low profile place for a protest. I later heard that one had slid from his horse, due perhaps to taking of drink. The horse lost interest after a bit and wandered home. Two friends joined him to "show solidarity" All were sleeping until it rained.

Whatever anyone's views are on any of the newspapers concerned, this is totally unacceptable behaviour.

The irony of an avowedly anti fascist organisation attempting to restrict access to the free Press does take some beating!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/extinction-rebellion-block-roads-to-murdoch-paper-print-sites?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR06mhnkyRcMQIvz4eJoS2WrOdKWpiW9ragXJi5L2JQAqjQSxdiC9na4V5E

And on the day The Sun publishes an article by Sir David Attenborough on the very thing they are supposed to be protesting about...Climate Change! Talk about own goal. ::)

I agree, and this sort of behaviour reinforces my view that significant elements within XR are simply the latest reincarnation of various hard left groups, who support environmental protests only as a "means to an end" of a Marxist state.
"smash the system"
"stop the city"
Such groups hate Murdoch for modernising the newspaper industry and reducing trade union control.
A free press is not a feature of the communist system.

Yes, I don't agree with it, but bear in mind that this print work also prints the Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, and the London Evening Standard.

Some of those titles have taken a Climate Change denial stance. 

I am a bit skeptical on how free our press is. Freedom should be freedom to print the truth. Some of it seems to be freedom of very rich people to print whatever they like to promote their own personal interests.

When election expenditure by political parties is tightly controlled but a newspaper can openly campaign on behalf of one party during an election. Expenditure that would not have been allowed if the party had had to but it as advertising. (The Sun has claimed to win elections for more than one party at different times). 

Also remember there was a Journalist who was a Brussels correspondent for one paper who made up stories about what the European Commission was about to ban which still seemed to be accepted as facts by many people. He seemed to get away with it at the time. Wonder what he is doing now?

For my information Ellendune - which ones?

Good ask. And while I am at it I better quote a source for my answer so how about this?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/25/why-are-some-british-newspapers-still-denying-climate-change (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/25/why-are-some-british-newspapers-still-denying-climate-change)


The full article gives a more nuanced answer.

The article is almost 5 years old, and given that the Sun, cited within it as an "offender" was going to be leading today with Attenborough's article,  it hasn't aged particularly well.

Fair comment. But The Sun was not the only one mentioned and it is only one article. So here are some more recent links

https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/another-humiliation-for-british-climate-change-deniers-and-their-promoters-in-the-media/ (https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/another-humiliation-for-british-climate-change-deniers-and-their-promoters-in-the-media/)

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/environment/2020/02/uk-newspapers-promote-favourite-myth-mini-ice-age-climate-change-deniers-denial (https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/environment/2020/02/uk-newspapers-promote-favourite-myth-mini-ice-age-climate-change-deniers-denial)

https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/is-fleet-street-in-climate-change-denial-15122 (https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/is-fleet-street-in-climate-change-denial-15122)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/murdochracy-controls-climate-debate-australia-200124052356203.html (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/murdochracy-controls-climate-debate-australia-200124052356203.html)

Yes I know one of them is Australian, but it is about News Corp so is relevant. 

One of the major policies of XR is to "reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025" A laudable aim IMHO, but I wonder how many of their supporters have properly thought through what would be needed to achieve this.

Policies to achieve this aim would have to include

An end to virtually all aviation. Not tinkering by adding "green strings" or slightly more efficient aircraft but closing down almost the entire civil aviation industry.
A very few flights could be allowed for life saving, but holiday or business travel, no way.
Make a start by closing down half the air transport industry THIS YEAR with more drastic measures in years to come.

An end to virtually all fossil fueled road transport. Certainly no more private cars unless electric. A handful of fossil fuel vehicles could be permitted for emergency services or other life critical functions.
No more diesel HGVs.
Make a start THIS YEAR by prohibiting any new registrations of fossil fuel vehicles, and doubling the price of fuel, with more drastic actions in future years.

An end to domestic heating that uses, gas, coal or oil. Make a start this year by prohibiting new fuel burning installations and doubling the price of fuels.

Ration electricity to that produced from renewables. Presuming that priority is to be given to electric public transport and to hospitals etc, this means largely eliminating domestic use of electricity, except at times of relative plentiful supply. No more 24/7 domestic electricity.
Make a start THIS YEAR by building the long talked about Severn barrage, and remove planning restrictions on renewable energy installations.

No more oil powered ships. Sail power or electric only. Make a start THIS YEAR by building sailing ships.

Whom is going to vote for this ?

Hmmmm Al-Jazeera............

All interesting articles, but fundamentally, no-one, no matter what their motivation or how virtuous they perceive their cause to be, has the right to prevent someone else reading whichever newspaper they choose, whatever that newspaper says or who owns it. There's no room for "yeah but" middle ground or equivocation on that, and I'd rise in defence of Morning Star readers on that point as much as those who take the Times.

XR hasn't done itself any favours this week, what with wanton vandalism, preventing the progress of emergency vehicles, mass protests whilst COVID is still around, and now this.

Possibly a wakeup call for a lot of people, who, with the best of intentions, have offered their support up until now. There are other organisations with the same (noble) aims who conduct themselves in a far more responsible manner

Yeah, but I suppose it depends on how you define 'newspaper'. I believe ISIS had a journal of sorts.


Well... I doubt XR draw much support from readers of any of the affected titles; particularly the print editions.

I try to read a range of views so I am not constrained by believing what "people like me" think is what everyone thinks.  I am not a natural Telegraph reader either, but Al Jazeera did once employ Andrew Neil so worth a read for a different take on the world ebven if I don't agree with it all the time.


I did say I didn't agree with it. 


I think I will let public opinion in general be the judge of that - I have been shown to be wrong too often when I have tried to second guess them.


Possibly - perhaps not - I cannot tell.