They jailed 2 eco-warriors for 3 years. Their crime? Peaceful protest. In a nation which prides itself on its pillars of democracy, including freedom of speech and peaceful protest. The guys were members of ‘Just Stop Oil’ and nailed themselves to Battersea Bridge, or maybe superglued their buttocks to exit 23 on the M25 or something which was ‘disruptive’ but in no way violent. In fact they tied themselves to a bridge on a motorway which then had to be closed for 14 hours. And what is 14 hours in the face of advancing catastrophic climate change for the entire planet?

In that context, from my (very high) pedestal as an electric vehicle driver, concerned about every badger, every polar bear, every bit of coral and every carbon some Porsche is spewing out as I go silently and smugly by, in a fit of range anxiety, desperately looking for a plug, it is catastrophic.

The immediate irony is missed that stopping motorways results in an extra 14 hours of cars sitting around… emitting. But its the mental health of those drivers which is also worthy of consideration. Basically, people get seriously pissed off when their journeys are disrupted. And yes, there’s ambulances who can’t get to hospitals, and corpses inside funeral cars who get delayed getting to their final resting places, but for each of those, there’s 20,000 just normal people sitting there in frustration and anger.

And they’re not, at that moment, angry with the government. Nor with the gas-fired power stations, nor with the world’s seeming impotence about fossil fuel change. They don’t care, at that point, about ‘the cause’. They’re angry with the dickheads who’ve stopped the traffic. And thus will be far more predisposed against their alleged ‘causes’ than in its favour.

All demonstrations cause some disruption. Close roads round Westminster, block Trafalgar Square, and we get that. But inciting hatred against your cause, however noble that cause, is stupid. To ‘disrupt’ the Marathon would be so totally stupid and ludicrous that its really not worth even considering.

Rest in Peace Barry Humphries, funniest Australian ever.

A xxxx