British judges are currently jailing Just Stop Oil protesters. Quite severe punishments. Sometimes utterly unreasonable punishments for peaceful protests. I wrote about that recently when Hallam, an organiser was jailed for five years and a couple of charming young ladies were jailed for four years each for chucking Heinz tomato soup on the frame of van Gogh's 'Wildflowers'. Yes, they were jailed for four years for chucking some Heinz tomato soup on a picture frame in a gallery.
So why are they doing this? It's because they are reactionary. Nearly all British judges come from the middle, middle/upper, upper classes in the UK. They are excellently educated. They go to the best schools and they go to Eton or Harrow after which they go to Oxford or Cambridge.
They become very successful barristers and KCs. They earn lots of money but if they want to become a judge they will have to accept less money but they enjoy the status of becoming a High Court judge or better. They receive a knighthood when they become a High Court judge.
They have high status. But they are part of the establishment. They are firmly part of the British establishment. And I believe a lot of them do not actually believe in climate change. A lot of people in the establishment in Britain don't firmly believe in climate change. They don't want their way of life altered which helps them to not believe in climate change. Their life is too good. They don't want anything upsetting them or their lifestyle. Climate change does negatively impact their lifestyle or will do for future generations.
And so because they want things to remain as they are, they don't like protesters who upset their way of life and tell them that things are going to get worse unless strong action is taken. And if they do have the temerity to upset their way of life in protesting they hammer them as hard as they can and issue overly zealous prison sentences for peaceful protests.
Another judge has done the same thing. He is judge Shane Collery KC (Kings Counsel). He sentenced George Simonson and Theresa Higginson to 2 years in jail apiece. Other protesters he's jailed for 22 months and 20 months. They pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to causing a public nuisance after they caused mass destruction by climbing gantries on the M25 motorway on November 9, 2022.
The judge said that the protesters were blasé about what they did. He thought the protests were a "curious way of seeking to influence the public opinion."
He added that "[You] considered you knew better than everyone else". Well, I'm gonna say that they do know better than everybody else and they have the courage to scream it from the rooftops. And it is judges like Shane Collery KC who don't understand what's going on. And if we could look back retrospectively in 50 years time at this judgement I think we would all agree that he was terribly wrong.
That's because in 50 years time time global warming will be impacting the planet far worse than it is now and people at that future time will understand how brave these protesters were in providing the public with a warning for the catastrophe to come.
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