I’ve just donated £10.00 to Just Stop Oil here using my full name, shame it’s not appearing ;)
ed: Dear oh dear, it seems to have broken …
later ed: I wonder if it’s my name – it’s [3/11/22 I did publish my full name here. I am totally willing to show that I support Just Stop Oil. I’ve removed my name because I’m concerned that it may affect search engine rankings for the whole blog.]
MPs are preparing to vote next week on some of the most controversial anti-protest measures left in the government’s notorious policing bill.
Amnesty UK has urged MPs to “follow the lead of their colleagues in the Lords in taking a stand against the power-grab” when the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill returns to the Commons on Monday.
Last month, the House of Lords rejected a string of proposals that would have given police in England and Wales increased powers, including the power to stop and search anyone at a protest “without suspicion”.
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Karla McLaren, Amnesty UK’s government and political relations manager, told openDemocracy: “The right to protest is a cherished part of the fabric of our society and it’s profoundly disturbing that the government is trying to gag people like this.
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Left Foot FORWARD: BP reports staggering profits as oil and gas prices surge
Oil and gas giant BP has reported profits of £7.1bn between July an September 2022. The staggering bumper profits come as oil and gas prices remain high following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
BP’s profits, which are double that of the same period last year, have been slammed by environmental groups and the left, who have highlighted both the climate and cost of living crises – the latter being largely driven by energy prices. There have also been renewed calls for increasing the windfall tax on fossil fuel companies.
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The reports of BP’s mega-profits come just days after Shell reported similar figures. Shell made £8.2bn between July and September 2022 and did not pay anything in the oil and gas windfall tax. That’s because of a loophole in the windfall tax which gives tax breaks to companies for investing in more fossil fuel extraction. BP has said it will pay $800m in windfall tax this year.
[ed: O}n day 32 of their activism my friends ;) at Just Stop Oil attempted to scale the gates of Downing Street and blocked Whitehall to demand that the government halts all new oil and gas licences and consents.
At 11:20am yesterday, a group of Just Stop Oil supporters swarmed towards the entrance to Downing street on Whitehall and attempted to scale the gates. A further group sat down in the road with banners to block Whitehall. Some glued themselves to the tarmac. 22 people were involved in the actions.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said:
“Rishi Sunak is about to U-turn on attending COP27. We demand that he also U-turn on new oil and gas. This genocidal policy will kill millions of people, while failing to address the worst cost of living crisis this country has ever seen.
“Its time for a serious windfall tax on big oil, without the get-out-of-jail-free tax credits that will encourage more oil and gas that we cannot afford. Vulnerable people will be freezing to death in their homes this winter, unable to afford a can of soup, while his government refuses to tax the rich and the big energy companies that are profiting from our misery.
“We owe it to our young people to stop fossil fuels, we owe it to our workers to create a just transition to a zero carbon economy, we owe it to our old people to enable them to live with dignity. We are not prepared to stand by and watch while everything we love is destroyed. “
The action yesterday followed BP’s announcement of a bumper profit of £7bn for the last quarter alone, while it expects to pay only £700m in windfall tax on its North Sea operations for the whole year. It also announced that rather than reinvesting its profits in the transition to renewable energy as it claims or in reducing costs for customers, it is prioritising transfers to wealthy shareholders by spending $8.5bn so far this year on share buy backs.
Yesterday’s action follow four weeks of continuous civil resistance by supporters of Just Stop Oil during which the police have made 678 arrests. Since the campaign began on April 1st, Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested nearly 2,000 times, with 6 supporters currently in prison.
This week’s UN Report states that “Staying under 1.5C is no longer credible.”
Going over 1.5C locks in the loss of the coral reefs, the loss of 25% of the world’s fish stocks, the destruction of hundreds of millions of livelihoods and millions of innocent lives.
Going over 1.5C means island nations going underwater and this is just the beginning.
Just Stop Oil will be pausing its campaign of civil resistance from yesterday. They say that they are giving time to those in the government who are in touch with reality to consider their responsibilities to this country at this time.
[This report is sourced mainly from Just Stop Oil press bulletins.]
[3/11/22 I’m suffering from a temporary health condition [4/11/22: Baker’s cysts] which is very painful. I’m not thinking straight and find myself shouting at people on the radio, etc because of the pain. I may have lost my way with this and it’s probably best that I leave it for a while.]
This is the article the earlier Coming soon relates to. It is getting revised and elaborated. This is my understanding and judgement. I am not claiming that it is wholly correct but it is approaching it.
Every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Current governments are woefully failing that responsibility through neglecting to address the climate crisis. There are many reasons for this which I am trying to identify in this article.
Public (private) education
Privately-funded education in UK is incorrectly called public education so that you have public schools which are actually private fee-paying schools that rich people send their children to. It is generally a high standard of education, far higher than the real pubic free schooling system provided by the government and financed through taxation.
In addition to academic achievements public school students are taught how to rule, to be in charge. Many UK politicians – particularly Conservative or ‘Tory’ politicians – are privately educated with some attending the elite Eton public school before progressing to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at the highly regarded Oxford University. By contrast I was educated at many different state-run schools, left school having completed O-levels at 16 and later achieved a BSc at a polytechnic and later again a MSc at the same polytechnic which by then had converted to a post-polytechnic university. I am quite capable in different ways through my experiences and despite receiving a less than first-class educational experience.
Three aspects of the education that public school students receive in addition to the academic education – often called the ‘hidden curriculum’ – are (i) that they should be concerned only with their own welfare, (ii) that they should trust and act on their intuition disregarding and regardless of evidence to the contrary, and (iii) that they will never be held to account for their actions. These three taught aspects have awful consequences for the World since they lead to neglecting to address the climate crisis.
There is a phrase “A gentleman never lies”. What this means is that public schoolboys are never accused of lying. They do lie of course – look at Tony ‘Bliar’ Blair and Boris Johnson. Lying was Boris Johnson’s first instinct – you would be nearer the truth by believing the exact opposite of anything he said. I was out drinking and fraternising locally and this posh public schoolboy student was taking the piss out of me. He was probably a student of law or something similar. So he’s repeating to me “I’m not taking the piss out of you.” as he was taking the piss out of my beauty mark, being hugely personally insulting. So I’m repeating back “That’s exactly what you’re doing.” It’s impolite to accuse somebody of lying of course but he was a total cnut trying to invoke personal stigma not understanding the accusation of being a liar because he had never experienced that.
These posh boys are also never contradicted so that they exist in some parallel universe. Blair may well have believed in weapons of mass destruction because he had poor abilities judgement abilities. The richer they are the more detatched from reality they are. People suck up to them. You never discuss prices with these posh boys because money is not an issue for them, they’re rolling in it.
These are the people in charge, really nasty people who don’t care about anyone else, appear concerned only with the immediate, don’t seem to take anything seriously and enjoy humiliating plebs like me. I can’t say that they’re all like that of course but that’s how they’ve been moulded so it would be difficult for them to not be. So, back to the main issue here: Why governments are not addressing the climate crisis. These are the people in charge who control governments. These are the people with superyachts, the people who fly around the World in private jets who just don’t care about anyone or anything except themselves. It might be fairer to say that it is the elite of this elite that is the problem, the 1% of the 1% who depend on big oil and gas to keep them rich and powerful. What sort of cnut do you have to be to take part in space tourism?
Elite education may have been appropriate in the era of Empire but is totally inappropriate now. Elite establishments should use their lead to teach compassion, co-operation and respect for all. I appreciate that state school teachers are constrained in how they can behave and what they can teach. School students should not be bullied for being poor, independent or free-thinking as was my experience. State school teachers and lecturers need to respect students’ human rights, help young people develop their potential and encourage participation in the democratic process.
The very concept of childhood is relatively recent and even today doesn’t exist in much of the World. Children are not educated and through poverty are forced to work in much of the World.
I started this article by stating that every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Privately educated Rish! Sunak has more of a responsibility than all other UK adults since he is UK prime minister. However, by chosing to neglect the climate crisis and by actually accelerating climate destruction he is even neglecting his responsibility to his own two daughters.
Climate activists are challenged while climate destroyers are not. Where are the questions Why are you destroying the planet? You’re promoting space tourism that causes … why are you doing that? Do you realise that this superyacht causes … ?