Just Stop Oil supporter who sprayed Scotland Yard sign acquitted
Just Stop Oil supporter Lora Johnson, 38, was acquitted of criminal damage by a Jury in front of Judge Grieve at Southwark Crown Court today. She was arrested on October 14, 2022, for spraying the iconic, triangular Metropolitan Police sign with orange paint in front of New Scotland Yard during Just Stop Oil’s month of action.
Lora was among the 637 people detained by police during a period of relentless civil resistance that month, demanding that the government halts all new oil and gas licences and consents. A video of Lora’s arrest from two years ago on Westminster Bridge, where she proclaimed that “inaction on climate change is a death sentence for all,” has been viewed more than 11 million times.
Johnson said today:
“I’ve just been found not guilty after six days at Southwark Crown Court by a jury of my peers. The action I took was painting the New Scotland Yard sign orange, in resistance to the government’s genocidal approval of new oil and gas licences.
“I would like to ask the MET police: who are they there to serve and protect? The good people of this country? Or the oil-corrupted government? I would like to ask them how they are planning to police the mass hysteria, the panic, the fear, the looting, the theft, the hoarding and the inevitable violence that will result when our shelves are empty and we can’t feed our children?”
UK Just Stop Oil climate activists convicted in first trial of new anti-protest laws
Phoebe Plummer, Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall took part in protest march last year in Just Stop Oil campaign
Three climate activists have been convicted of “interference with key national infrastructure” by marching in the road in west London for 20 minutes, in the new offence’s first test at trial.
Phoebe Plummer, Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall were the first defendants to face a jury trial on the new section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023, which bans any act preventing harbours, airports, railways or roads “from being used or operated to any extent”.
Critics have called the law repressive, and claimed that it gives authorities a licence to crack down on virtually any protest at their discretion.
The defendants had sought to persuade the jury that convicting them under the new law could criminalise a swathe of legitimate protest. But after jurors were directed to only take into account whether or not the protest had caused “significant” disruption to the roads, they found the defendants guilty in an 11-1 majority verdict.
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Morning Star: Mass action is the antidote to Labour-Tory policy consensus
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus
“LABOUR and the Tories move closer on economy.”
Thus a headline in the Financial Times last week. The FT speaks not just to and for British finance capital, but to capitalists worldwide needing a steer on British and international politics.
Unlike the bought-and-paid-for Tory press, it usually does so without demagogy or partisan point-scoring. Its conclusions are therefore to be taken seriously.
It writes: “Despite being the official opposition, Labour has signally refused to oppose many of [Jeremy] Hunt’s recent economic policies…” including the cuts to National Insurance.
Further: “Hunt set out 110 measures to boost the economy in his 2023 autumn statement and Labour opposed none of them. The same applied to all of the policies announced in the chancellor’s spring budget this year.”
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has also agreed with all Chancellor Hunt’s financial services reforms, has accepted his target of ensuring falling debt as a share of national income within five years, and adopted his corporation tax rate.
The Tories have repaid the compliment up to a point, stealing Labour proposals on taxing non-doms and the North Sea oil and gas industries.
But this convergence is mainly on Tory terms, with Labour dumping any proposal, like its green investment plans, which sit outside the consensus around a new austerity.
For that is what is on offer at the general election. It is a further squeeze on public services and wages to help improve the competitive position of British capitalism.
Reeves and the Labour Party pretend that their approach represents “change” because it offers “stability” after years of Tory chaos.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus
Patient safety at risk as Tories’ ‘40 hospitals’ project mired in delays
Campaigners slam pledge as a ‘scam’ while Trust leaders say costs have spiralled by 25 per cent
THE Tories’ faltering pledge to build more hospitals is a “scam” designed to make it look as if the government is committed to investing in health services, campaigners charged today.
The government promised 40 new hospitals in England by 2030 under Boris Johnson’s leadership in 2019.
The scheme sparked criticism after it transpired that not all of them would be new but included refurbishments and extensions.
Five years later, NHS trust leaders are voicing their frustration as the New Hospital Programme (NHP) continues to be mired in delays.
They say that patients are increasingly at risk in crumbling buildings, with out-of-date equipment that is hampering care.
Some trusts are being forced to cough up £1 million a month from already stretched budgets, to cover on-hold building projects and the bill for having to patch up dilapidated sites, says NHS Providers, a membership organisation for NHS trusts.
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