“Commuters now physically dragging [Extinction Rebellion] protestors from the roof of the train”, reports ITV’s Holly Collins. If it will not cause a problem where you are for you to cheer out loud, watch that video.
A few points:
– There is some violence on both sides. Trumpian, I know, but there is. The Extinction Rebellion protester appears to be the first to kick someone, but then the crowd all pile on him at once. Don’t cheer that. But if Extinction Rebellion think “physical action” is allowed for them, why the hell shouldn’t physical action also be permitted to ordinary people? People trying to get to work from Canning Town Underground station at 7 a.m. do not generally have the sort of jobs where one can ring in and say, “I’ll work from home today”. They cannot afford to be late.
– Why are XR targeting Tube stations anyway? I thought public transport was supposed to be environmentally friendly. Update: It’s because there is an Emergency. Seriously, from their own website: “This morning (Thursday 17 October) a number of Extinction Rebellion UK affinity groups are peacefully disrupting the London Underground because there is an Emergency.” Not just any old emergency, one with a capital E.
Edit: There’s more! A longer video courtesy of “sid@1968Sid69” of the same incident from a different angle, showing the second Extinction Rebellion protester suffering what TV Tropes calls an “Oh, Crap!” moment and duly being pulled off the roof of the train in his turn.
This is an interesting example of public order being served by the absence of the police rather than its presence.
Extinction Rebellion need to be made to understand their public relations position. Just because the BBC’s performing news seal will say great things about you and slap its flippers doesn’t mean the public like you. It means the seal is hungry and its boss wants 6 out of 7 people dead all for the glory of a utopian new world republican order.
The general public are so Danny tolerant idiots forget their fists hurt.
Indeed, extremely interesting. I am totally OK with XR forcibly disrupting people’s lives being met with appropriate non-state violence of this sort.
The police have often in the past prevented lectures etc on the basis that some protest group has threatened to violently disrupt the event. Can’t they apply the same rules here, we now have adequate evidence that XR are provoking a violent reaction and their activities should be avoided ? I rather think the next step in this will be the police will start evacuating and closing down Tube stations as the easy solution.
Hipster, meet Real World. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. As said, the “Oh, crap . . . . !” moment, when Tarquin realizes that the proles are not going to rise up in joyous solidarity and join him in the struggle, is just priceless.
Fanatics trying to impose their ideas on others, by force. A few more rough-and-ready relocations like this will soon put a stop to it. I get the impression that most of these soi-disant revolutionaries have very little street time at all – look at how they’re dressed for it – and have simply never considered that they might run across a 250-pound ironworker who’s just trying to get home after a late turn.
llater,
llamas
‘ . Don’t cheer that. ’
Yes do!
Moral hazard: for as long as these loonies believe there is no personal cost and consequences to their behaviour, they will carry on, particularly when ‘law and order’ is provided by an effete police ‘force’ and the ‘cause’ of the loonies has the tacit support of almost the entire political and luvvy class.
Their behaviour is not non-violent, it is aggressive, bullying, intimidation by noisy crowd, damages property, and prevents folk going about their lawful and rightful business.
Spot on.
I’ve no idea what XR were thinking, it wasn’t long ago when London commuters were confronting armed jihadis, do they think a bunch of swampy types are going to get ignored, considering the amount of construction workers who travel in every day, and don’t forget the guys in suits can be just as effective ?
Back when dirt was just a slight stain, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, YHS would stop his mighty Honda every morning at a newsagents in Anerley and pick up his copy of The Guardian. I only got it for the crosswords, honest . . . .
One of the highlights was every Friday, as I recall, when it printed a large-format cartoon by Posy (last name? Crap, CRS) that chronicled the struggles of the impeccably-Left, right-on Weber clan. I think this may be where the common epithets of Tarquin and Jocasta, signifying a certain type of warm, well-fed hipster, may have originated. Does anyone have an earlier sighting . . . . . ?
Yes, I have time on my hands. Why do you ask? 🙂
llater,
llamas
Lovely and telling comment on the second linked clip, prat chased along the train roof, finds he’s nowhere to go.
The Righteous Anger of the Just is a wondrous sight.
Glad to see the bastards get a well deserved kicking. Now for the remainiac traitor EU owned MP scum.
That was a joyous sight to behold. If I may paraphrase Orwell: we ride comfortably on our tube trains because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf. Guess Tarquin and Rupert had forgotten about the rough men…
I observed all of the recent XR protests in London and quickly realised that they were made up entirely of the entitled middle classes; they were actually almost identical, in composition, to the earlier ‘Remainer’ marches.
Because these bien pensants only ever associate with other middle class Remainers, read the Guardian and watch Channel Four News they cannot believe that their views are not shared by the rest of the population. Which is why they are so furious about the referendum result; and why they won’t ever understand the anger of those commuters.
And bear in mind that a lot of those who are doing this have votes. This Extinction Rebellion nonsense is radicalising people who are taking a good, hard look at the BS that comes out from environmental alarmists.
The peasants are revolting, and that’s seriously bad news for the “wankerati” across the board.
@llamas,
Perhaps not entirely unrelated, Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel?
Incidentally, these XR videos are really just the 2019 rounds of the Upper Class Twit of the Year competition.
Simmonds
llamas –
Are you perhaps thinking of Posy Simmonds and her Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe cartoons?
@ Philip Scott Thomas – no, now that I have a last name (thank you, Ian) I can Google. The cartoons I am referring to are the ‘Mrs Weber’s Diary” series, which started life being called ‘The Silent Three . . . “, I know not why. 1976 to sometime in the early ’80s, of my own knowledge.
It’s funny to look back at some of those strips now, and realize that, at the time, we laughed because the Weber characters were so completely OTT in their right-on wokeness, and yet nowadays they would be looked down upon as hopelessly reactionary.
Posy Simmonds did a strip in this series that was a takeoff on Peter Brueghel’s “Wedding Feast” that I recall to this day, funny as hell.
Ian, Monty Python’s Tarquin was a parody of the ‘upper-class twit’. This Tarquin is a different species – the warm, well-fed middle class hipster, who has fantasies of being a street fighter for the liberation of the oppressed and the advance of everything that is Right and Proper. 5 gets your 10 that he’s a Remainer, wears sustainable shoes and hemp Y-fronts, and always asks your pronouns before speaking with you. IOW, an insufferable bore and a crank, of the kind that Orwell so-accurately lampooned 75 years ago.
llater,
llamas
Related: there are still Vikings in Denmark.
Tom Carver: “I observed all of the recent XR protests in London and quickly realised that they were made up entirely of the entitled middle classes; ..”
That was London, in Edinburgh, we had the spectacle of the Scottish Police force ‘happy clapping’ in time with the ‘protesters’ chants. They had their demonstration in the main artery into or out of the City, and caused extensive disruption.
To add instult to injury, the whole rabble could have been moved twenty yards into Festival Square where nobody would have given a damn what they were doing. But the Scottish Police authority assisted them to block the road instead.
The Police are worse than useless.
Llamas, I think this is what you’re referring to:
The Peasant Wedding
Because they are exhibitionists who want to f*ck up the lives of people they despise.
Naturally. It is a manifestation of the general “completely losing their shit” that the English middle-classes have exhibited since the Brexit vote (and Trump). The panicked reaction to the revelation that they are no longer in complete control any more. We will have many, many more years of this, sadly, but it is better than a society run by them for them.
Had I been alive in 1943, and had my duty included flying over Hamburg raising a firestorm, I would not have been saying, “Oh goody, melted German babies, hurrah.” On the other hand, I would have believed what I was doing was right, and I would have agreed with C.S.Lewis that if you have to fight, there is no point in always having a long face about it, or denying yourself all the aid that the stern joys of combat and comradeship can give. It’s clear that a great many people, like Orwell, saw WWII as a sad, not a happy, necessity, yet also found it in many ways a positive relief after the dismal 1930s, when evil seemed steadily to advance and good seemed steadily to retreat.
In our happily very very much less grim situation, I see a hint of this dichotomy in Natalie’s
being instantly followed by her
Why the hell – not just ‘Why’ still less ‘It could be argued that’. Why the hell indeed, when obliged to fight, should we feel obliged to fight with a long face, or, having once granted that the overall situation calls for anything but cheering, feel obliged not to be glad of our victories.
Duncan S. – That’s the one! I was working off free-Sprint-in-the-UK slow data on my phone but now I gots me one of them there fancy PC’s with wifi and Intertubes and such. I’ve been having a happy amble down Memory Lane.
On the question of ‘cheer that’ vs ‘don’t cheer that’, there’s a side of me that says that these people should be left so-much-as-possible alone to perform their stunts and disruptions. The more attention they can draw to themselves and their message – preferably, by actions like this which make many, many ordinary people deeply upset at them – the more that those same ordinary people will see their message and decide for themselves. When it’s a headline in next morning’s paper about some climate protest in the West End the day before, it’s easy to overlook. When you are 2 hours late getting home, your shepherd’s pie is cold, and you missed Dancing With The Stars, because some hipster jackass climbed onto the top of the Tube train at Canning Town while lecturing you about how your two weeks in Morocco means the end of the world, and how you ought to go back to eating roots and berries huddled next to a smokey fire – you might be inclined to see the message both more-clearly and with a distinctly-jaundiced eye. For the win, I say.
llater,
llamas
For me, the great benefit of seeing the crowd knock the nuts off the train is that it tells people – normal people – that they’re not alone, that they’re not selfish deplorables for wanting to climb on that train themselves and knock the nuts off.
For a long time, there’s been a huge moral pressure on people to believe that the left’s aims and goals and actions represent the good, and that to fight them is backwards and craven. Granting people permission to believe their own eyes is liberating. If we voted in the open, Trump would never have won – because of this same moral pressure. That’s the same reason why Trump’s hugely popular rallies are so great – it reinforces the idea that, no, it’s not universally accepted as evil or stupid to support such things.
Here’s my favorite video of this episode, for just these reasons.
The poet said “..for we are the people of England, and we haven’t spoken yet.” Well, perhaps the people have started to speak.
In eleven year’s time when the world hasn’t ended, do you think that any of these XR types will have enough self awareness to recognise what jerks they were? Or will Thermaggeddon just be moved back to being twelve years away like the ice free Arctic?
This is going to sound very cold and heartless, but whatever: what a spectacular own-goal by XR (occasionally, the “what I do for a living” part of me kicks in on this kind of thing).
Canning Town Station was not the place to pull this stunt. Canning Town is, for the benefits of non-locals, a blue collar, working-class part of East London. A sizable proportion of commuters will have been going home after a night shift of bloody hard work. Have a look at the videos and compare the clothes of the commuters and the protesters. The Canning Town crowd are probably more eco-friendly, in a quiet way, than most.
To say that they wouldn’t be in the mood for “shenanigans” would be an understatement of such epic proportions that even Brits would say “That’s a bit of understatement. Cup of tea?”
Also, trains. Trains are good. Cars are bad. Let’s go after trains. Lolwut?
I’m not going to feel happy that a couple of Quentins or Tarquins have had a good kicking. I don’t have it in me to relish it, despite everything. Watching a couple of blokes being pulled off a train onto a concrete surface feet first (ie. Chance of head hitting concrete after an 8ft drop) isn’t something I’ll ever be ok with, let alone the kicking they got afterwards. Sorry, guys, I just can’t.
There’s nothing about this that makes me happy. It just emphasises how broken, how polarised we are, as a society.
I hope these guys don’t come to symbolise every concern over the environment.
But I guess they probably have, already.
I’m guessing that from now on, anyone who says that they recycle, upcycle, grows their own food, or in any way attempts to live without leaving too much of a “footprint”, is going to be lumped in with these twats.
That’s…a shame.
And that, is a PR fucking disaster for them.
Come to find out that Protestor #2 at the incident in
Canning Town is a 36-year-old Buddhist who describes himself as a ‘full-time protestor’. Well, of course he does.
So somebody else pays his bills. I wonder who?
Regarding Stonyground’s point, history is littered with seers and prognosticators who have predicted the end of the world, some of them many times over. They never seem to lack for believers. Since the beliefs of this particular set of fanatics are primarily religious in nature, we should not expect things to be any different in their case – they will have no problem rationalizing the failures of their predictions to come to pass. A slight adjustment in the math, a factor not perfectly allowed for, the excuses are limitless. When your starting point is that Doomsday is upon us, and that right swiftly (as the old Baptist prayer has it), the precise details matter little, it’s the core belief that counts. We’re Doomed, I tell ye, Doomed!
llater,
llamas
“I hope these guys don’t come to symbolise every concern over the environment.”
They don’t. They only symbolise the nutty, extreme, unscientific instances of concern over the environment. Nobody around here is going to object to environmental laws like “Don’t tip a million gallons of mercury-laden sludge in the local river” or “Don’t sell radioactive Radium toothpaste to the public”.
“I’m guessing that from now on, anyone who says that they recycle, upcycle, grows their own food, or in any way attempts to live without leaving too much of a “footprint”, is going to be lumped in with these twats.”
Again, I don’t think most people are really bothered about those, either. The problem people are the ones who want to force *other people* to “recycle, upcycle, grows their own food” etc. And yes, I very much hope that these people do get associated with those people.
I’m not sure about that. Caring for the environment is common sense to most people. These idiots are raging against an imaginary problem and their insanity is costing billions that could be far better spent.
Ok.
Well, that’s the same as saying I’m cool with pushing over old ladies and calling them fascists, then.
One could instead compare it to saying that when, in the early days of the Nazi party, there were some Ernst Hanfstaengl-style Nazis around, playing the piano and sounding civilised, and some Julius Streicher-style nazis around, loyal to Hitler “because no-one else wanted their slimy loyalty” then you would rather people associated the Hanfstaengl types with the Streicher-types. It would not imply that you wanted Jews beaten up – rather the reverse. It would just mean that, since the Nazi movement sheltered this behaviour, you wanted it known.
Neon, on October 17, 2019 at 6:33 pm, wrote:
[Aside: Personally, I hope not, although I do wish that some of the more vocal such folk, and especially those who “stick on side” about it or loudly complain about those they deem insufficiently devout, would dial it back a bit.]
.
Later, at at 6:53 pm, Nullius quotes Neon. Here is Nullius’s last paragraph, with an important, but apparently overlooked, qualification presented in boldface and what I think is Nullius’s main point in caps:
It’s not the same thing as smacking (whether physically or even verbally) people who are devout recyclers, etc., just because they really do try to walk the walk (like neon, I gather); it’s certainly not the same as physically beating up people who are annoyingly fixated on loudly proselytizing non-stop for their version of environmentalism, however much we would like, in our daydreams, to super-glue a sock on it.
.
Now, possibly I’ve misinterpreted neon’s comment in response to Nullius, or Nullius’s para that I quoted, or both. If so, please let me know. I will apologize sincerely, and at least consider the sackcloth-and-ashes outfit to be worn in repentance. (Probably pass on the actual donning, though.)
.
Niall — forgive my obtuseness please, but I’m not sure how to take your comment. Do you mean to agree with Neon’s final remark, or to elucidate Nullius’s remark?
What is called “ordinary life” can only continue if people are prepared to defend it – defend against those who try disrupt it. In order to avoid “mob action” police forces exist – but the police forces in modern Britain are soft on the left (the top ranks of the police, at least in London, are now saturated with leftist doctrines and people – the ordinary police officers know they have to go along with it). The police are far more likely to go hard on someone for writing a “racist tweet” than for stopping a train.
And it was a TRAIN, an electrically powered one – exactly what the Greens say they want people to use rather than cars.
Accept that now we know “ER” do NOT want people to use trains rather than cars – they do not want technological civilisation at all. Which means that they want more than 90% of the population of this country to die – as the sort of primitive society “ER” could not support even 10% of the current population, I doubt it could support 5% of the current population.
So “Extinction Rebellion” is actually in favour of extinction – or 95% of it.
They make Pol Pot look like a moderate.
“Well, that’s the same as saying I’m cool with pushing over old ladies and calling them fascists, then.”
Don’t be sexist/ageist! Old ladies can be fascists, too.
And note carefully what I said. There’s no problem for most people with people who choose to recycle/go vegan/cut carbon themselves. No more than there is with any other weird religion. But the thing that really gets up other people’s noses is when they force those beliefs and rituals on other people. If you want to recycle your own garbage, that’s no skin off my nose. You can even lecture and preach about it – it’s irritatingly annoying, but that’s free speech. But when you start demanding that *I* have to wash and sort *my* garbage, without pay, because of *your* screwball beliefs, then I don’t care if you *are* an old lady, you’re also a fascist.
And I know plenty of old ladies who do and are.
But I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. You understand the difference between doing it yourself, and making everyone else do it, right?
The air, water, and land almost everywhere in the world are far cleaner than they were twenty or forty years ago (except, of course, in the newly developing third world pop centers.) They are cleaner because we’ve all generally done a good job of being concerned about the environment.
But we’re an informed species. We’ve learned to draw the line at patronizing every STUPID concern over the environment. We don’t pray to keep the volcanoes quiet. We tend to stick with the intelligent concerns. We pay attention to air particulate counts, and LD50 numbers, and . . . science.
And the whole AGW crisis isn’t one of those intelligent crises. It’s like Y2K writ large. It’s not quite anti-scientific, but it’s certainly a-scientific. And so people aren’t deciding “screw the environment”, they’re deciding “screw fake environmentalists.” And that’s good.
And so people aren’t deciding “screw the environment”, they’re deciding “screw fake environmentalists.” And that’s good.
Well the people might be, but the establishment isnt. They are salivating at the thought of more control and more taxes.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/13/firms-ignoring-climate-crisis-bankrupt-mark-carney-bank-england-governor
The mass of affected people seem to consider Extinction Rebellion types to be loons.
I wonder how the Dutch populace is reacting to the tractors shutting down their cities?
Same basic idea – we’ll shut you all down to emphasize our own welfare – but I don’t see any indication (in what little coverage I’ve seen) that any Dutch citizens are looking to pull Dutch farmers out of their rigs.
Could it be that, in both instances, the mass of people consider the AGW scam to be . . . a scam?
If so, my faith in humanity will be strengthened.
Yes, I took the final sentence as disconnected from the one preceding it, and “those people” as the ones recycling etc rather than the forcers. Reading comprehension D-
Julie, it is kind of you not to blame my insufficient writing. 🙂
I was rather agreeing with Nullius, at least to the extent of inviting neonsnake to see things from another PoV. Any movement that plans to steal our freedom because its adherents get off on thinking themselves superior will have its outwardly-civilised members – some of whom will be in no condition to do the actual physical coercing of us themselves. And to Nullius’ response that even little old ladies can be fascists I’ll add that a friend I knew at Oxford had a Stalinist grannie. She was so up for the famines and the purges – while of course claiming as vehemently as any holocaust denier that it was all exaggerated by wicked capitalist propaganda.
Niall,
That makes sense enough. And I imagine you’ve seen neon’s comment confessing to a misreading. So at this point I think we’re all on the same page (at least on this sub-issue) and I can go to sleep looking for something fresh to fret about. :>)!
Thanks for your response. May I say you’re very good about following up on questions and replies to your comments. :>)))
Nothing compared to you, Julie. I’ll make the guess that you began typing your response before I had finished using every second of the 5-minutes-correction time to add to mine. It’s a debatable habit of mine and can occasionally cause confusion, though no harm in this case – but if the Stalinist grannie anecdote was missing when you began your response then your speed was indeed prompt, especially at what I assume is late in the day for you (or do I mean early, since “to be up past midnight is to be up betimes” 🙂 ).
😀
I didn’t understand the post either, but I’m prepared to blame my education, since I don’t recognise any of the Nazi references…
Meanwhile, just in case anyone isn’t clear on Extinction Rebellion, feast your eyes on this horror show by one of their founders. Before clicking, get yourself a glass of your preferred stiff beverage, and consider yourselves given whatever the libertarian equivalent is of “trigger warning”.
(Note: as best I can, I’ve checked, and it’s not satire. You’ll see what I mean if you click…)
Good gad, neon! I fully expected a satirical takedown of the piece — despite your final warning. I was about halfway through when I realized that I’d better rush through the rest, lest the steam coming out of my ears take on that telltale purple radioactive glow.
And here it’s a lovely day as long as you admire it from indoors, and I had a lovely cup of hot pseudo-cappuccino for breakfast, and ….
You’re right about the stiff one. I think I’ll have a nice dry martini or six, hold the vermouth.
That’s what she said 😉
Yeah, not joking. Luckily for me, it’s Friday evening, and I’m in a pub in London, a couple of pints in, and discussing recent ER events with some randoms that the Lady has decided to talk to.
They’ve (ER) generated no sympathy, even amongst those randoms you might think would be sympathetic.
Good news from the pubs, then, neon! You and the Lady enjoy yourselves. 😀
I suspect there will be more, should the XR loons not learn from this one. Because a lot of their potential future targets certainly have.