Good News At Last

“The founder of Extinction Rebellion has been jailed for five years in what is believed to be the longest sentence for non-violent protest in the UK.

Roger Hallam was found guilty of conspiring to block traffic as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign on the M25 over four days of disruption in November 2022”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/18/extinction-rebellion-founder-jailed-for-five-years/

In what way is this good news? Oh, and that link is behind a paywall. Do you pay to read the Telegraph? A suspended sentence would have been more appropriate 

Good news?

I’m making a brew, who’s got the biscuits?

It’s ok everyone they’re here to save us from the echo chamber.

Do you pay to read the Telegraph? A suspended sentence would have been more appropriate

I mean, it’s bad – but jail for it?  Not sure personally, esp if it’s a momentary lapse of judgement

Ok, playing devil’s advocate, if people are going to go down for five years for planning (but not executing) a non-violent protest, why not just riot?

Might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb.

(Apart from being a bad day for people’s right to protest in a democracy…)

This is genuinely scary news. You can now go to jail for peacefully protesting about the most important thing going on in the world right now? It’d be better to jail any politician that does anything that means we fail to meet next zero by 2030.

I don’t remember IRC being quite as stubbornly anti environmental and Faragey as this. Is he the new Jambalaya to @grimep ‘s Teamhurtmore?

How long should the chief execs of Amey and Bear get given how good they are at causing traffic chaos?

Chris Packham’s comments were pretty spot on as far as I’m concerned. It’s does feel like judicial bullying.

Judge saying this shouldn’t set a precedent but we bloody well know it will, as does he.

@onehundredthidiot What did he say?

Seems like a kangaroo court to me that you’d expect in Russia or a tin pot republic. Judge seems to be a nazi that vastly oversteps the mark when the defendant wants to give his full evidence.

Cue immediate appeal for a mis-trial.

What a massive waste of MY tax money

Judge quoted in this article,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/five-just-stop-oil-supporters-jailed-over-protest-that-blocked-m25

If his defence was “the sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t see” he’d be a free man!

@munrobiker + 1

Shocking sentences and sounds like something you’d get in some mad authoritarian state.

It’s a democracy. There are plenty ways to protest  and campaign without disrupting the lives of the public going about their business.

Yet prisons are overcrowded and we’re releasing convicted violent criminals who’ve served less than half their sentences to accommodate a chap whose sole purpose is to make the world a nicer place to live. The mind boggles.

@irc

As long as you’re OK.

🙁

Utterly ridiculous, something you’d expect a Tr*mp appointed judge to do. I hope they appeal and I’ll be donating £££ to help them do so, I’ll even put it in IRC’s name.

The guys that climbed up the Dartford crossing bridge got a few years inside too from memory.

Yes, completely disproportionate in my view.

They’ll be able to appeal the severity of the sentence, if i had to guess, i’d think that the defendants might have wound up the judge through the case, it sounds like it from reports, so once found guilty, and against the level of damages the protest caused, the judge has given them the high end of the sentencing guidelines.

As the judge said

“your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.”

Hmm citizens facing disruption and harm to parade ones views. Brexit anyone?

Yet prisons are overcrowded and we’re releasing convicted violent criminals who’ve served less than half their sentences to accommodate a chap whose sole purpose is to make the world a nicer place to live. The mind boggles.

This is spot on.

Judge saying this shouldn’t set a precedent but we bloody well know it will, as does he.

I’m far from an expert but isn’t this a cornerstone of how English Law works, “what did we do last time”?

It’s a democracy.

Irony meter off the scale.

“your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.”

Sounds like a future STW big hitter – can he join and log-in from prison!?

[paino]

paino

Full Member

Yet prisons are overcrowded and we’re releasing convicted violent criminals who’ve served less than half their sentences to accommodate a chap whose sole purpose is to make the world a nicer place to live. The mind boggles.

Wish the ‘like’ button worked

Yet prisons are overcrowded and we’re releasing convicted violent criminals who’ve served less than half their sentences to accommodate a chap whose sole purpose is to make the world a nicer place to live. The mind boggles.

On a practical level… Where are they going to put them?

Apparently the jails are too full to send rapists and murders down, but irritating trustafarians are fair game now?

Dont get me wrong. I think they deserve punishing just for their annoying, middle-class self-righteousness and dress sense, and anyone white with dreadlocks probably deserves everything they get, but 5 years getting bummed by Barry the Knife from Toxteth seems a tad harsh

It’s a remarkable sentence. Same judge didn’t jail two blokes who assaulted a copper and left him needing a metal plate inserted. If they’d just abandoned a few vehicles around the M25 they’d have got a a few thousand in fines between them.

Non-violent protests are not worthy of five years in the clink, regardless of how inconvenient or costly they are.

I was in a massive traffic jam on the M25 thanks to JSO. On my way to get the Chunnel. Fortunately we had several hours spare but there must have been a reasonable number of normal people who had their holiday plans thoroughly messed up that day. Astonishingly selfish. The ends justifies the means argument is garbage and leads to a bad place.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c880xjx54mpo

BBC report on the trial.

Utterly deranged.

Sounds like a future STW big hitter – can he join and log-in from prison!?

Ha Hallam makes TJ seem like a paragon o acquiescence!

Dont get me wrong. I think they deserve punishing just for their annoying middle-class self-righteousness and dress sense, and anyone white with dreadlocks probably deserves everything they get, but 5 years getting bummed by Barry from Toxteth seems harsh

Nice. Casual homophobia mixed in with the usual centrist dad nonsensical hyperbole.

I was in a massive traffic jam on the M25 thanks to JSO. On my way to get the Chunnel. Fortunately we had several hours spare but there must have been a reasonable number of normal people who had their holiday plans thoroughly messed up that day. Astonishingly selfish. The ends justifies the means argument is garbage and leads to a bad place.

I’d share your annoyance in that situation, but do you think people should  spend half a decade in jail for <checks notes> messing with people’s holiday plans?

They didn’t delay the judge getting to his appointment with his dominatrix, did they?

That’d probably explain it

Will it be a sliding scale going forward? I make that 19 days in prison for every hour someone is inconvenienced.

I agree that the sentences are very high (although, they’ll only serve 50% of it behind bars), but we weren’t at the court and didn’t hear the evidence presented.  From media reports, it appears that the defence wound up the judge and thought that they would get away with it.  They were guilty of what they were charged with, do they have right to cause the disruption (which they planned).

This is genuinely scary news. You can now go to jail for peacefully protesting about the most important thing going on in the world right now?

Not even peacefully protesting about it, just a Zoom call planning on peacefully protesting it.

Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown, which the defendants wanted to point to as the key motivation behind their actions, and which they said provided them with a reasonable excuse for them. It’s a loaded deck.

Saw a video the other day of people being arrested because they were talking about potentially having a pro-Palestinian rally/protest…. Sorry, but that’s **** up.

In twenty or thirty years we’ll look back on the Extinction Rebellion people as martyrs in the same way we look at the Suffragettes. They’re not out there protesting for the sake of it, but for your kids future.

Their way of going about it may not always be the most appropriate, but the message sure is.