More of Just Stop Oil’s eco-army have scored stints in the clink this afternoon. Joining recently sentenced Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam…

Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw Heinz soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in 2022. Causing £10,000 worth of damage to its 300-year-old frame…

Judge Christopher Hehir has sentenced Plummer to two years and the other to 20 months just now. There are, as co-conspirators might imagine, two bail conditions:

• They can’t carry glue, paint or any adhesive substance in public.
• They can’t visit any galleries or museums.

Plummer defended herself by saying: “I intended to shine a light on the climate crisis and on the cost of living crisis.” She can shine a light on the prison wall from now on…

Shadow Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh has some history of calling for “urgent action” on the “climate crisis”, though she’s kept quiet on her long-held activism for a little while. Co-conspirators might wonder whose side will she take when the eco-loons clamber on top of commuter trains…

In 2019 Haigh joined an Extinction Rebellion protest and exclaimed to listening eco-terrorists:

“It is your right if not your duty to stand up and wake up the world to this existential threat facing our humanity, so I am here alongside you tonight because over the world, scientists, teachers, doctors, police officers, parents, and teachers, have joined this movement. Not troublemakers, not uncooperative crusties, but people people make waking us up to the fact that we have failed.”

In a Starmer government Haigh will be responsible for the entirety of England’s transport system and no few elements of devolved ones. Extinction Rebellion will be glad to have such a devoted ally of theirs round the cabinet table…

The Court of Appeal has concluded its judgement today after the Attorney General asked for clarification on whether climate protestors can claim that businesses subject to criminal damage would think it was fine if only they knew the true results of climate change. Guido has considered applying the same argument for socialists…

The court’s judges are decisive in slapping down that legal defence:

“Circumstances” in the phrase “the destruction or damage and its circumstances” do not include the merits, urgency or importance of the matter about which the defendant is protesting, nor the perceived need to draw attention to a cause or situation.“

That means that the 2023 ruling in which Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam and others were cleared of £36,000 worth of damage using that same argument, was wrong. You can’t claim that because you believe that the business owner would have consented to damage had they known its purpose, that counts as reasonable “circumstance“. A major blow dealt to rampant eco-vandalism…

Yesterday eco-posho Just Stop Oil activist Cressie Gethin appeared for the eighth day at Isleworth Crown Court to defend her case for climbing up a gantry and shutting down an entire chunk of the M25 in June 2022 because the government is “writing policies that are killing people around the world“. By blocking the motorway close to Heathrow, her stunt impacted over 3,000 people, delayed 26 flights, and had 19 cancelled at the airport. The stunt must have been a great sacrifice for Gethin, her being a music student at Cambridge…

Gethin hit one of three gantries as part of the motorway stunts. She claims in her defence that “whilst this may sound unbelievable, I did not realise that the stretch of motorway I was on led to Heathrow.” Guido finds that a little hard to believe after taking a look at where exactly the gantry is…

From the height of the platform the airport, 500 metres away, is pretty easily visible to those with passable eyesight. Amazingly Gething went on to say “that, despite not being aware of the location at the time, I do not think that near Heathrow was an inappropriate place to conduct this protest… because of the relevance of air travel to the message I was trying to get heard“. She wants it both ways…

UPDATE: Gethin has now been convicted of causing a public nuisance. Judge Hannah Duncan said “evidence about climate change wasn’t admissible or relevant”.

An eco-warrior teacher from Insulate Britain has been slapped with a 5-week jail sentence for causing chaos during rush hour in London on October 25, 2021. During the trial, the “remorseless” Louise Lancaster couldn’t resist lecturing the jury in her closing statement on the woes of climate change, even after being warned by the judge not to bother. Turns out that didn’t do her any favours…

The judge promptly instructed jurors to disregard her words, stating that “she knew she wasn’t entitled to say what she said at the end of her address”. He went on to say that although the protestors have a right to protest, that does not mean that they have the right to cause widespread disruption… with this particular ‘protest’ significantly impacting well over 5,000 people. 

Along with Lancaster, there were five other eco-zealots, who will now have to do a combined number of 315 hours of unpaid work. They have also been sentenced to 4 to 6 weeks of jail time suspended for 18 months. Lancaster went on to say that she is “more proud of my civil resistance for Insulate Britain than anything I have ever done in my life.” If gluing herself to a road is her proudest achievement, she probably hasn’t exactly led the most productive life. School’s out…

The BBC is yet again failing to meet its own standards of transparency and neutrality. In a piece on COP 27, the corporation invited Tory husky-hugger Greg Barker as sole guest. The Tory peer was allowed to deliver a five-minute harangue on behalf of the G77 nations looking for climate reparations. The BBC interviewer gave Barker a business class ride on his conflicted position …

Co-conspirators may be aware that Barker had previously worked for Anglo-Siberian Oil as well as Russian oil company Sibneft.

Even into 2022 he worked for Russian aluminium producer EN+, a leading company in an industry that produces 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. He was also implicated for his role legitimising Russian oligarchs.

Had Barker been a climate sceptic they would have barbecued him. The BBC failed even to mention Greg’s proximity to Russian oligarchs.