I posted this on Twitter yesterday:
Protestors seeking to draw attention to the desperate plight of our planet have been sent to prison for four to five years. And they were only planning a protest. They did not even cause disruption.
No one has been imprisoned for causing the global financial crisis.
No one is being imprisoned for polluting our rivers.
No one, so far, faces jail for the Post Office scandal.
And no one is being threatened with prosecution for permitting 230,000 deaths from Covid as a result of failed preparation.
Nor is anyone being threatened with prosecution for the mass pollution of our planet.
But for peaceful protest you can be described as a fanatic by a judge and be jailed for five years.
Is this the end of freedom of speech?
Is it just fascism in action?
Is it a sign of the madness of the end times of neoliberalism?
Or is it the state, captured by neoliberal interests, putting the right to make profit above human and democratic rights?
Maybe it is all those things.
And will Labour do anything about this? I very much doubt it. These judgements fit very nearly with their authoritarian views.
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
The plods decided to close a motorway, because of one or two people on a gantry. Why close it? Were they going to jump off onto traffic? Nope.
So why not leave them up there until tiredness/rain/cold drove them down. Taking this route would minimise disruption (sure traffic would slow to gawp but that’s all).
Hazarding a guess, discussions were had/instructions were issued and under the cloak of “‘ealth n safety” (whose health? whose safety?) the plods closed the motorway – thus providing a rationale (demonstrators cause massive disruption) to impose bonkers prison sentences.
If anybody cause “massive disruption” it was the plods (& the politicos that they may have been in cahoots with).
The intermperate language used by the judge shows the shape of things to come from what passes for the English establishment.
This will cause massive polarisation.
Apologies Mike, I do agree with your sentiment but speaking as a motorcyclist who was actually diverted away from the M25 on that day (it “cost” me about 15 minutes, max, no big deal), I do think the closure was appropriate. Falls happen.
Hopefully, bearing in mind all the reasons you give, these very harsh sentences will be overturned on appeal.
The Judge was very concerned about the economic cost.
It is precisely for calling for accountability in all the cases you enumerate that the neoliberal will see you as a fanatic. The neoliberal, after all, is merely doing what the market dictates, for which action there is no alternative. And who, but a fanatic, would hold someone accountable for taking the only reasonable course of action?
You may be right
But they are wrong
Has the problem « Establishment Bias » in our Legal System been noticeably mentioned in the main stream media?
* Advice from judge to jury to ignore defendants’ explanations to explain pro- environment actions.
*Use of Judge only trials for some political protestors (Mr.Craig Murray?)
* Pursuit and treatment of Mr Julian Assange
Might very much the most of the main stream media, not least the B. B. C., be under the intense influence/control of the « Fat Purse/Wallet » establishment?
I was going to say that the judiciary has been captured. But that’s probably not quite right as they are already part of that group of Public School – Oxbridge alumni who effortlessly make their way to the top in many professions, including politics and the law and seem to share many of the same attitudes, particularly in regards to the great unwashed.
The Social Mobility Commission and the Sutton Trust issued a report in 2019 which commented: “[The] report, Elitist Britain, shows that 65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school; 75% attended Oxford or Cambridge. The report describes judges as the ‘most socially exclusive groups of all the professions examined here’.”
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/senior-judges-most-socially-exclusive-of-all-professionals/5070720.article