BY JACK WATSON  

After months of causing chaos on the streets of London, Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters are planning a continuing summer of discontent having stated that they will ‘paralyse London’ further, with slow-marching columns ten times bigger than anything they have had before.  This after the Metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday that JSO had cost them £.7.7 million since April.

The galling prospect of these muppets continuing to disrupt our lives is made worse by the fact that we seem to lack the will to confront the problem they create.  

In Germany, JSO activists were filmed gluing themselves to a runway at an airport. So irritating are these people that news they may have to have fingers amputated elicited very little sympathy and not a little joy.   Recently, they disrupted the BBC Proms at Albert Hall by invading the stage and unfurling a banner. Someone disrupted the wedding of George Osborne (although not officially a JSO protester, JSO did applaud the action) and protesters interrupted Wimbledon twice by running onto the court and throwing jigsaw pieces and confetti on the grass and threatened to disrupt the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. How a group of JSO protesters planned to get into the mix with a fleet of F1 cars travelling an average 220 mph was not clear. We may have seen more than just orange paint smeared over the track.  

JSO have already been accused of having ‘blood on their hands’ after a woman in a delayed ambulance died, possibly as a result of being unable to reach hospital as a result of one of their protests. Obstructing the highway is a criminal offence but does not seem to be dealt with as such, at least in the UK. Wilful obstruction without lawful excuse is one of several criminal offences that could be used to put them behind bars for a while, but such a result rarely occurs.  

The Met said the cost of policing 515 protests carried out by JSO since April has amounted to the equivalent of 23,500 officer shifts. Over that time more than 270 people were arrested over the demonstrations, which included slow marches and the disruption of high-profile events.

At the Lords Ashes cricket test between England and Australia JSO threw orange powder onto the pitch. Fortunately, the England wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow tackled one of the protesters and carried him over the boundary hoardings. We need to see more of that kind of a response. So far no charges have ensued although he got no support from the sporting or security authorities for his actions.  

If those who have the power to stop the disruption of ordinary people’s lives cannot see that they are failing those people and that there are many accidents waiting to happen then they must be ignoring the evidence. JSO protesters have been dragged out of the way by motorists, been rammed and injured, pushed out of the way, pushed to the ground and even pushed out of the way by vehicles in the UK and in Germany where some protesters were nearly run over. If these protests had been dealt with more robustly these incidents could be avoided.  

Let’s call these people WETs. Weirdo Eco Terrorists. That is what they are.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman promised tough action on the protesters and has ‘made it easier’ for police to arrest them.   The question is, will they?   At the moment the opposite is happening; a man was violently manhandled by the police and pushed into his van, after doing what the police should be doing in the first place: clearing them off the roads.   JSO is a ridiculous organisation, whose aims are not going to be achieved. They are hypocrites. The uninvited guest at George Osborne’s wedding has been known to jet off to Thailand for holidays, and she is not alone among JSO adherents in having been discovered in foreign climes.  

Their supporters are hypocrites too. Lewis Hamilton proclaims his support while making his millions in a sport which is utterly dependent on burning fossil fuels. Sir Keir Starmer should be ashamed to take money from Dale Vince, the publicity-seeking New Age traveller turned spiv who is the owner of the electricity company Ecotricity and has funded Just Stop Oil in the past.  

‘Just ignore them’, some people argue. ‘Stop writing about them’, others urge. But JSO are becoming incredibly difficult to ignore. Could we have ignored the IRA?  

It is hard not to conclude that JSO get away with things that other people would not. They even post Twitter polls asking, like terrorists, where they should attack next, yet they remain on Twitter.  

Surely it is time Just Stop Oil is stopped. For their sake and ours.

Jack Watson is a 14-year-old schoolboy, who has a Substack about being a Hull City fan. You can subscribe to it here.