Rhinos Worry Me<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://todon.nl/@rik" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>rik</span></a></span> </p><p>"The inequality looks even starker when you compare the Just Stop Oil protests with the fuel protests in 2000. The first day of protest that year was organised by the Conservative party, which saw fuel taxes as an opportunity to attack the Labour government. Two months later, in September, the campaign erupted into a nationwide shutdown by a coalition of lorry drivers and farmers. They blockaded oil refineries and fuel depots across the country. Nearly three-quarters of filling stations ran dry, supermarkets began rationing food, ambulance services were severely disrupted, schools shut, bus and train services were suspended, operations were cancelled and the NHS was put on red alert.</p><p>Simultaneously, the protesters blockaded motorways with convoys of slow-moving trucks. Transport across much of Britain ground to a halt. The cost to businesses was estimated at £1bn, which in those days was real money. No one even bothered to document the missed hospital appointments, school days, work days, flights and funerals (of which the judge Christopher Hehir made so much in sentencing the Just Stop Oil protesters), as millions of people had to cancel their plans.</p><p>The result? As far as I can discover, not a single organiser or activist was prosecuted. Far from it: the first convener of the September protests, Brynle Williams, used his resultant celebrity to get elected as a Conservative member of the Welsh parliament, where he was treated as a pillar of the establishment. Six weeks after the protests, Gordon Brown, the Labour chancellor, gave the blockaders much of what they wanted, cutting fuel and vehicle taxes."</p><p><a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/Climate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Climate</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ClimateCrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateCrisis</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/JSO" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>JSO</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/JustStopOil" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>JustStopOil</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/WholeTruthFive" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WholeTruthFive</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/WTF" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WTF</span></a></p>