Crocodile tears of heartless anarchists
Platell’s People
WAS anything more galling this week than the sight of eco-warrior Zoe Jones in tears when she heard that a man had failed to reach his dying father’s bedside in time to say goodbye because of her protest group’s roadblock?
Extinction Rebellion glued themselves to a bathtub on one of Bristol’s busiest roads, so his 14-mile car trip, usually a 30-minute journey, took three hours.
As she listened to a playback of the man’s harrowing phone call explaining what had happened to a local radio talk show, the tears ran down Zoe’s face. Yet she was unrepentant.
True, she apologised. ‘We’re incredibly sorry,’ she said, ‘We didn’t mean for our protest to affect your life in this way . . .’ But then, in the same breath, she insisted they were ‘doing the right thing’. Her emoting looked like crocodile tears to me. Either that, or she is woefully naïve.
Quite apart from the intolerable disruption to hard-working people’s lives, police and politicians have been warning for months that Extinction Rebellion protests could result in deaths because of ambulance crews, doctors, fire engines and police cars being held up in traffic.
Ms Jones says she has to protest because of the ‘climate emergency’
THANK heavens we do not have a Donald Trump in power in this country, or he might have told our Barbados-born, England cricket star Jofra Archer to ‘go home’, too. And we’d have lost the World Cup.
— but what about the people suffering genuine emergencies?
The movement is actually deeply subversive. They think it gives them not only moral superiority but also freedom to act as they please.
The former head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, Richard Walton, calls the group extremist and says it is trying to break down democracy and the State.
Extinction Rebellion’s founder Roger Hallam has himself said, chillingly: ‘We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose . . . and yes, some may die in the process.’ Who does he think he is? What gives
him the right to decide what kind of democracy is fit for purpose?
Of course, the younger generation is welcome to protest about global warming and force politicians to act. But their genuine concerns are being hijacked by a bunch of manipulative extremists and anarchists.
Which is why your tears won’t wash I’m afraid, Zoe. Not while your group is prepared to prevent a son from seeing his dying father, and to inflict misery and even death, for its cause.