Activists are let off with a slap on wrist

● Serial protester Laura Frandsen was given just a £150 fine last July after being found guilty of blockading printing presses.

The 30-year-old Londoner was one of six Extinction Rebellion campaigners charged with obstructing the highway outside Newsprinters printing works on September 4, 2020.

Judge Sally Fudge convicted the defendants but sentenced most to a conditional discharge at St Albans Magistrates’ Court.

The protest lasted 14 hours during which around 100 workers were unable to leave the plant in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.

● Convicted ecoactivist Paul Sheeky was spared jail for contempt of court after helping bring a motorway to a halt.

The 46-year-old, from Warrington, Cheshire, was among nine Insulate Britain protesters who staged blockades on the M25 last September.

Sheeky was given a two-month suspended jail sentence last December. Other defendants got up to four months in jail.

The motorway blockade started two days before Sheeky appeared for sentencing for blocking a Manchester street on May 1, 2021. For that offence, he was fined £114.

● In January, an eco-activist who superglued himself to the roof of a BA plane, had his 12-month sentence cut to four months by appeal judges.

Former paralympic athlete James Brown, who is in his late 50s, was convicted of causing a public nuisance by a judge at Southwark Crown Court last September. But three Court of Appeal judges, Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Goss, ruled that the 12-month jail term should be cut to four months after his lawyers mounted a legal challenge against his conviction last December.

The double gold medallist climbed aboard an Amsterdam-bound plane at London City Airport on October 10, 2019.

● Eco-activists who dug up a lawn outside a Cambridge University college were ordered to pay just £198 compensation.

Around 22 shovel-wielding protesters caused an estimated £4,365 worth of damage outside 16th-century Trinity College on February 17, 2020.

Extinction Rebellion cited the college’s “ties with fossil fuel companies” as a reason for the protest. No arrests were made during the action.