‘Disrupt’ has been the mantra of environmental movements for a long time, upscaled considerably by Extinction Rebellion, an outfit that wore mass chaos as a badge of honour. To this, Just Stop Oil added ‘destroy’ to their repertoire of climate-themed tricks, causing expensive damage to buildings and surfaces with their orange paint.

The general public in the UK were already irate after the groundwork laid by Extinction Rebellion. There was very little patience left by the time upper-class kids and ageing Greenies in orange vests started sitting in the middle of highways – which the public is charged exorbitant green taxes to use.

Predictably, a counter-group called, ‘Just Stop P***ing Everyone Off’ popped up in response. Mimicking Just Stop Oil, they also wore orange hi-vis, surrounding protesters by making a human chain to prevent them from moving around. It was a good idea – a shame it turned out to be a prank by YouTubers.

It doesn’t really matter, because the public saw the idea and liked it. Although, if we’re honest, a genuine working class rebellion would probably be called something a little stronger, such as ‘Just F- Off’ (if the shouts from motorists are anything to go by).

Public anger has been encouraged by the lack of police response. One police officer was recorded casually standing around at one of these events, saying they would be ‘moving Just Stop Oil on shortly’. It’s the sort of lazy reply which is not good enough when protesters are engaging in illegal disruption of traffic. Would the police officer be chilling out if these were protesters against the Covid vaccine? Or farmers angry at the eco zealots in government? Or even parents against the rainbow movement in schools? You decide. These are the same rainbow-clad cops that show up at your door moments after liking the wrong sort of tweet.

Politicians and police need to be extremely careful. Motorists are at the very end of their patience, which could be seen as a bus pushed against the backs of Just Stop Oil protesters. One forceful nudge in a moment of anger or distraction and someone is going to get hurt. It is not as if Just Stop Oil are acting in the interest of the greater good. Their actions cause cars to produce a huge amount of extra emissions waiting around on blocked roads. Just Stop Oil can pride themselves on being active contributors to fossil fuel emissions.

Judges and police have mostly given Just Stop Oil a free pass. One judge described the group’s ‘admirable aims’ and was moved by their emotive reasons after they cause a nightmare at Birmingham in April.

As The Spectator reported: ‘By implying a tension between ‘politically or morally-motivated decisions’ and the application of ‘established legal principles’ the judge could hardly have given a stronger hint as to where his own political and moral sympathies lay.’

The judge then went on an extraordinary spiel in favour of their ideology. Like the banks, we are seeing the legal world wade into politics where they were neither invited nor wanted.

‘It is unarguable that man-made global warming is real and that we are facing a climate crisis. That is accepted and recognised by the scientific community and most governments (including our own),’ claimed the same judge.

‘Your aims are to slow or even stop the advance of global warming and therefore to preserve the planet not just for generations to come but for existing generations. No one can therefore criticise your motivations and indeed each of you has spoken individually about your own personal experiences, motivations, and actions. Many of your explanations for your actions were deeply emotive and I am sure all listening were moved by them, I know I was. In simple terms you are good people with admirable aims. However, if good people with the right motivation do the wrong thing it can never make that wrong thing right, it can only ever act as substantial mitigation.’

What rot.

Just Stop Oil are the type of activists that are motivated to sit on freeways in front of the cameras, but not throw away their iPhones. If we were to audit their lives, how much hypocrisy would we find? It is performative social activism which the public saw through long before they started throwing soup at great works of art.

The public has no time for emotional rambling from the legal system, not when the cost of living has reached an unbearable level pushed there almost solely by green politics and green taxes that do little but line the pockets of the elite class – a class that still go on all their European holidays, drive their cars, and heat their pools.

In 2022 it was revealed that Just Stop Oil protesters admitted to driving petrol cars – but that doesn’t make them hypocrites – they are simply ‘victims’ of the ‘fossil fuel economy’.

Just Stop Oil are clear about their goals – they want to end the use of oil and fossil fuels. Despite this, no one, not even the virtue signalling judges, have asked them what happens to the medical and healthcare industries when they get their wish. With the medical world over 90 per cent dependent on fossil fuels, Just Stop Oil might as well be re-named, ‘we don’t give a s* about healthcare’. That’ll put a dent in their champagne socialist ideals – well, it would if they were smart enough to work out what the unintended consequences of their mindless disruption actually are.

Proving how little these activists care about their fellow human beings, footage emerged recently of a Just Stop Oil protest preventing a mother from taking her sick baby to hospital, with other motorists hanging out of their cars, enraged by the sanctimonious idiots potentially putting the life of the child in danger. The activists wandered around blankly, seemingly unable to break through their eco saviour programming to show a little humanity.

The longer police fail to crack down on this movement, the more likely it becomes that the general public will snap when they come face to face with the people ruining their lives. It will be wholly the fault of police, politicians, and the legal system who treat these eco-vandals with a light touch.

To be clear, what Just Stop Oil is doing holding up roads and highways is not legal. The maximum penalty could land them in prison for 51 weeks, while transport bodies are all but begging authorities to do something about this orange scourge disrupting traffic conditions and putting lives in danger.

‘They’ve never done a day’s work in their life!’ shouted one motorist, at this generation’s new class of excessive champagne privilege. The working class can see through this eco grift to what they really are … another bunch of attention-seeking kids who, instead of planting trees, are sitting on their arses.

If Just Stop Oil want to do something useful, they could go out and sit in front of the machines cutting down forests to plant wind turbines. Those are fossil-fuel guzzling technologies that add bird-murdering to their list of planet-saving skills. Come on, Just Stop Oil, prove that you care about the environment by shutting down a wind farm. Then someone might believe you.

Flat White is written and edited by Alexandra Marshall.