Back in the Jug Again

Nigel was on the wrong side of the law again on Thursday, at City of London Magistrates Court.

Back in September 2020 he got arrested as part of the Extinction Rebellion Protest outside the Houses of Parliament.

The occasion had been the first hearing of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, tabled by Caroline Lucas.  It is an attempt to take measures to stem irreversible climate catastrophe but the Government is against it.   By protesting outside parliament, the hope was to appeal to the consciences of MPs so they might support it.

Nigel sat peacefully in the road and refused to move onto the grassy area where the police were containing protesters in circumstances which made Covid social distancing almost impossible.

In court our lawyer tried out some new tactics and arguments.  Nigel, as always, pleaded ‘Necessity’ – he did something a bit wrong in order to prevent a greater harm – i.e. global heating and the deaths of millions.  But, the judge was disposed to find Nigel guilty.  His sentence was a suspended fine.

However, we got hit with high court costs – a new way of deterring Climate Activists from peaceful protest.

The Government plans to make things even harder with the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill, 2021, currently being rushed through Parliament.  It means that next time Nigel (or anybody else) sits down in the road as part of a peaceful protest, he could be given a ten year prison sentence. 

Due to climate factors, we have cut out air travel to foreign countries.  But this monstrous Police Bill will give us the opportunity to experience what it is like to live in Hong Kong or mainland China!

Standing up for all of us

Today Nigel attended a London magistrates’ court (via Teams videoconferencing), was found guilty of obstructing the highway, given a conditional discharge and asked to pay court expenses of £331.

And I am proud of him.

He was arrested 07-10-2019 while sitting in the road at the junction of Northumberland Avenue and Trafalgar Square.

It was part of an Extinction Rebellion protest.

His defence was ‘Necessity’ - by drawing attention to the Climate Emergency and trying to get the Government to act Nigel was attempting to save lives, both in the immediate future and throughout the years to come.

Representing himself in court, Nigel said:

‘The number of deaths as a result of the climate emergency is going to rise, and rise dramatically. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, and now UN climate finance envoy, put it very simply in a statement to the BBC on 6^th February:

"When you look at climate change from a human mortality perspective, it will be the equivalent of a coronavirus crisis every year from the middle of this century, and every year, not just a one-off event. “

Covid is an emergency.  Currently it has caused 100,000 deaths in the UK, and 2.4m globally.  But by the middle of this century, the climate emergency will cause that number of deaths every year.  Every year. 2.4m every year.’

However, even though thousands of people have indeed died since Nigel sat down in the road in October 2019, of the drought, floods and storms caused by climate change, the court did not consider the danger immediate enough and convicted him.

We knew beforehand that this was the probable outcome, but time will prove that it was not the right one.

 

She Stoops to Conquer

 

Every year, we go to glean chestnuts in the local woods.  I use them in all sorts of vegetarian and vegan dishes over the winter.  We realised they were ripe now and if we didn’t go soon, we would miss out.

I’d committed to a teaching conference at the weekend (on Zoom), so we couldn’t get away to the woods until almost dusk on Saturday.  We would have to be quick or the car park would shut with our car inside. 

We headed for the best spot and began combing the ground for the green spiny cases.  They always remind me of the land-bound version of sea-urchins.  But the only land-urchins we found had already been split open.

Many people and even more deer had been there before us.  The deer always leave the case spread out with the silky lining showing, like a pale star, completely cleaned of chestnuts. People do a less thorough job and leave small nuts behind.

Empty-handed, we rushed back to the car before we got locked in.

The following day, the conference again stretched into the afternoon, but when I got out, I remembered a new spot.  I’d discovered it a couple of weeks earlier, by the usual expedient of spotting other foragers and asking them what they were collecting. 

However, it was a long walk to get there and would there still be chestnuts?

In the green gloom of the woods, it turned out that there were.  Plenty of them.

And it allowed Nigel to make the annual repetition of one of his favourite puns.  As I bent to pick up a chestnut, ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘She stoops to conker.’

NB Despite Nigel's terrible pun, conkers ( AKA) Horse chestnuts are not edible. It was the delicious sweet chestnuts that I was collecting. 

 

Lend your support to the campaign to save Symondshyde Woods

http://www.save-symondshyde.co.uk/

Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill – please help your planet

Please follow the links below (which will take you swiftly and easily through to your MP’s email) and ask your MP to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill which will be debated during this session of Parliament.

Find everything you need to take part here: https://digitalrebellion.uk/cee-bill

An Arresting Experience 2

I already blogged last week that Nigel was arrested as part of the Extinction Rebellion protests.

A few days later, in complete contrast, we were driving down to Cornwall with Pascoe in the back, aiming to meet Perran and Carenza for a family holiday.

It would be a time of regeneration after the stress of protest.

So what we weren’t expecting was a flashing blue light in the rear-view and police asking us to pull over. We pulled over.

Nigel hadn’t been speeding - he stays below sixty to conserve fuel and limit pollution. 

So what was this about?

To show that we were upstanding citizens with a clear conscience, we sprung out of our car and walked round to greet the police.

But as I looked across at Nigel, I saw that he was still wearing his Extinction Rebellion badge.  Not something which puts the police in a good mood. 

However, they were polite and pleasant.

It turned out that our number plate, caught by police surveillance camera, was showing up as uninsured. 

Very luckily, Nigel had proof on his phone that we ARE insured. 

It turned out that when we removed the twins from our insurance earlier in the summer, the company had inadvertently flicked a switch on the database which made it look as if nobody was insured.

It was weird to feel for a moment as if we might really be on the wrong side of the law.  It contrasted with Nigel’s arrests for Extinction Rebellion where he is doing something very RIGHT.

Please follow the links below (which will take you swiftly and easily through to your MP’s email) and ask your MP to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill which will be debated during this session of Parliament.

Find everything you need to take part here: https://digitalrebellion.uk/cee-bill

An Arresting Experience

 

Nigel got arrested as Part of the Extinction Rebellion protests last week.  He was said to be sitting in the road in Parliament Square.

 He never normally finds himself on the wrong side of the police.  However, on Tuesday he took a day’s holiday, travelled into London, was arrested and carried bodily into a police van and detained for a number of hours in a distant police station on the opposite side of London from where we live, finally getting the train home at 11pm.

For him, the sacrifice was intensely necessary.  His aim, and that of the 700 other Extinction Rebellion arrestees, is to highlight the ongoing Climate Crisis and to try to get the government to act.

Getting arrested is Nigel’s answer to the question, ‘What on earth can I do to try to keep this planet habitable for my children and grandchildren?’

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The aim is to get the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill passed during this parliament. Please follow the links below (which will take you swiftly and easily through to your MP’s email) and ask them to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill.

Find everything you need to take part here: https://digitalrebellion.uk/cee-bill

 

 

 

Blocking Fossil fuels with Extinction Rebellion

What better way to spend the Friday before bank holiday than outside the gates of a massive oil depot?

 Buncefield can hold up to 65 million litres of fuel, each litre of which produces 2.5 kg of carbon when used. It has pipelines to Gatwick and Heathrow, supplying aviation fuel. 

Nigel and five other members of Extinction rebellion locked on to cars blocking the entrance to prevent tankers entering for 6 hours. 

It is a demonstration designed to draw attention to the climate emergency which is already causing floods and wildfires in many parts of the planet.

'The burning of fossil fuels more than anything else, is driving the climate emergency. Buncefield is the epicentre of fossil fuel distribution in the UK.'

You may not fancy lying in the road like Nigel, but please help by emailing your MP and asking them to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. 

For all our sakes.