Damn Drax: climate protesters found guilty

You may well have heard that the twenty nine protests who stopped a coal train on its way to the monster Drax coal power plant, and started shovelling out the contents, have been found guilty of obstructing the railway and are to be sentenced later in the year, although this wont result in custodial sentences.

The action, designed to highlight the criminal rate at which we're burning fossil fuels, involved stopping a coal train, boarding it and then digging as fast as they could. Oh yeah, and one of them was dressed as a canary. There's always one isn't there!

Jonathan Stevenson, one of these disgusting criminal reprobates, made a brilliant closing speech for the protesters. Please do read his speech in full but he ended by saying;

On Tuesday the prosecution argued that what we did was quite simply a crime, and as a result we should be found guilty. They were trying to suggest that if you find us not guilty, the whole world would fall apart. We argue that the more likely route to the whole world falling apart is if we continue burning coal in the enormous quantities that it is being burnt at Drax.

After being found guilty Dr Louise Hemmerman, another one of the defendants, described the trial where they had been forbidden to call their expert witnesses and put their full case for why they took this form of direct action;

“The judge declared from day one that climate change was irrelevant to the trial, despite the fact that it was the sole reason for doing what we did, and from that moment on it was certain we’d be convicted. It was unprecedented and highly political censorship by the judge that meant the jury members weren’t allowed to consider the gravest threat faced by humanity when they came to their verdict.”

Monbiot described them as the conscience of the nation, even churchmen are impressed.

I'm full of praise too, of course. The movement against climate change needs people like this who have the courage to take their hearts in the mouths and commit audacious deeds. Bring it on.

Just one point of note. This picture clearly shows that, just as in every other work place, you've got those who are doing the work whilst some bespectacled clipboard monitor, hands on hips, "supervises". Oh for shame! You'd have thought a grass roots movement would have been more egalitarian (shakes head in disappointment).