Judge throws out case against Greta Thunberg

[Tony L]

How is your domestic goddess? Has her health improved at all?

She’s not right, but seems no worse, certainly not unhappy or losing weight. It is just the stuff in the litter tray looks a bit wrong. Vet couldn’t find anything conclusive for £200, so I stopped at that point. If she gets worse I’ll go back.

 

[paulfromcamden]

She’s not right, but seems no worse, certainly not unhappy or losing weight. It is just the stuff in the litter tray looks a bit wrong. Vet couldn’t find anything conclusive for £200, so I stopped at that point. If she gets worse I’ll go back.

If she's not losing weight and she seems herself that's good at least.

Just a thought - have you tried her on a grain-free food in case there are cereals in her food that are upsetting her stomach?

 

[Tony L]

Just a thought - have you tried her on a grain-free food in case there are cereals in her food that are upsetting her stomach?

When she seems under the weather I temporarily shift to the posh vet-approved stuff (Royal Canin or Applaws), but no way can I afford to feed her on that long-term. It is absurdly expensive, though you could certainly serve Applaws to humans in sandwiches and they’d not notice. Current supermarket stuff that mostly stays down is Felix ‘As Good As It Looks’ (which speaking as a veggie is good at all). Previous was Webbox, but that mostly gets honked up onto the carpet now.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

I never really understood it from the beginning, along with some other so-called ‘new’ words.

Its like ye olde "commie". You're intended NOT to understand it, but to fear it. Stick-on label covering the reality from view.

 

[paulfromcamden]

When she seems under the weather I temporarily shift to the posh vet-approved stuff (Royal Canin or Applaws), but no way can I afford to feed her on that long-term. It is absurdly expensive, though you could certainly serve Applaws to humans in sandwiches and they’d not notice. Current supermarket stuff that mostly stays down is Felix ‘As Good As It Looks’ (which speaking as a veggie is good at all). Previous was Webbox, but that mostly gets honked up onto the carpet now.

Yes it's not cheap - I sometimes look at what I'm having and realise that her tea was twice the cost of mine! But I figure she's reached an age where we all deserve a few luxuries and mealtimes are the highlight of her day : )

Anyway give her a chinrub from me and apologies to everyone else for the feline diversion.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Throwing paint or other substances at paintings is infantile because it is pure attention seeking, it does not address the issue of climate change in any form. Pure "look at me" behaviour, what you'd expect from a four-year-old, it is nothing but attempted vandalism when perpertrated by a so-called adult.

The "look at me" is sometimes needed to make the media even report something exists. Otherwise they just leave it off the radar entirely. Instead they go on pumping up what those in power want promoted.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

If anything its more about that than anything else. Obviously the people that are on side are already convinced of the argument, and if they were already enough to cause real change, there wouldn't be any need for any form of demonstration..


Example: The people gluing themselves to the streets and blocking traffic in london (including people who've been trying to get to hospital), or jumping on the tube trains etc have done zip to pursuade anyone of their argument. All they've done is made people angry and far less likely to be engagable in a rational discourse on the topic.

No, that isnt ALL they have done. They have ensured that the fact of climate change being a problem isn't simply absent from the media. Not everyone reads the Scum.

 

[Tony L]

Its like ye olde "commie". You're intended NOT to understand it, but to fear it. Stick-on label covering the reality from view.

‘Woke’ is basically human rights, civil liberties, equality etc, so the likes of the Tory Party, GOP, Reform, UKIP, Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph, GB News etc who rail against it are just shouting “we are pro-fascism” at the top of their lungs. Anti-woke = fascist. It really is that clearly defined to my eyes. The scary thing is the UK and US have shifted so far to the extreme-right that such language is now normalised. People have been so successfully gaslit that railing against basic human rights and attacking minorities rights to exist is now the political mainstream.

 

[wacko]

Met someone a year ago who was complaining about Woke people.
His wife was Asian.
So I asked him to explain what Woke is in front of his University age daughter. She simply looked at her father and me.
Must have been an interesting conversation after I left though.

 

[gez]

Weirdly, people throwing paint in London and stopping traffic has been no inconvenience to me at all here in Glasgow. Climate breakdown on the other hand is already messing with my life and business and I strongly suspect it will get much worse.

Those who publicly protest as being very courageous and committed. How many of us would risk a Police baton across the skull or a day's kettleing, followed by jail and a criminal record in order to raise the profile of an issue we care about? These young people who protest are seeing their future wiped out. They are frightened and angry. More power to them.

Been there, done that. Used to take part in CND demonstrations whenever they happened back in the day. But the big differences were:

a) the demo was planned and agreed, so the police could shut roads and people were inconvenienced yes, but they could still get to where they were going (presuming it wasn't actually on on of the streets the demo went down)
b) there was no wanton destruction of property involved.

I absolutely believe in the right to demonstrate to affect change. I just believe it should be done in a peaceful, law abiding way and not deliberately set out to just be a pain to people who lets face it are not the decision makers anyway.

These small groups like Just Stop Oil etc have no clue. Small peice meal demos like theirs never affect change. Only large crowds on the streets have any chance of pursading government to do things differently. The rest is just considered a policing annoyance and nobody in gov will ever give them the time of day. They're literally achieving nothing.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

There were >1million people to the 'Stop the War' demo in Blair's time, and >1million people to 3 'Anti Brexit' marches in 2017. No impact on official decision making in the slightest. So I'm not convinced planned demonstrations have the effect you argue they do. Civil disobedience is about all we've got left.

 

[Enfield boy]

There's money in war and shorting. Ain't gonna let a few million getting uppity stop the grift.

 

[Tony L]

Indeed. Sunak’s $1.5bn Infosys contract with BP is the perfect example of the UK’s current environmental position. Net zero, the Paris Agreement etc etc are all up for sale for cash in brown envelopes and other backhanders. The planet will be on fire long before grubby thieving Tory hands are extracted from the pockets of environmentally destructive businesses. It is the modern equivalent of slave trading. They know it is wrong, they have seen the data, but they’ll just keep doing it as long as they possibly can to enrich themselves. Crooks, grifters and parasites.

PS Citation for Infosys/BP accusation:

Sunak's family firm signed $1.5B deal with BP before oil and gas license announcement

JUST two months before Rishi Sunak opened hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, an IT firm founded by his…

www.thenational.scot

 

[wulbert]

Been there, done that. Used to take part in CND demonstrations whenever they happened back in the day. But the big differences were:

a) the demo was planned and agreed, so the police could shut roads and people were inconvenienced yes, but they could still get to where they were going (presuming it wasn't actually on on of the streets the demo went down)
b) there was no wanton destruction of property involved.

I absolutely believe in the right to demonstrate to affect change. I just believe it should be done in a peaceful, law abiding way and not deliberately set out to just be a pain to people who lets face it are not the decision makers anyway.

These small groups like Just Stop Oil etc have no clue. Small peice meal demos like theirs never affect change. Only large crowds on the streets have any chance of pursading government to do things differently. The rest is just considered a policing annoyance and nobody in gov will ever give them the time of day. They're literally achieving nothing.

You make a valid point. However, it is precisely because our democracy is broken and our ability to influence policy by legitimate protest so eroded, that people "up the ante" to have their issue make an impact.

As an illustration, there is no way to vote any party with environmental concerns into any position of power and control in the next UK government at Westminster. We have the same binary choice of political leadership (Red or Blue) that we have had since the last century. What are people to do if they don't have any route to meaningful representation in their own country?

 

[gez]

You make a valid point. However, it is precisely because our democracy is broken and our ability to influence policy by legitimate protest so eroded, that people "up the ante" to have their issue make an impact.

As an illustration, there is no way to vote any party with environmental concerns into any position of power and control in the next UK government at Westminster. We have the same binary choice of political leadership (Red or Blue) that we have had since the last century. What are people to do if they don't have any route to meaningful representation in their own country?

You think our democracy was any better in the 80s? Labour may well have been pro disamament at the time, but it was irrelevant as they were never going to get in to power. Basically the same problem the Greens have right now. So theres no more excuse for climate change supporters to act the way some of them do today, than there would have been nuclear disarmament supporters to do the same in the 80s. Which they didn't.

If you believe that climate change is a more existential threat than nuclear weapons were in the 80's, and therefore climate protestors have an entitlement to act how they do, then I can only conclude you weren't alive at the time or at least were still a a kid.

 

[paulfromcamden]

If you believe that climate change is a more existential threat than nuclear weapons were in the 80's, and therefore climate protestors have an entitlement to act how they do, then I can only conclude you weren't alive at the time or at least were still a a kid.

Hmm. Nuclear annihilation is/was a threat not a nailed on certainty. Without drastic action on climate change life on earth is going to be very different in a few generations.

 

[Simon Dawson]

I read an interesting article about the Suffragettes a few years back and the basic theme it covered was actually that their movement, whilst undoubtedly drawing attention to the inequality in the country at the item (which was a good thing, obviously), actually did very little to change the situation.

After all, consider for a moment you are a gentleman of the early 20th century who believes that women are weak creatures who need to be kept in their place and that giving them the vote would be a fanciful notion - would you suddenly change your mind because a group of them broke some windows, set off bombs, vandalised art or started throwing themselves under racehorses? Of course you wouldn't - if anything it would reinforce your feeling that they are too emotional and couldn't think as logically as men.

Said article suggested that what actually gave women equality was the First World War -the men went off to fight and the women took their jobs in the factories and actually proved through actions that not only were they just as capable as the men, in some cases they were better. This was in strong contrast their earlier militant actions, with the suggestion that these did more harm to their cause than good.

Except New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893, quite a while before WWI.

 

[dweezil]

When she seems under the weather I temporarily shift to the posh vet-approved stuff (Royal Canin or Applaws), but no way can I afford to feed her on that long-term. It is absurdly expensive, though you could certainly serve Applaws to humans in sandwiches and they’d not notice. Current supermarket stuff that mostly stays down is Felix ‘As Good As It Looks’ (which speaking as a veggie is good at all). Previous was Webbox, but that mostly gets honked up onto the carpet now.

Could be worth looking at supermarket chicken, it's amazingly cheap and our cat loves it, usually drumsticks on some offer.

We're currently delivering a lot of wheat to a pet food factory so some are significantly vegetarian with a bit of meat for palatability.

 

[gez]

Hmm. Nuclear annihilation is/was a threat not a nailed on certainty. Without drastic action on climate change life on earth is going to be very different in a few generations.

The fear that people felt at the time was very real, and that's all that matters when it comes to motivating people to protest. The truth of whatever the protest is about is essentially irrelevant. If people believe something strongly enough they'll protest about it. It matters not what the realistic odds of nuclear anhialation was vs climate change, fact remains that at the time people believed we were on the brink of anhialation. Yet people still didn't glue themselves to roads, throw paint at property and all the other puerile things that climate change activists have done (what's next? take a leaf out of the animal rights groups and start letter bombing people?)

 

[ff1d1l]

The fear that people felt at the time was very real, and that's all that matters when it comes to motivating people to protest. The truth of whatever the protest is about is essentially irrelevant. If people believe something strongly enough they'll protest about it. It matters not what the realistic odds of nuclear anhialation was vs climate change, fact remains that at the time people believed we were on the brink of anhialation. Yet people still didn't glue themselves to roads, throw paint at property and all the other puerile things that climate change activists have done (what's next? take a leaf out of the animal rights groups and start letter bombing people?)

Different times, different issues.

Marching is not only risky now, but is either not reported, or under reported, as in last weekends march against the genocide in Palestine, a march of 200k, but reported by the bbc as being "in the thousands". So, not terrifically effective.

Given that publicity and raising the public profile are of paramount importance, how would you go about achieving this? Any good ideas that haven't been tried before?