
Over the last few weeks, much of London has been plastered with posters advertising the environmental protest group Just Stop OIl’s ‘Occupy Westminster’ protest, beginning on Oct 1. The timing could hardly have been better, as, since it was first announced many weeks ago, a new fossil fuel-loving, climate change-denying government has been put in place — elected by just 81,326 Tory Party members and with no mandate from the people of the UK — which has proceeded to refuse to levy windfall taxes on the energy companies’ vast and unearned recent and future profits (choosing instead to put the burden on taxpayers for an energy price cap that was required to save the country from economic collapse), has lifted the ban on fracking, and has promised to open the floodgates to new oil and gas extraction (as well as, most recently, crashing the UK economy in the most alarming manner via unjustifiable and fiscally deranged tax cuts for the rich).
Backed by the malevolent far-right ‘libertarian’ think-tanks based in Tufton Street, close to Parliament, including the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), described by climate researchers and environmental groups as “the UK’s most prominent source of climate denialism”, Truss’s government has no interest in investing in renewables, even though the majority of the British public backs new on- and off-shore wind power, solar power and wave power, rather than fossil fuels, and also has no interest in investing to insulate Britain’s leaky homes, even though it would vastly reduce our energy needs, and well as providing significant employment.
The occupation of Westminster begins tomorrow (October 1), with activists gathering first at Euston, Paddington and Waterloo stations at 11am, and then converging on Westminster, with the plan repeated on Sunday October 2 (when, incidentally, the Tories’ train wreck of a conference begins in Birmingham), and, from Monday October 3, moving to Whitehall, opposite 10 Downing Street at 11am every day.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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