Just stop oil and Israel

Give us a mob and we’ll find a cause. And if one cause doesn’t wreak enough havoc, we’ll merge a few together.

This seems to be the rationale behind yet another paralysis visited on central London by cause hounds. So if you plan to drive to, or through, that area today, plan again.

Two mobs, Just Stop Oil and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, have joined forces to hold London hostage yet again. They are marching under the flags and slogans proclaiming the unassailable justice of both causes – singly and in combination.

At first glance the fit seems imperfect. If we just stopped oil, we’d thereby just stop the funding of Palestinian causes, much of which comes from the oil revenues of some Arab states.

Then again, Just Stop Oil activists have also been known to share their rage with LGBT campaigners. You’d think that their today’s co-marchers would hold such association against the planet defenders. After all, many Palestinian marchers have to believe that LGBT people ought be stoned, thrown off tall buildings or otherwise abused.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is also taking part in the fun, but only as one of the funders. I wonder where its money is coming from. In the past the CND was a Soviet front, and much of its funding came courtesy of the KGB.

That organisation has since changed its name, but has it kept its clients? That seems logical: after all, that group campaigns for the nuclear disarmament specifically of the West, which has to be martial music to Putin’s ears.

However, he may hear some discordant notes: one poster also says “UK criminalising protest like Putin”, which some may take as tacit disapproval of Vlad.

One has to assume that London bobbies will wade into the protest march, smashing some heads with truncheons, stamping others into the tarmac and then sentencing dozens of people to a tenner in prison. That’s what the phrase ‘like Putin’ seems to imply.

In fact, they are referring to the proposed Public Order Act currently in the Lords. It had cleared the Commons in the run-up to the Coronation as a way of ensuring that the ritual would take place undisrupted.

When assorted mobs did try to disperse the procession, the police pushed them aside, with nary a truncheon seeing the light of day. I surfed the Internet trying to find photos of London cops playing footie with human heads (still attached to the bodies or otherwise), and came a cropper.

In short, all this proves that many causes into one do go, especially since marching mobs don’t mind it if the interconnections are somewhat tenuous. This isn’t about logic, is it? It’s about finding an outlet for bubbling gonadic hatred – of whatever is supposed to be hated today.

But the ring masters don’t want to come across as mindless thugs. If it’s logical interconnections you seek, you reactionary troglodyte you, they are happy to oblige.

Come forth, a Just Stop Oil spokesman: “Palestinians are among the most vulnerable people on earth to the effects of climate collapse, and in the daily struggle to survive in an apartheid state, they have no capacity to protect themselves against what is coming.

“The Public Order Act has criminalised peaceful dissent. Anyone speaking up about the injustices wrought on Palestinians or calling out the corruption and criminality of the UK government, risks arrest.”

Now that’s an impressive potpourri if I’ve ever seen one. Because Israel is an apartheid state, the UK government is corrupt and criminal, and any dissent against it is criminalised, global warming will destroy the planet, starting with Palestinians. Who can argue against this logic? Exactly. Only the people I’ve called reactionary troglodytes.

Since I am manifestly not one of them, I’m happy to put my somewhat rusty but still extant advertising skills to the service of political virtue. So here are some slogans to energise the masses into – justified! – civil unrest:

“Save the whales, the planet, Palestine and each initial in LGBT”, “Yes to wind, no to antacids”, “Down with the syndrome”, “No nukes, no dukes”, “Kill an Israeli for Islam and CND”, “Yasser, that’s my baby, Nasser, don’t mean maybe”, “Wind farms and cannabis farms”, “Right to riot”, “Make Palestinians and healthcare free”, “Do it man to man”, “Kill the Bill” (that one will need a picture of a policeman) – stop me please, before I suggest something really bizarre.

The French tend to treat such slogan wielders with tear gas and water cannon, not that it does them much good. But, and now I’ll sound serious for a change, if people wish to protest against anything, it’s their right to do so.

They should be welcome to exercise it – provided they don’t thereby impinge on the rights of others. If an ambulance or a fire engine can’t get through because our planet and Palestine need saving, lives may be lost in the more immediate term. And even barring such dramatic scenarios, my right to have a quiet walk through London’s gorgeous centre is valid too.

There should be some areas designated for such protests, where the mobs can vent their innermost emotions without bringing a great city to a standstill. Perhaps Highgate Cemetery may be perfect, with Marx’s grave providing the centrepiece. Or the Regent’s Park Zoo, where protesters could multitask as exhibits.

The Public Order Act doesn’t go far enough, in other words. It should be based on the premise that blocking the traffic and paralysing the city is not an assertion of freedom, but its denial.

Just write to your MP, chaps, if you want to protect Palestinians from warm weather. That’s the civilised way to protest without too many people thinking you’re just a bunch of destructive morons. And that’s how Britain is still different from Putin’s Russia. “Down with spurious similes!”