Selfish middle-class eco-twerps love ruining a night out for ordinary folk but don’t have the guts to hit real culprits
‘You f*cking idiots!’ is not a phrase usually bellowed at the World Snooker Championships.
Snooker is a generally very calm, peaceful sport, played and followed by people who behave during the games with the utmost decorum and respectful silence.
But on Monday night all hell broke loose when two Just Stop Oil protesters burst through the crowd at The Crucible in Sheffield to try to wreck the competition on live TV.
One, 25-year-old student Edred Whittingham, was successful, leaping onto a table as a match was being played and spraying orange powder all over the green baize surface.
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The second, 52-year-old former museum worker Margaret Reid, was stopped before she could do the same to another table.
Both were then led away to a storm of boos, jeers, and cries of ‘Criminal damage!’, ‘What are you proving?’ and, as I said at the start of this column, a three-word volley of abuse that perfectly summed up my own sentiments about the stunt.
The most aggravating moment for me wasn’t the sight of Whittingham kneeling on the table and shrieking dementedly through his self-created orange mist.
It was the self-satisfied smirk he gave as he was removed.
At which point I wanted someone to take the 15 red balls and shove them down his smug gurning mouth.
Of the many pathetic acts these cretins have committed in recent years, from targeting art galleries to Formula One races, this seemed the most egregiously pointless.
I would wage all the cash in Elon Musk’s bank account that not a single member of the audience at The Crucible, or any of the millions watching on TV at home, watched these imbeciles wrecking their entertainment and thought: ‘Good for them, I must sign up to support Just Stop Oil.’
As sports promoter Barry Hearn said in a withering broadside to the pasty-faced wastrels: ‘You’re much more likely to lose support than gain support because you’re not putting a message across, you’re just showing what you are – a disruptive anarchist. It actually brings you down to that level where people find you a complete and utter pain, you’ve ruined a kid’s night out that he’s been waiting for – for years or whatever – and you don’t give a monkeys.’
Exactly.
And who are most of those whose night was ruined?
They’re working-class British people.
Many will have saved up for a year to attend the biggest event in snooker, something that will have been harder than usual given the crippling cost-of-living crisis.
And they had their escapist fun destroyed by a pair of selfish middle-class twerps who probably think a Spider is an insect and a Cannon something that fires balls – and couldn’t care less about the havoc they wreak on ordinary members of the public.
Even worse, they’re doing these puerile stunts at OUR expense.
Whittingham is studying politics and philosophy at Exeter University on a student loan – so we’re all paying for this clown to skip his education to perform these grand-standing, self-aggrandising criminal acts.
Oh, and he’s been arrested six times, and even briefly jailed last year for blockading an oil terminal. All of which has cost the taxpayer tens of thousands more in police, court, and prison expenses.
And for what?
Just Stop Oil say their only goal is for Britain to immediately stop licensing all oil, gas, and coal.
But they don’t have a clue what we’re supposed to replace them with that wouldn’t be totally impractical and bankrupt the country.
On Nick Ferrari’s excellent LBC show this morning, one of the group’s supporters phoned in to insist we could survive within eight years on energy derived solely from ‘solar, wind, and waves’ which of course, is utter nonsense.
‘Fiona,’ said an exasperated Ferrari, ‘intellectually, you’re nuts.’
To be clear, I don’t dispute the world is facing a genuine climate crisis, mainly because most top scientists far more expert about it than me have reached that unequivocal data-based conclusion.
And polls indicate the majority of Britons share my view that it makes sense to wean ourselves off our current over-reliance on fossil fuels and move to cleaner, renewable energy.
But because most Britons are sensible people, not hysterical pink-haired, nose-ringed lunatics, they also understand this process will take considerable time, and certainly a hell of a lot longer than eight years.
And after decades of apocalyptic eco-warrior doom-mongering about the imminent end of the world, they’ve also realised the world hasn’t ended and doesn’t look ending any time soon.
So, like me, they prefer pragmatic workable solutions to help save and sustain the planet, not constant ‘THE END IS NIGH!’ screeching and incredibly dumb cultural vandalism from a bunch of self-promoting climate zealots whose real aim seems to be self-publicity gained by disrupting the lives of ordinary people.
These deluded attention-seeking clowns are also moral cowards, because they know Britain now has a comparatively good record on measures to combat climate change, while the world’s worst polluters like China and Russia continue to have diabolical records.
Yet like Greta Thunberg, you never see Just Stop Oil protesters pop up to protest in Beijing or Moscow.
They love to compare themselves to the Suffragettes, but those women actually risked their lives to win the right to vote.
These gutless goons only risk getting poked with a handbag by an enraged granny at The Crucible.
If Just Stop Oil want to continue ruining sport-watching for working-class Britons, and prove they really are the new Emmeline Pankhursts, I suggest they run onto the pitch at the next Millwall home game and see how many fans they convert to their cause.