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A splat of chocolate cake on the face of waxwork King Charles. Orange paint sprayed over a luxury car showroom in London. Famous paintings doused in soup, food stores swimming in milk, assorted roads blocked, innocent cheeses and dairy products ruined for ever.
Yes, the eco protesters who promised an October of disruption in the UK in their bid to save the planet have stuck to their word, along with roads up and down the land.
Look. Can we be honest? Nothing they do is going to stop the likes of Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Xi Jinping or anyone else from using or producing oil. Nor guilt-trip travellers to stop flying around the globe to enjoy holidays in the sun. Nor, indeed, to stop the protesters from using oil products or oil-based transport systems themselves.
However, they’re still allowed to delude themselves and do their worst, with the police and courts seemingly happy to let the activists carry on wreaking havoc.
JAN MOIR:Â Eco protesters say that the end of the world is nigh. Do you know, at moments like this, I would almost welcome it
Since the very first palm was glued on to an unsuspecting road earlier this year, 2022 has seen an escalation in green protests and criminal damage. Yet the oil/climate-change activists continue to be treated with kid-glove indulgence by officialdom.
It’s infuriating, particularly because this civilised forbearance is so much more than the activists show to those they inconvenience, or whose goods they damage. They are even willing to stop ambulances carrying patients with life-threatening conditions from reaching hospital.
Such cruel intransigence says everything about their fanaticism.
Just look at Madeleine Budd. Despite previous offences, the 21-year-old eco zealot was spared jail this week after pouring urine and human faeces over a memorial to Captain Sir Tom Moore. She had already breached her bail conditions following a Just Stop Oil invasion of the Oval cricket ground, but District Judge Louisa Cieciora merely gave her a suspended sentence and a slap on the wrist.
The judge noted her ‘young age’ and ‘deeply held views’ on climate change, adding: ‘Given your actions could not or have not achieved what you wanted them to, and you want to find a better way to express your message . . . I am just about persuaded I can suspend your sentence.’
An ambulance being forced to reverse as Just Stop Oil protesters shut down the road
Why? Budd was protesting against the use of private jets, which had nothing to do with Sir Tom, but she still emptied the contents of the chemical toilet from her own caravan over his statue.
That is absolutely disgusting, not a ‘better way to express her message’. Particularly as he had done nothing to merit such a fate, except raise millions for the National Health Service and cheer up the nation at a bleak time during lockdown.
I should add that Sir Tom was a former British Army officer who served in World War II and caught dengue fever in Burma for his troubles. He then became a tank instructor at a military base in Dorset and did, by any stretch of the imagination, more for this country than most of the oil-protesting Ruperts and Camillas put together.
Certainly much more than Madeleine Budd. And nothing in her punishment will deter others from doing the same.
It can’t go on. This kind of green protesting attacks society and all of us by imposing costs and inconvenience on everyone except the protesters themselves, who enjoy a starburst of attention and a degree of smuggery that could heat the Earth’s core all by itself.
Just Stop Oil sprayed the HR Owen Car showroom on Berkley Square in central LondonÂ
Yet whatever they do, the eco mob are shielded from criticism by their own self-righteousness and a misplaced belief that nothing done for the good of the planet can possibly be wrong.
What I worry about is a kind of progressive — in both senses of the word — stasis creeping across the country, strangling progress and enterprise, like poison ivy choking a great oak tree.
Every time a bold, interesting or energetic initiative is announced by the Right, the dark forces of the Left do their best to stop it, while offering no alternative.
The expulsion of two members of the Rochdale grooming gangs to their Pakistani homeland. The repatriation of plane-loads of convicted criminals back to Jamaica. The plan to send immigrants to Rwanda to have their asylum applications processed. The proper punishment of protesters who commit criminal damage — all of this hindered by the forces of do-good and pie-in-the-sky against the forces of pragmatism, realism and doing what is best for this country.
Emma Brown, 30, (pictured) a graduate from Glasgow School of Art, said: ‘I am taking this action because art is about telling the truth and connecting to our deepest emotions. But right now, when we need them most – art institutions are failing us’
T his week’s news about the exponential rise of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel should horrify everyone — but, of course, it does no such thing. Blinkers on, fingers in ears, anyone who objects is a racist, la la la la.
Freedom From Torture chief executive Sonya Sceats even went on LBC yesterday to suggest that senior police officer Dan O’Mahoney — the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander who informed MPs of this surge in illegal migration — was a government puppet.
His report, she said, was just ‘police parroting the lines the Government are sending them’.
Dear God. How can you fight a mindset such as hers? Miss Sceats’s thinking is remarkably similar to Miss Budd’s: a zealot who is unwilling to face the truth of a situation because it does not dovetail with her own belief system. And reacting by pouring a bucket of muck over the person who deserves it least.
Eco protesters say that the end of the world is nigh. Do you know, at moments like this, I would almost welcome it.
 How Meghan’s mastered the art of the ‘markle’
Allow me to introduce you to a new word — the verb ‘markle’. To markle means to talk about a subject while avoiding an embarrassingly obvious connection to yourself in relation to that subject.
A perfect example was the Duchess of Sussex, markling for all she was worth about the Angry Black Woman stereotype on her Archetypes podcast this week. ‘Sometimes things make you feel angry or sad or hurt or upset — and that’s not a gender or racially specific feeling. Yet, this trope of the angry black woman, it persists,’ she said, while failing to mention the allegations of bullying made against her by royal staff. An absolutely classic markle, as I’m sure you will agree. The duchess has always denied these allegations, and the findings of the inquiry into them have not been made public, so we have no idea if they’re true.
But if what she claims is correct, surely they are perfect exemplars of what she was discussing? That women of colour are sometimes unfairly labelled as troublemakers with attitude when they are only setting out boundaries?
Instead, with actress Issa Rae and comic Ziwe, she discussed how the trope had been applied to them and how TV shows depicting it (broadcast 20 years ago) were appalling.
I hope this empowers the young listeners they want to impress, but it’s hard to see how or why.
 Oh Harry, do Spare us the pity party . . .
Meanwhile, will Prince Harry be doing a bit of markling himself in his new book?
Entitled Spare, his long-awaited memoir will be released on January 10.
The self-pitying title — taken from the saying ‘the heir and the spare’ — puts me in mind of those schoolboy diarists Adrian Mole (written by Sue Townsend) and Nigel Molesworth (Geoffrey Willans).
Harry has much in common with St Custard’s pupil Nigel in particular. Both are disenchanted members of a gothic, depressing and ancient institution from which they want to escape — the Royal Family and St Custard’s prep school are alarmingly similar.
JAN MOIR: The prince has let it be known he is donating around £2 million from the proceeds to charity. Sounds generous, until you realise that the book is being translated into 15 languages and will be sold in its millions around the world
Plus Nigel has disappointing uncles, hem hem. Spare will cost £28 per copy. The publisher calls it a ‘personal and emotionally powerful’ read, which is good to know.
However, at that price I would expect Harry to come round to my house, make the tea and personally tell me once more how traumatising it was when, as a grown man, ‘my father literally cut me off financially’.
The prince has let it be known he is donating around £2 million from the proceeds to charity. Sounds generous, until you realise that the book is being translated into 15 languages and will be sold in its millions around the world.
Still, I’m sure it will be ‘advanced, forthright, signifficant’, which is another topp Nigel joke, as any fule kno.
The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 loses another half a million listeners and I’m not a bit surprised. In the news henhouse, the show has become a shadow and parody of its former self, with a flock of mad and egotistical presenters barely concealing their contempt for the clucking government ministers who are invited on each morning to explain themselves — or else.
These cocks and chicks are exhausting. It is either Nick Robinson or Mishal Husain being silkily confrontational, or — even worse — Amol Rajan being all cor blimey matey with politicians. Meanwhile, the Nick Ferrari show on LBC is superior in every way: informative, amusing, stimulating and with a host who listens politely to all sides, instead of sneering or shouting them down. A relief and a blessing — and he never, ever markles (see left).
JAN MOIR: It is either Nick Robinson (pictured) or Mishal Husain being silkily confrontational, or — even worse — Amol Rajan being all cor blimey matey with politicians
Like millions of us, I had barely heard of BBC newsreader Victoria Wotsit-Nobody until she wrote a long and impassioned essay on why, following divorce, she was taking her mother’s maiden name. She didn’t want anyone to think she was anti-feminist for doing so.
The former Victoria Fritz, nee Trench, will now be known as Victoria Valentine. Fair enough, but isn’t it just that Valentine is a prettier name? Be honest, Vicky! Victoria Fritz sounds like a detangling hair product, while the Victoria Trench could be a drainage solution or a medical condition somewhere private and unspeakable. Call yourself what you want, darling. If no one cares about gender, no one cares about your name.
 Last of the summer whine from AdeleÂ
JAN MOIR: This wine whine must be the ultimate mumrock song and destined to be a hen-party anthem — but is Adele for the rosé or against it? Like the water she bobs around on, it is never quite clear
Hmm, I’m really not sure about that new Adele video for her hit song I Drink Wine. It features the glammed-up singer in a ravishing gold dress floating around a swimming pool on what looks suspiciously like a giant perineum pad, also politely known as a ‘maternity doughnut cushion’. Has she been through a difficult time? It sounds like it. ‘I hope I learn to get over myself,’ she sings, as a platoon of fit young men in swimming trunks push her doughnut around.
This wine whine must be the ultimate mumrock song and destined to be a hen-party anthem — but is Adele for the rosé or against it? Like the water she bobs around on, it is never quite clear.
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