Just Stop Oil

Let me go out on a limb here. Consider this a confession of sorts. I am often made to feel incredibly uncomfortable by witnessing protests in public, the throngs of placard waving activists shouting the same wearied but eternally needed cliches. I look on and I feel that squirming feeling…

Over the past few weeks, UK climate group Just Stop Oil (JSO below) made themselves international headlines by engaging in some high-profile disruptive actions, including throwing soup over famous paintings and then blocking one of the busiest highways— the M25. …

This week’s roundup of legal news includes fraud, public order, open justice, and the Post Office IT inquiry, as well as recent case law and commentary. — Crime Fraud failure The National Audit Office (NAO) has reported on the government’s Progress combatting fraud, finding in general that there hasn’t been much. The report focuses primarily on the Home Office. The NAO previously reported in 2017 urging the government to do more, after finding that “fraud had been overlooked by government…

You know I like to think I live in the moment? I bore myself with my replies to people which take some variation of that mantra. It is not that I don't mean it, I do, I just suspect they expecting something new. Some things are the same but new…

Not since Andy Warhol graced the New York art scene has soup been such an icon of pop culture. Today, however, the humble appetizer is no longer the subject of art but rather the controversial icon of direct action on art. In recent months, international climate activists have turned museums…

All possible ways to protest for serious climate policies within “the norm” have been tried. There are no options left but to become disruptive. — This column was originally published in Dutch on Joop on November 5th, 2022. Climate protests are taking on new forms. In the past few days an activist from Just Stop Oil glued himself to the protective glass hanging in front of the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, and an…

The small, but definitive, change produced by the UK Climate protest movements. — What We’ve won so far. At the start of October, I attended a JustStopOil march in London. The march disrupted roads, occupied parliament square, and held speeches before setting in to block London bridge. Over the following days, which I did not attend, the protests became more disruptive. …