Just Stop Oil are far from ‘arrogant’ – we need to be looking at the bigger picture

From gatecrashing Wimbledon to disrupting London’s recent Pride march, Just Stop Oil protestors are working very hard not to be ignored.

But while Keir Stammer has declared them as ‘arrogant’, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton has said he would support a peaceful protest by the group – and a fair few Metro.co.uk readers also believe they have a point.

Here’s what they’re saying in Metro Talk…

‘Where would we be now without similar protests?’

I don’t understand the hostility of writers to this paper (MetroTalk, Mon),Sir Keir Starmer and others towards the Just Stop Oil protesters.

After all, they are just trying to draw attention to the grave and urgent problem posed to all of us and the rest of nature by the burning of fossil fuels.

Where would we be now without the similar protests of the Suffragettes, the anti-Apartheid and civil rights protesters and Mahatma Gandhi and his followers?

These people are doing the same as them – protesting against something dangerous and destructive. They are far from ‘arrogant’ as Sir Keir has called them. Jenny Ochera, West Norwood

‘They are risking their freedom’

I just want to say I find it incredibly sad that people are continuing to have a go at Just Stop Oil protesters.

These are intelligent people, many of them professional people, who are risking their freedom to try to persuade the government and any possible future government to do the right thing, and leave fossil fuels in the ground.

This is what climate scientists have told us we need to do. If the government and opposition would show any commitment to doing the right thing, people would not be demonstrating.

Please, people, we need to start looking at the bigger picture. K Beaven, South Gloucestershire

‘Attacking the messenger won’t solve the problem’

It’s easy to criticise Just Stop Oil but the undeniable facts are that we’re now in a rapidly warming world, due to man-made climate change.

It’s very hard to face this truth but attacking the messenger isn’t going to solve the problem. The suffering coming our way is going to make World War II look like a picnic.

The sooner we realise this the sooner we can force our politicians to take the urgent action needed to avert catastrophe. Helen Elwes, Oxford

And talking of Keir…

Having been guaranteed victory since the financial crisis of September 16, 1992 – Black Wednesday – when hardly anyone had ever heard of Tony Blair, Labour went into the 1997 election promising to stick to the Conservatives’ tax rates and departmental spending limits.

That was not an electoral necessity. It was what Blair and his court, who could have done anything they pleased, actively wanted to do.

Current leader Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow secretary Rachel Reeves have promised the same thing. Again, not because they have to, but because they want to.

What will be the point of a General Election at which both main parties have the same plans for tax and spending?

Once elected, Blair and Gordon Brown surrendered democratic political control of monetary policy with no electoral mandate to do so (by making the Bank of England independent), while Blair, his health secretary Alan Milburn and policy adviser Paul Corrigan brought the privatisation of the NHS from the outer fringes of the think-tank circuit to the heart of government.

Today’s interest rates, not even passed on to savers, are the result of the first measure. Meanwhile, Labour’s 1997 pledge card had promised to abolish the NHS internal market. Those were the opposite of the truth. And here we are again. David Lindsay, Lanchester

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