This smug and selfish mob are more ego than eco

ENVIRONMENTAL activists Insulate Britain are calling a halt to their campaign of disruption until October 25. So if you want to bowl round the M25 without some goateed git in hi-viz gluing himself to your bonnet, now’s the time.

Some think the hiatus is because the climate protesters are running scared, what with increasingly furious motorists manhandling them off the roads, while the petrol tank of public sympathy is running on empty. Or perhaps the obvious futility of their actions is finally beginning to dawn? Hardly.

Much as I hate to be the seagull of cynicism once again dumping my guano on to the cliff face of a noble cause, isn’t this pause simply because it is half-term in England around then? And far more likely that Insulators are laying down their cudgels and tubes of glue to enjoy one last week of sunshine at their gite in the Dordogne or second home in Cornwall? Or perhaps they’ve been roped into babysitting the grandchildren, as per.

Shortly after the lull, IB promise to make themselves known at the United Nations COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, where one suspects the usual roadblocking hostilities will be resumed.

I’m looking forward to that. If they honestly think Glaswegians are going to put up with their disruptive nonsense for five minutes, then they really are on another planet — one that is beyond saving.

In the meantime, protesting seems to be a game to them, although it is increasingly clear to everyone else that sooner or later, someone is going to get seriously injured or killed. And it is hard to dismiss the notion that perhaps this is exactly what Insulate Britain want; the terrible wound of martyrdom to lend a sick glory to their cause.

WHEN it comes to this motley band, I try to be reasonable. To consider the views of others, to listen to their arguments. Yet with Insulate Britain and their mother ship, Extinction Rebellion, the red mist soon descends.

Over this last fraught summer, they lost me at hello officer, I’m not budging. They lost me at stopping people from going about their lawful daily business. And then, by refusing to move aside for ambulances or desperate drivers trying to reach sick relatives, they lost any shred of decency that was left.

The actions of these selfish activists are completely unforgivable — but they don’t care whom they upset, so long as they get their smug mugs on television or in the newspapers.

And they are of a certain type, aren’t they? White, middle-class, usually retired. Posh, educated, entitled. People who have spent much of their lives telling others what to do — from behind a desk to behind a misguided sense of moral superiority. They are the kind of people who worry about the size of your energy bills, but not their own.

Clearly, they don’t empathise with the pressure of having very little money. Or they would understand just how desperately some of those thousands of people stuck on motorways around London needed to make that appointment, hit that deadline, get to work on time.

In their persecution of the working classes, the posh crusties don’t give an organic fig about any of that.

When they were called to arms, these men and women put down their Sudoku puzzles, switched on the Aqua-Magic watering system for the rhododendrons, promised themselves they would use the tumble-drier less, stacked fresh logs for the wood-burning stove, popped another windfall apple pie in the chest freezer and took to the roads around the capital to unleash hell.

Look at them as they glue themselves to the Tarmac, lips pursed in a righteous moue of ethical arrogance, toasty and snug in their quilted Uniqlo jackets and heavily padded saviour complexes.

The protesters enthusiastically staged their 13th roadblock this week, sickeningly triumphant to have evaded meaningful censure or punishment by the Government so far. They are not frightened by Priti Patel’s threats or by injunctions that could cause havoc with work or family commitments. Why? Because they don’t have any!

To give credence to their actions, Insulate Britain’s scaremongering spokesperson Liam Norton claims that within a decade the fuel crisis will be so catastrophic there will be no food. Not even ice lollies to help us through heatwaves that will ‘not be survivable’. And insulating our homes is going to stop all this?

If loft lagging is so fundamental to the survival of the human race, why hasn’t Norton bothered to insulate his own home? If the planet is in such dire straits, why don’t Insulate Britain do something practical instead of sitting in the middle of the road?

Workshops, education, fundraising for insulation for poorer households? If the sands of time really are running out in the desert of climate despair, why waste a second ornamenting the middle of the motorway like useless garden gnomes?

Don’t just sit there and blame the Government, do something! The whole of humanity is in jeopardy.

PART of the great hypocrisy that bedevils this utter shower is that they indulge in the manipulative use of shame and guilt to try to justify their actions — but absolve themselves from all responsibility.

Somehow, as they once more glue their buttocks on to the fast lane of futility, they propound the myth that everyone else has been degraded by the consumption of energy and first-world privilege, while they alone have grown strong.

I’d dearly like to insulate myself from the annoyances of Insulate Britain, but I fear it is already far, far too late for that.