Wednesday
May062015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill There's something about Bristol
May 6, 2015 Climate: Parliament Energy: gas Ethics There is a really violent undercurrent to this election:
Vandals targeted a Conservative MP days before the election by deliberately flooding her garden with 1,300 litres of sticky oil.
Last week cars belonging to Ms Leslie and her elderly father Ian, 70, were daubed with paint and the words 'Tory Scum' were scrawled along the bodywork.
Charlotte Leslie has written about her shock at finding that vandals had punctured the oil tank in her garden, causing her parents' entire heating supply for the year to seep into the ground.
The thuggery seems to have been prompted by Ms Leslie's support for unconventional oil and gas development. In other words it's the environmentalists again.
Reader Comments (72)
'I can do whatever I like because I'm an environmentalist' seems to be the latest balaclava wrapped round the Trotskyist heads of those who once posed as hunt saboteurs, then animal rights turds. A few years in prison usually knocks the stuffing out of 'idealists'.
A cowardly act of aggression & vandalism, what a surprise!
I expect they are considered brave heroes by the limited number of limited minded individuals.
You're forgetting that environmentalists are 'good'.
Therefore anyone doesn't agree with them is 'evil'.
Therefore any action is excusable.
I'm afraid this sort of thing is only the beginning.
Has this happened before, in Bristol?
You dont see anyone going around daubing Labour or even Green Scum on anything.
Maybe we should ?
Nothing worse than left wing fascists, isn't that how Hitler started off ?
Do I think they’re Nazis?
Yes, I nailed my colours to that particular mast a long time ago, most recently in the final part of the “know your enemy” series which you can find here. They attempt to hide behind Godwin’s so-called law, but if they want to tattoo labels on people like Nazis, turn up with burning torches outside people’s homes in the dead of night like Nazis, witch hunt through academia for opposition like Nazis and dehumanise all resistance like Nazis, then that’s what they are – Nazis. I see them with clear eyes for exactly what they are and make no apologies for that judgement. It’s they who should hang their heads in shame.
Are they fascists
The green brownshirts strike again.
Pointman
Nasty I can understand... sort of, but how illogical can you be to protest potential pollution with genuine, actual pollution?
It makes a change for the Tories to be targets of the environmental and left wing thugs. It is usually UKIP supporters that are targeted as shown here and here, to give just a couple of examples.
Not to worry, Bristol's crack police investigation team is on the case. A solution is nigh:
'When the officer looked at the tank, there were some holes which had been drilled in quite low in the tank. They could have been deliberate."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3070285/Tory-MP-car-vandalised-discovers-yobs-drilled-holes-outdoor-fuel-tank-flooded-garden-1-300-litres-oil.html#ixzz3ZNAnreMj
@pointman
...They attempt to hide behind Godwin’s so-called law, but if they want to tattoo labels on people like Nazis, turn up with burning torches outside people’s homes in the dead of night like Nazis, witch hunt through academia for opposition like Nazis and dehumanise all resistance like Nazis, then that’s what they are ...
I also have a problem with Godwin's law. The problem is that I don't see Nazis as intrinsically and horrifically evil - something special in the field of horror. I think that they were just fairly normal people, doing exactly what most humans can be brought to do with sufficient persuasion.
Look at the Milgram experiments. Most people can be made to torture and slaughter other humans, sometimes with very little encouragement. So long as we keep pretending that the Nazis were unusual and unique, we avoid realising that the capability for doing this exists in EVERY society and that, given the right conditions, you could be reporting your neighbours to the state security apparatus for suspicious, probably illegal attitudes. In some ways the West is already quite far down that road...
TinyCO2
Had the owner of the tank spilled a thousand litres of oil accidentally the Environment Agency would be on the case. As it was green protestors then there is no problem.
Bish: I figured you'd pick this up when I read it in the DT. I do hope plod are clever enough to find the blog and the entry quoted in the story: "Tires were punctured to put a brake on the race further to the right." - seems to me to be obviously written by an American. I hope his IP address is in this country though...
SandyS, if it comes to court, these vandals will be described by Greenpeace as experts in public engagement, media liaison and police advisers on environmental pollution.
Anyway, let's make sure the Greens get stuffed at the ballot box - vote UKIP!
PTF
Taking this back to the human dimension, imagine what it would be like for you and your 70 year old father to get up in the morning and find that this had happened.
What is wrong with these people?
Is anyone surprised by the bahaviour of the environmentalists and their cohorts the silent (it wasn't me guv) climate "scientists"?
Mindless violence and cowardice the hallmarks of CAGW.
@Dodgy Geezer
Milgram is a sad comment on our nature. We have to bite down and recognise it and still try our best. A little bit of knowledge about us can be so hard on ones natural optimism. So often when I've seen people in bad situations, I've seen a selfless goodness come out.
The real bastards
Pointman
Any reaction from the Green Party, Friends of the Earth, or Greenpeace yet? Have journalists from the main stream media actually been asking spokespersons from those organisations for their reactions? If not, why not?
This is such a combination of stupidity and malice that it shouts out Greens. I do hope that if the perpetrators are caught they are charged not just with criminal damage but say attempted arson or something equally serious with a long term inside. It is despicable.
I am watching the news on BBC1 and there was an item a couple of minutes ago about the leader of the Green Party campaigning in Bristol earlier today. Of course there was nothing about the green vandalism directed against the Conservative candidate.
Just checked the BBC and Guarniad websites, no mention at of this story on either. What a surprise!
Mayday 7. Election 2015 Fen Beagle Cartoon...
https://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/mayday-7/
Talking about the election
Who should win ,Tories with a small majority.
Who will win ,Tories with a small majority.
Cameron made the best move not appearing on the second leaders "challengers" debate.Cameron raised himself above the other minor parties and finally appealing to the public that was already sick of endless bed hopping cosy coalition talk.
Nigel should have blown it out too.
It what happens when you give groups like greenpiss carte blanche. Every other enviro nutter thinks it's OK to behave like a terrorists. This behaviour will continue until Europe, and it is mostly Europeans, starts treating these incidents as terrorist attacks. More so when they attack power stations.
Someone's got to point it out so I will.
We don't know that this vandalism was done by Greens. It could be anyone who isn't Tory.
It could be the Communists, the Socialist Workers, disgusted UKIP ex-Tories...
It might just be a non-political thug who has an axe to grind with this MP.
Let's not generalise from a crime to imagining a criminal class.
I've heard that Bristol West has a particularly left wing variety of Lib Dems who cannot forgive the leadership for entering a coalition with the Conservatives, whom they hate. As a consequence, support for the Green party in the area seems to have soared.
As the title of this post says, there is something about Bristol. There is something about fanatical environmentalists too.
@M Courtney: "We don't know that this vandalism was done by Greens. It could be anyone who isn't Tory."
Unfortunately, your theory is not supported by fact, these latest attacks appear to be part of an ongoing campaign against Ms Leslie by local "anti-frackers". This, for example, from January:
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Fracking-protesters-daub-offensive-graffiti-MP/story-25944510-detail/story.html
Green = Nazi.
No more to be said. The modus operandi demonstrates.
Fen: Great cartoon! Your Professor-ship can't be far away.
"We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work."
Guess who.
If these 'terrorists' really were Greenpeace then they will be shot by their own lot! Do they not know that contentious issues are not to be discussed in this campaign?
What have we heard about defence, climate change, immigration (no really), the EU and energy?
Interestingly Cameron stopped talking about immigration targets just when Nigel discovered that the EU had decided to take control of that issue. Cameron has also stopped talking about defence at about the same time as Merkel and Juncker have called for an EU army and some people here actually support Cameron?
According to today's DT; if there was a really serious emergency we could muster a massive 30 fighter aircraft to defend the country, ye gods!
It's a general anti-Tory phenomenon that is particularly acute among the younger generation I think and not confined simply to environmentalists. I call them the Facebook generation.Dumb and irrational and imbued with self-entitlement. I have noticed it since returning from 10 years abroad. The country is f*****.
Dung, 9:22pm: "According to today's DT; if there was a really serious emergency we could muster a massive 30 fighter aircraft to defend the country, ye gods!"
Nooo, we just sent four of them off to the Baltic, to show solidarity with our East European allies.
I usually avoid threads where commenters rant about Trotskyists and leftwing fascists, but Pointman has a point. He's ready to call the Green activists Nazis and explains why at length.
I've used the term “ecofascist” in the past and then apologised. One day I'll explain why.
When Tim Ball in an article at WUWT quoted Hitler at length, causing Richard Betts to take his ball and walk off the pitch in a huff – an event which I take to be a spectacular own goal for sceptics – I got to wondering: What is it about climate activism that makes us think of fascism? Is it the poverty of our own historical knowledge that makes us refer to the one big bad movement we all know about? Greens don't march in uniform singing patriotic songs. They don't burn books or lock us up. (Sometimes one among them will suggest the possibility of locking us up in a discussion on Youtube that typically gets viewed by a few hundred people. We are not yet even at 1923, let alone 1933.)
I think Pointman is badly, dangerously wrong about Greens being Nazis. We don't live in a world where rival political factions naturally take to the streets to beat each other up. Green policies have less support among the population than antisemitism and revanchard nationalism had in Germany in the 20s, yet they are supported (in whispers) by all the major parties – above all by the most important party, the SNP.
The position of Greens seems to me to be closer to that of Christianity circa 300 A.D., which was adopted by the governing elite of a Roman Empire in terminal decline, while the great majority of the population remained indifferent.
MCourtney is right to counsel prudence about attributing this attack. Yes, it's nasty, but it's not Kristallnacht.
geoffchambers: Kristallnacht occurred when carbon dioxide was officially designated a pollutant.
Harry Dale Huffman (May 6, 2015 at 10:54 PM)
Several thousand died on Kristallnacht. No-one dies when Western politicians or climate scientists say something stupid. This is why comparisons with Nazism are ill-founded. The Western world has changed irremediably for the better in the past 80 years. Our governments may do nasty things, but they won't murder us. Suggesting that they will plays into the hands of those like Professor Lewandowsky who states publicly (most recently in a 43 minute discourse on John Cook's “Spot a Denier” University of Queensland course) that we climate sceptics are paranoiacs sufferering from a victim complex.
Geoffchambers, Real people are really being abused and attacked, yet your attitude is: "move along now, there's nothing to see". If the attacks were the other way round - Conservatives and UKIP supporters verbally abusing or physically attacking Greens and Labour - we wouldn't be able to move for the condemnations and charges of Nazism.
Every time an established Labour or Green politician, for example, says "UKIP are racist" (and I have been present when that has occurred) it gives permission to the bigoted, thuggish, socialist or enviromentalist minority to take it one stage further. And they do.
It is ironic that Labour is getting a taste of their own medicine in Scotland, and surprise, surprise, they don't like it.
@geoffchambers. 10:34pm: "MCourtney is right to counsel prudence about attributing this attack. Yes, it's nasty, but it's not Kristallnacht."
As previously pointed out, this is not a single attack on this individual and her family; but a repeated campaign that anti-fracking greenies have already put their hands up to.
@Dodgy Geezer
Indeed.
Budgie
Budgie, well, and bravely said! it is the arrogance that amazes me, we appear to have a new species 'homo superbus' arrogant man? All knowing man, who can control the temperature of this planet.
Budgie (May 6, 2015 at 11:18 PM)
No, my attitude is not: "move along now, there's nothing to see", but rather: “we don't know what we're seeing”.
As a left-winger, I'm willing to admit that “the left” has this unpleasant tendency towards intolerance. The right can be similarly nasty, but since right wing views have been triumphant for decades, it's less evident.
Just wait until some powerful force in Western Europe suggests that the rich are too rich for the good of society, that organised labour should have its say in running the economy, that pointing missiles from Faslane at Moscow is possibly not the best way of convincing Putin of our pacific intentions – then we'll see how many right wing libertarians want to free up investment from stupid green schemes to help the poor Africans. Rightwing politicians from Thatcher to Milliband have dominated the political agenda for over 30 years. THere are signs from Greece, Spain, and elsewhere that this may change.
I'm sorry I can't take part any more in this interesting discussion. I'm off to Paris to look at old paintings. In a sane world I'd suggest you all should do the same, or, like geronimo, go to blues festivals in deepest France. The world is not sane, but I wish you all well.
As a foreigner looking in, I'm interested to see what tomorrow brings.
Fair warning, I'm a heterosexual male whos trigger words are "climate change", "gun control" and "rape culture"; I'm rooting for Nigels lot.
The silence of the left. Particularly, pertaining to a myriad of monstrous crimes against humanity - was and still is deafening.
Selective memory Geoff, not again?
And a cornucopia of contradiction and paradox for the "progressives", where prejudice abounds when all they can talk about is "fairness" but fairness for the British - oh not on your life. Piety and hypocrisy, lab MPs to sit in a hall where an audience is segregated when all they spiel is about "equality"!
Aye, during the 70s - the left never spoke up against the IRA bombing campaigns and today they are loth to condemn the Charlie Hebdo murderers, and remember the silence and muted censure of the killers of Lee Rigby?
That pathetic song 'celebrating' Margaret Thatchers' death? Puerile - doesn't come close to describing that sort of witless stupidity.
The left wing teachers unions, the left wing academia and throughout the educational establishment and with their agitprop have conditioned school kids for a generation and a half to accept the doctrinal pap of Political correctness. Latterly, eco guff - is taught that it outweighs all else, thus breaking the law to halt new build coal fired stations, stopping drilling, coal trains - hey that's all good, great stuff strike one for GAIA and another one for moral compass gone haywire.
And when the lines are drawn, when the chips are not in their favour - take a look at the suffering and threats this lady suffered for speaking out, I tell you, it shames the nation.
Silent - is consent to many lowlifes and now there are so many wound up stupid people, what happens next could be truly frightening, when there is no respect for the law but when worse than that, when the law is complicit - where then?
When the left combines, shuts it's eyes with the complicity of the authorities of law enforcement what can happen?
Widespread abuse, flagrant criminal behaviour flourishes, ref; Rotherham, Sheffield, Derby, Blackpool, Rochdale, Manchester, Leeds and 20 other towns and cities - can happen.
And anyone who says nay, becomes a legitimate target - that's how the left works.
To understand all is to forgive all, as they say. You have to see both sides of the argument. I don't. Just fight or get out of the way of those prepared to do so. Me and God will have a discussion on the finer points of morality afterwards and I'm prepared to answer for my actions. At some point, you have to do something.
The big green killing machine: They sit with God in paradise.
Pointman
@geoffchambers; 12:10 am: "I'm sorry I can't take part any more in this interesting discussion. I'm off to Paris to look at old paintings."
Just like Mr A Hitler did in 1940, glad to see you socialists are keeping up your traditions, although in your case you're a month early.
Yep I echo @geoffchambers & MCourtney
- Simplistic activists prefer to see the world it as black and white . us vs them
- The real world is full colour complex, and we skeptics appreciate that
we do not see it as a false dichotomy : The Animal Liberation Front and RSPCA are not the same.
Yes parts of Green/left do both often express totalitarianism but to compare a few bits of vandalism with the murdering of 6 million people is severely distateful.
So although I understand where Pointman is coming from, people are right in saying such opinions can be used to dismiss us .."look at those loonies , they just call us Nazis"
We understand the that there is context, there is perspective, that things are full colour complex, that often there is a need to say "I don't know"
... whereas others give in to see the world with simplistic over certainty ..and that is why they are so often wrong.
A bit too much wild extrapolation here. A bunch of anti-fracking illiberal fanatics spilling oil somehow quickly morphed into an argument that all lefties and greens are Nazis. Godwins effect indeed! Funny that Nazis are usually considered right-wingers because the first victims of them were the real socialists, then gays, gypsies, Jews and communists etc. How right-on lefty of them! Oh wait.....Of course the only real underground resistance to these b*stards was from the communists and it was the communists who were most responsible for defeating them. Some of you guys need to read a book from time to time, as you sometimes sound just like the frothy-mouthed, swivelly-eyed, ill-educated old farts that lefties paint you as. Blogs - and scepticism as a whole - is judged on the this snapshot perception.
I wonder how many fracking wells it takes to produce this amount of pollution?
James but the communists killed millions of socialists they also sent Gays , gypsies and Jews to die in droves in Gulags and purges so are they also 'right wing ' ? they also were more then happy to sign up with Hitler and when that went belly up to take billions in aid off the allies to survive long enough to fight back ! mind even then they were happy to feed information to our enemy's if it served their purpose and to stand by and watch the Nazis destroy Warsaw !
I have great respect for the Russian man and woman but non for the communists they were just Nazis with better PR !