Just stop oil

Ever since Monty Python created their internecine, bickering and ridiculous groups of freedom fighters – the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front – for their 1979 film The Life of Brian, it’s always been easy and tempting to mock and deride the fissiparous nature of ideologues and tin-pot revolutionaries. Those who believe in the purity of a cause tend to have a semi-religious mindset – and consequently one semi-divorced from reality – which brooks no heresy from orthodoxy. Thus extreme, quasi-cult movements are always prone to split into factions. And so it goes with the radical green movement, which at its worst excesses does resemble a bizarre cult: witness

These are bleak times in our land, and we must take our pleasures where we can. Personally I have been able to find a great deal of consolation over recent days in watching members of the public confronting protestors from the Just Stop Oil movement. There is some especially pleasing footage of van drivers in south London hauling protestors off the roads by the scruff of their necks. The colourful language which accompanies these acts is an additional delight, for the irate British public is not always immune to using words that polite people might deplore. All the videos bring some satisfaction. This week a strange-looking man-child with a comb-over

The National Gallery is home to Van Gogh’s still life Sunflowers. It’s an oil on canvas that, according to the Times, has been valued at £75 million. It is a cherished work of modern European art and one of the most important to come from the post-impressionist movement. This morning, two activists from Just Stop Oil went into Room 43 of the National Gallery and drenched Sunflowers in Heinz cream of tomato soup, before glueing themselves to the wall. One of the young women said:  Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice? The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels. Everyday life has become