“Prepare to Go to Jail,” Judge Tells Just Stop Oil Art Vandals
Two Just Stop Oil activists have been found guilty of criminal damage for hurling tomato soup at a Van Gogh painting in the National Gallery, damaging its antique frame. The Times has more.
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, both 22, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup at Sunflowers and then glued themselves to the wall in October 2022.
Although the painting, which was completed in 1888 and is worth up to £72.5 million, was protected by a glass cover, the 17th-century Italian frame was damaged by the soup, which acted like paint stripper, Southwark crown court was told. Prosecutors believe the soup may have caused £10,000 worth of damage to the frame.
The pair, who denied damaging property, showed no emotion as the jury announced its verdict after a four-day trial. Judge Christopher Hehir released them on bail before their sentencing on September 27th. Hehir told the activists to come to court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison on that date”.
The maximum sentence for the offence is ten years’ imprisonment. The bail conditions stipulate that they must not carry glue, paint or any adhesive substance in a public place and must not visit any galleries or museums.
The court was told that the pair had visited the museum a day before the incident to carry out reconnaissance and bought the tins of soup from a supermarket.
In a statement read to the jury, Isabella Kocum, a frame conservator, said she was “shocked and dismayed by the extent of corrosion this tomato soup” caused to the “exquisite antique frame”. …
Plummer and Holland said they were taking instructions from someone else in Just Stop Oil but refused to identify the person. …
In her closing speech, Plummer claimed that she was “sounding an alarm bell” on climate change and invoked the example of the suffragettes and the civil rights movement in the United States.
Worth reading in full.
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Yes! I think I am getting a chubby. Make it a long sentence so that they have to do more time before being let out.
The sensible, low-cost way of dealing with these cases given that they glued themselves to the wall would be to leave them glued to the wall where they could slowly wither and die just like… oh, I don’t know…a Sunflower which has shed its seeds.
😀 😀
Marvellous news 👏
‘Only following orders……’
The mendacious, self serving, cry of the fascist over the decades.
Befehl ist befehl!
Considering that we’re already subject to climate change alarm bells ringing 24×7 all over the MSM and that all relevant political parties are in agreement on this, it’s hard to see how vandalism in art museums might cause anyone to notice something about climate change which escaped public attention so far.
It could be that their dictator is already inside, given the outcome of the M25 trial.
If he’s going to jail these scum, why did the Judge allow them bail?
Time to pack?
Time to sh1t themselves!
Or for Daddy to arrange a new barrister.
If their financial backers are willing to write off the bail, this would give them ample time to seek asylum because of political persecution in some part of the world where the UN is more directly in control. I don’t really know where this could be but one of the minor EU member states might already be sufficient for that. This would also make brilliant headlines (from the perspective of the UN): Political protestors against “climate change” forced to flee state terror in the UK to … !
Taking the conspiracy theory one step further: It’s known that the UK judicary is generally on board with the climage change movement. Hence, this might be just what the judge wants: Come September 27th, if you’re still in the UK, I’d have to jail you. Consider your options wisely!
Plummer, who studied at the University of Manchester and represented herself at the trial, told the court that she decided to use tomato soup “because it would stand out” and that it “symbolised the link between the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis”.
And what has caused the cost of living crisis? Any ideas Phoebe?
The two activists denied that they considered the frame when planning and carrying out the protest and told the court that they believed the painting would be protected by the glass cover.
If they didn’t consider the frame and/or believed the painting to be protected this indicates that they are not very observant or motivated to be observant. As that is the case then what makes them think that they can lecture anyone on anything, especially something as complex and chaotic as the interplay of Earth’s multiple climate systems with the spin of the earth and it’s eccentric journey round a massive nuclear star.
The article in The Times ends with:
…Last week Sir Keir Starmer faced calls to intervene in the case of the activists, known as the Whole Truth Five, while the United Nations human rights commissioner described the terms as “deeply troubling” and “disproportionate”.
How to deal with righteous delusion on this scale?
I should have highlighted the UN’s involvement in this case. They have shown their hand and it is absolutely not benevolent. The activists are useful idiots and will ultimately end up in the gulag along with everyone else.
The UN is the enemy. They still want to tear up the Paris agreement on the grounds that “all our predictions have been wrong” and get something much more Net Zero aggressive instead. That’s their usual mode of operation: Gibt man jemand den kleinen Finger, dann will er die ganze Hand (German proverb, If you give a little finger to someone, he’ll come back for the whole hand) and the only sensible way of dealing with this is Never give them anything.
These people aren’t stupid. They know they’re running a racket based on lies at the expense of the taxpayer who’s supposed to get royally shafted in the course of it.
How on earth did something so simple take 4 days to decide? They were filmed doing it. There is only one verdict and there is no room for debate.
Lovely dig by the Judge, who also sentenced the other JSO Five, that they should prepare themselves ’emotionally’ for a prison sentence.
How long should they get and how long should they actually serve? I’d say a sentence of 6 years and absolute minimum term of 3.
The basic fact is that these terrorists. let’s call spades spades here, are costing you and me one hell of a lot of money. We shell out for security on their marches, petrol in their traffic jams, higher charges at the places they damage. Peaceful protest is fine but deliberately disrupting peoples lives is terrorism.
We have terrorism laws so use them for more than sneaking on peoples bins!
I’d give them the full 10 and hope they have to serve the lot. Since they will then be 32 or thereabouts, it might limit their opportunities for breeding another generation of selfish, indoctrinated parasites on society.
Neither are what might be called Miss World possibles are they?
If the self righteous activists keep getting away with this stuff then their extremism will simply become worse till people get hurt or worse killed. ———When you believe things that are mostly untrue which is all based on faith and emotion rather than any facts or reason you are capable of all manner of dangerous acts.
“Judge Christopher Hehir…told the activists to come to court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison…”
Many years ago, at a time when UK football hooliganism was in the world news, a taxi driver in Singapore took me on a tour of the island, and drew up outside a large grim 19th-century brick building. It was Changi jail. ‘No hooliganism in Singapore,’ he stated with an air of triumph. ‘You get the cane here, you don’t sit down for six months.’
With our prisons full, and offenders little deterred by the thought of a little comfy custody at the public expense, maybe it’s time to look East and rediscover how we used to deal with juvenile delinquents. Maybe Judge Hehir should have told them to prepare not to sit down for 6 months.
Liberal progressives and mamby pamby social justice is destroying the west. These people do their eco terrorism here because they know we will let them away with it. In China they would not dare, because they know they would end up in the gulag.
These silly little twits look like the kind of irritating brats in the street that keep kicking the ball over your garden and hurling abuse at you when you dare to say “give it a rest”. They are too young to know anything about climate or energy, and what they do know comes exclusively from scaremongering globalist politicians with an agenda that has more to do with socia justice, equality, fairness, and all the other communist garbage rather than anything to do with science. ——-The science itself is actually very simple. The sun sends down its heat and some gets radiated back to space, where some will be trapped by greenhouse gasses the largest being water vapour, and CO2. ——–But there is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate, and levels of CO2 in the past have been 10 times higher and the idea comes entirely from climate models full of assumptions and speculations where many of the basic parameters in the model eg how clouds work are UNKNOWN. Is it any surprise therefore that all of the expensive models have so far been totally wrong? ——–It should also be noted that the IPCC… Read more »
I loathe that spoilt rich kid, Phoebe. Might be pleasant to have her out of the way for a while. As for saying she was taking instructions from some other person she “gallantly ” refused to name, well tough. You take the fall then as you were the one willing to do the damage.
The Suffragettes did not campaign for universal female suffrage, common working class women weren’t considered to have enough intelligence to be able to decide about political issues and how best to vote.
They were Middle Class with nothing better to do. Sounds familiar.
Annie Kenney, the famous Oldham suffragette was not middle class, she was a mill (cotton, Oldham was known as King Cotton) worker and started at age ten.
It is good news that these two are going to jail, but it made me think of the much larger scale criminal damage that is being perpetrated by the government, namely the desecration of the English landscape planned by Ed Milliband. The Van Gogh was protected by glass, but there is no protective shield for the land. Once it is covered by wind turbines and solar panels, we may lose it for good. A country that loses its land is a country that loses its soul, at least so the Maoris of New Zealand thought. Milliband should go to jail for eternity for his criminal damage.
Not jail, too expensive, no room. Tender judicial consciences must accept that corporal punishment has to come back. Not the least of its advantages is that we can afford it.
As for the entailed reversion to savagery, we are in the savage state now, We have rampant lawbreaking without fear of the law, which is savagery. If we want to be civilised again we have to end impunity for lawbreaking.
I say to anyone who blanches at the thought of 6 of the best for throwing soup on the Van Gogh, good! That’s how you should feel in a civilised society. Don’t throw the soup and you won’t get the cane.
As for the abysmal windmills, we cannot even rely on market forces to remove them when the climate scam finally ends. Apparently, they have no scrap value.