In the history of virtue signalling entities, there’s a new kid at the party. Uninvited, and largely unwanted, much like salmonella ridden vol-au-vents, Just Stop Oil are in the house, cue meaningless soundbites designed to make protestors feel better about themselves, which, in the cold light of day, do nothing to evoke change.

Think ‘Hope, not hate’ and ‘be kind’. Both of those, roughly translated, mean ‘fall in line with my narrow-minded world view or we will come for you with a fury and vengeance not seen since the resistance blew up the death star’. And then, during a lull, and amid a cost-of-living ‘crisis’, (which is a word that does not cut the mustard in way of explanation of the financial havoc being wrought on all bar the super-rich), along comes a virtuous bunch of millennial dirtbags hell bent on causing misery in the name of the environment.

Again, the devil is in the detail, and they are bereft of any detail. Are we amid an environmental crisis? Check. Are we aware of this crisis and our role in attempting to stem the forthcoming Armageddon? Double check. Do we need a cacophony of rag tag, over emotional hypocritical virtue signallers to ‘school’ us? Nada.

The protestors hit, for four days, stretches of the M25 around London Colney, Kings Langley and South Mimms and I was directly affected, as thousands of those reading this were. My wife had to cancel her art classes at local primary schools leaving some upset kids and her losing income. In the great scheme of things inconsequential but replicate that thousands of times for the lady who missed her mother’s funeral, the truck drivers who were delayed in getting home to see their families and the emergency vehicles scuppered in their attempts to save lives, and the nastiness and pure self-indulgence of their actions becomes clear.

The story which summarised their stupidity came on the Wednesday, when a group of protestors were stopped and arrested in Kent. As they drove a car. Which uses oil. Not ones for irony, there was no explanation given for their ‘misstep’ and online the abuse and rightful ire was damning, with but a few dissenting voices who had believed the written on the back of a fag packet rhetoric.

The truth is those supporting the protestors, and the protests themselves, advocate the use of public transport, which uses oil, as their wear their shoes (produced in a far-flung gas guzzling factory) which are then transported to their homesteads in diesel spewing trucks as they remonstrate on energy hungry social media. The virtue signal is nothing but self-gratification you see, and the feeling of belonging to a group, no matter how renegade. In lieu of a motorcycle gang or football team to pin their colours onto, they choose a gantry, superglue, road closures and a photographer from the nationals to feed their self-righteous egos.

The world’s biggest polluters, by a country mile, are China: Now if they really wanted to effect change, they would not be throwing (oil based) paint over priceless works of art or blocking transportation arteries but travelling over the great wall to remonstrate with the organ grinder, not us monkeys. But they will not do that, will they? As they are aware they would inevitably face the wrath of the regime, and soon be serving a lifetime of hard labour in a ‘re-education camp’, so it’s a no brainer: Protest where the punishments don’t fit the crime, and that is where we need to redouble our focus, as a ten stretch in Strangeways for such rank idiocy would arguably be deterrent enough….