Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Buy pass

Of all the activist groups, I have found Greenpeace to be the most erratic to follow and/or support consistently.

Protest is very much the bedrock of a free society, and they have dealt in this for decades, pretty much always effectively but not, IMHO, always wisely.

As a rule of thumb, I am not in favour of anything that creates risk, breaks laws, incites violence or, and especially, efforts that selectively target and inconvenience poor schmoes just trying to get on with their lives.

With this latter at least, I usually wonder how the perpetrators would feel if their chance and a holiday or somesuch was ruined by a bunch of others who are often a tad selective about what they do and what they aim to stop.

However, smart ways of raising profile that hit the pockets evenly by being more targeted at corporates and governments (it all ends up back in our wallets no matter what, let's not forget) are, when done well, to be admired.

Hence I think the purchase of a parcel of land in the way of the proposed 3rd runway, to be divided into mini-plots, to be very smart.

Not quite so sure on some of the justifications being used (the spokesperson was very inarticulate and hence less than persuasive in soliciting public support on SKY news just now), and again the choice of celebrity messengers (a few of the luvvies being against this seem quite well travelled, and indeed seem more concerned with what was going on over their West London homes than sea levels in the Maldives), but this is one worth following to see how the various protagonists handle it all (I see Mr. Brown in a dithering funk, the business community tying itself in contradictory 'good for the community' knots and the activists getting more radical and losing public sympathy pretty quickly... all per usual).

BBC - Protesters buy up Heathrow land

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