The Tipping Point

There’s protesting and there’s protesting. Railway workers are taking intermittent strike action every few weeks to protest about what they say has been an inadequate pay offer, as well as threats to their jobs. The far left led Enough is Enough group has been holding protest marches around the country on a range of issues including low pay, high fuel bills and food poverty. Then there is End Private Jets which wants to end private jets, as its name suggests. Yesterday, one of its activists, one Maddie Budd, literally tipped a large container of shit all over the statue of Captain Tom Moore, the centenarian who walked up and down his garden to raise money for NHS charities during Covid-19.  I am not sure if she will attract the kind of publicity she might have hoped for. Why Sir Tom? I wasn’t aware he was a regular user of private jets.  What had he done to deserve this?

“Every time a private jet takes off, it pours a bucket of shit and blood on everything Captain Tom stood for,” said Ms Budd. So, what did Sir Tom stand for? Well, he served his country in the armed forces, he became a travelling salesman (but possibly not travelling by private jet) and he raced motorcycles. I am but a simple man and her argument lost me a bit.

It is quite possible, likely even, that Ms Budd was on a winner with the campaign. The glut of private jets flying from A to B and then onto Z via all the other letters in the alphabet can’t be good for the environment, especially in the midst of catastrophic climate change already visiting upon us some ghastly extremes of weather. I don’t suppose I am doing much to help by flying off on holiday or driving around so I am not without sin, so to speak. But I would be more than slightly upset if someone like Ms Budd tipped a bucket of shit over me, as she did with Sir Tom’s statue. And I’m not convinced such an act would make me more sympathetic to green issues, although to be fair to myself, I do accept the science and fact of climate change.

The statue will be cleaned up and people will be able to remember the old boy with the admiration he so deserved. Ms Budd’s reputation may be sullied for much longer.

Whether it is fair to say she deserves what’s coming when hacks from the red tops start digging into her past and present and her private life is exposed to the world is something else. How much will they enjoy it if she comes from a well-to-do middle class family from the shires and not someone who was raised in the sink estates? You just know, don’t you. Perhaps, this is the time for calm reflection on her part and perhaps an apology? To drill down will keep the pot boiling for as long as the red tops want it to.

Tipping shit all over statues makes no sense at all. I’m not sure it’s environmentally friendly, either.