Was anything more galling this week than the sight of eco-warrior Zoe Jones in tears when she heard that a man had failed to reach his dying father’s bedside in time to say goodbye because of her protest group’s roadblock?
Extinction Rebellion glued themselves to a bathtub on one of Bristol’s busiest roads, so his 14-mile car trip, usually a 30-minute journey, took three hours.
As she listened to a playback of the man’s harrowing phone call explaining what had happened to a local radio talk show, the tears ran down Zoe’s face. Yet she was unrepentant.
Was anything more galling this week than the sight of eco-warrior Zoe Jones in tears when she heard that a man had failed to reach his dying father’s bedside in time to say goodbye because of her protest group’s roadblock?
True, she apologised. ‘We’re incredibly sorry,’ she said, ‘We didn’t mean for our protest to affect your life in this way . . .’
But then, in the same breath, she insisted they were ‘doing the right thing’. Her emoting looked like crocodile tears to me. Either that, or she is woefully naïve.
Quite apart from the intolerable disruption to hard-working people’s lives, police and politicians have been warning for months that Extinction Rebellion protests could result in deaths because of ambulance crews, doctors, fire engines and police cars being held up in traffic.
Ms Jones says she has to protest because of the ‘climate emergency’ — but what about the people suffering genuine emergencies?
As she listened to a playback of the man’s harrowing phone call explaining what had happened to a local radio talk show, the tears ran down Zoe’s face. Yet she was unrepentant
The movement is actually deeply subversive. They think it gives them not only moral superiority but also freedom to act as they please.
The former head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, Richard Walton, calls the group extremist and says it is trying to break down democracy and the State.
Extinction Rebellion’s founder Roger Hallam has himself said, chillingly: ‘We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose . . . and yes, some may die in the process.’
Quite apart from the intolerable disruption to hard-working people’s lives, police and politicians have been warning for months that Extinction Rebellion protests could result in deaths because of ambulance crews, doctors, fire engines and police cars being held up in traffic
Who does he think he is? What gives him the right to decide what kind of democracy is fit for purpose?
Of course, the younger generation is welcome to protest about global warming and force politicians to act. But their genuine concerns are being hijacked by a bunch of manipulative extremists and anarchists.
Which is why your tears won’t wash I’m afraid, Zoe. Not while your group is prepared to prevent a son from seeing his dying father, and to inflict misery and even death, for its cause.
Thank heavens we do not have a Donald Trump in power in this country, or he might have told our Barbados-born, England cricket star Jofra Archer to ‘go home’, too. And we’d have lost the World Cup.
Jane Seymour, 68, steps out to mark the 100th year of women’s suffrage
Jane defies the FaceApp ageing
Much amusement as celebs post pictures of themselves via the new FaceApp that ages them decades — just as ageless Jane Seymour, 68, steps out to mark the 100th year of women’s suffrage.
What a lesson in natural beauty the ex-Bond girl is — she says she owes it to a strict regime of washing her face with really cold water, exfoliating and using a good moisturiser.
Thank goodness she stuck to it — or she might have ended up looking like this FaceApp created image, which is based on a picture of a young Jane!
Thursday nights in with a bottle of Blue Nun will never be the same again after the final episode of Andrew Neil’s This Week, the finest satirical TV show to grace our screens for decades.
I’ll even miss my old nemesis Michael Portillo — we fell out when I was working for William Hague and I’ve always regretted it.
Sometimes the Beeb really is a booby.
Coleen’s got a lotta bottle
Enjoying a girls’ weekend in Ibiza away from her four sons and errant hubby Wayne, Coleen Rooney got so plastered she tried to open a bottle of wine with her teeth.
There’s something enduringly adorable about curvy Col, gorgeous in a pink bikini showing a little mummy-tummy — a salute to her four pregnancies.
She really is a glorious role model for young mums — and fully deserves her break from looking after five juveniles.
Enjoying a girls’ weekend in Ibiza away from her four sons and errant hubby Wayne, Coleen Rooney got so plastered she tried to open a bottle of wine with her teeth
The icing’s on Mr H’s cake
Baker Paul Hollywood, 53, and his 55-year-old wife Alexandra’s 19-year marriage was dissolved in court in less than a minute on the grounds of his adultery.
The couple appear to have come to a private financial settlement for the estimated £8 million he accrued while they were together.
Given most wives get half, let’s hope Paul’s little barmaid girlfriend, Summer Monteys-Fullam, 24, is worth the millions. No soggy bottoms there — only his.
Coverage of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 has been enthralling and I discovered something new — that Toy Story’s hero Buzz Lightyear was inspired by the second man on the moon, er, Buzz Aldrin. It’s only taken me 24 years to work that one out.
How absurd that Megs and Harry’s garden plans at Frogmore Cottage have been declared a matter of national security. It’s still unknown how much we’ll have to stump up, but they have budgeted £20,000 for plants. Surely they can afford their own rhododendrons.
Ahead of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Kate Winslet says she would have been ‘upset and disgusted’ had she learned there was inherited wealth in her family. That’s privately educated Kate with the £35 million fortune.
Westminster Wars
Some compare Boris Johnson’s campaigning girlfriend Carrie Symonds to Meghan Markle — a breath of modernising fresh air to blow through the stuffy old Tory Party. Jolly good, too.
And at almost half his age, 31-year-old Carrie will probably want baby Borises soon. What joy.
Though he needs to get divorced from his second wife Marina before we formally welcome the third Mrs BoJo.
And square it with his kids. Downing Street is about to become more colourful than Coronation Street.
Without a hint of self-awareness or irony, Mrs May made her last speech as PM, warning Boris Johnson that his populism would leave the Tories in the ‘gutter’ of history
Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer is hotly tipped to become leader if Corbyn does the honourable thing and falls on his pruning fork.
How can we take a man seriously who looks slightly more cheerful than the Addams Family’s manservant Lurch and is named after a drink popular in the Eighties? Kir Royales all round for the Tories if he succeeds.
Without a hint of self-awareness or irony, Mrs May made her last speech as PM, warning Boris Johnson that his populism would leave the Tories in the ‘gutter’ of history.
She called for ‘compromise’ — this from a PM whose leadership has been defined by her total lack of it.
Heartwarming news that Billy Connolly is returning to our TV screens with a three-part travel series having quit stand-up due to his Parkinson’s.
A new beginning for Billy and a message of hope to all those with the disease — that even at 76, there’s life in The Big Yin yet.
Spare Lily a thought
Currently playing an angel in the TV series Good Omens, Michael Sheen, 50, announces his partner Anna Lundberg, 25, is expecting ‘a little angel of their own’.
His girlfriend of several months is already proudly showing her obvious baby bump. Yet spare a thought for his daughter Lily, who at 20 is only five years younger than his new lover.
She’s already had to endure her mother Kate Beckinsale’s forays with men half her age. Talk about selfish parents.