Sometimes when I read what people say about protestors I wonder if the suffragettes would have been locked away as terrorists. They certainly used some violence, including arson. Mary Leigh threw a hatchet at Asquith! It was only because many of them belonged to the higher social classes and the police and courts respected class that they weren’t imprisoned for longer. Even then they were often treated badly in prison.
Seriously, if protesters are peaceful and their cause is just we should surely if not actively support them at least be sympathetic.
I have only stood against something once and that was the Iraq war. A small group of us held a vigil outside the village shop, which was closed.
My brother in his youth was an active protester especially at the height of the miners strike. He witnessed the police violence personally.
The day people stop protesting will either mean we live in Utopia or are completely controlled. Let’s pray it’s the first.
By the way, Mary Leigh was born in 1885 and died in 1978, I would love to know how she lived the rest of her life.
I find it absolutely appalling that people actually list shopping as a hobby.
So different from our childhood when you saved Christmas paper, string etc. as they were in such short supply.
I find your comparison telling.
It is even more amazing that climate change affects everyone on the planet and yet we are not more vocal.
The protesters sitting down and sprayed by police were actually obstructing the entrance to a building
A bank headquarters.
But they were still preventing people with legitimate access their right to enter that building
Jonathan Pie…x 
The people who were protesting in London were blocking roads to people who had a legitimate right to use but were not sprayed in the face with pepper, two totally different ways of policing protesters.
Two totally different countries, the UK police did arrest 106 people on Friday perhaps some of them were the ones blocking the legitimate access of others and were dealt with in a different way. Over 600 have been arrested in London over the week. It isn’t that the Met aren’t dealing with the protesters just have a different way
Of course the suffragettes were locked away as terrorists, they were force-fed when they went on hunger strike, but allowed out if they were too ill so they wouldn’t die in custody, which would have looked bad, then rearrested.
Look up the cat and mouse act.
A senior Met police spokesman on the radio yesterday spoke about “not upsetting protestors eating their lentil quiche” 
Our UK police are lovely in the main 
And for once good on Theresa May for banning Boris’s water cannons .
The Met has said it is very different for them dealing with people who are essentially nice but are breaking the law and this needs to be dealt with
Yes. I didn’t put it well. They were viewed at terrorists at the time but not the terrorists we would think of today. The big difference being they were disenfranchised.
When I was an undergraduate Nelson Mandela was widely accounted to be a terrorist by HM’s govt and the popular press.
At the time he would have been seen as such by certain governments. Often a terrorist is just an enemy of the government. The old IRA, pre 60’s are often thought of very fondly by republicans. A friend of my father’s proudly showed me a photo of her IRA relative, stressing he was old IRA.
Mick, capitalist money is money derived from the work done by working people, like honey is made by bees. It is then sold back to the workers at inflated prices, and used (successfully) to persuade people to accumulate dross and baubles to fill their emotional emptiness .
It used to be called usury, and was regarded as sinful in the Bible (“moneylenders and tax-collectors”).
People protesting against climate change are not trying to persuade the public, they are trying to influence political decision-makers, and they are succeeding, mark my words.Our daughter has joined the protest, is a lentil-eating vegan, has long decided not to have children because the future is desperately unsafe, as have our two sons. This ethical celibacy is a growing trend.
Nothing wrong with tax-collectors… Let’s not forget… “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”…
I think in Biblical times tax collectors were corrupt, but of course we live in an era where tax law is evenly applied to everyone (who can afford the services of DeLoitte, Price Waterhouse Cooper, Jacob Rees-Sprog etc etc) 
Tax-collectors were hated… (much like nowadays)… whatever… the sun is shining… Happy Easter… Peter 
The subtext surely is 'don’t get so caught up in what and how you render to Caesar that you forget to render to God at all. Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.