The Just Stop Oil protestors who disrupted the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield are lucky Hurricane Higgins is no longer around.
If the temperamental Irishman had still been with us, their infantile orange stunt might have resulted in an explosion of the colourful language he was famed for, and perhaps a bit more beside.
Higgins wasn’t averse to physical confrontation. And instead of being escorted out of the hall by security staff, the two exhibitionists – one of whom who leapt onto a table and threw orange powder all over it – might have found themselves seeing stars, not coloured balls.
And what was the point exactly?
The closest product relationship I can work out to connect snooker and oil would be the slicked back Brylcreemed hair of the debonair former world champion Ray Reardon.
The Welshman was legendarily unruffled at the table. But even he might have lost his cool if he had been confronted by the kind of infantile idiots who want to plunge us back into the dark ages with their campaign to end the use of oil immediately.
There’s no compromise with these fools.
It’s their way or the highway.
But like many other protest groups they are now in real danger of seeing their arrogance backfiring on their cause.
Just Stop Oil – but leave us our mobile phones please
I’m not sure how the childish action of the disruptors is supposed to hasten the end of the black stuff which, like it or not, we still need for a host of everyday activities, such as ensuring there’s food in the shops and medicines in hospitals and pharmacies.
They will argue that their message has attracted widespread publicity – and that interrupting the enjoyment of millions watching on TV is a small price to pay to save the planet.
But their hypocrisy is staggering.
Like the rest of us they likely use every modern product known to humanity, from mobile phones to transport.
Most folk won’t object to their demands for a cleaner greener world. But their timescale is loopy.
If we indulged their madness and stopped oil production tomorrow, we’d be plunged into the dark ages, living like primitive humans without heat and light and readily available food.
But these folk are long past the stage of just being protestors.
They have become narcissists; self-seeking attention seekers glorying in bringing misery to the rest of us, from trying to stop the traffic to attempting to halt the Grand National.
And like the National protestors they have no answers to the most basic questions which would arise if their wishes were implemented immediately.
Grand National activists in same league as Just Stop Oil
On the Nicky Campbell show on BBC Radio Five, a spokesperson for Animal Rising, the group which wants the National outlawed, fell at the first fence when he was asked what should happen to the 50,000 thoroughbreds currently stabled in the UK if racing were to be stopped.
Saturday it was the Grand National.
Today it was Snooker’s turn to experience ‘How to alienate people completely from your cause’.
pic.twitter.com/QlJhCkIc3W— John O’Brennan (@JohnOBrennan2) April 17, 2023
He and his fellow activists have given no thought to the practical realities of closing down an industry which employs 20,000 people in rural areas.
He suggested that we stop breeding horses. And when it was pointed out that this didn’t answer the question of what would happen to the 50,000 cuddies who would be made redundant overnight, he muttered that they could be rehomed in sanctuaries.
Kevin Blake, a racing pundit, pointed out that his ideas would “create the greatest equine crisis and tragedy since the First World War, because thoroughbred race horses are not equipped to be lobbed out in the field and forgotten about”.
But such dilemmas don’t bother the oil or animal lobby.
That’s because the tricky business of finding workable solutions doesn’t provide cheap and free publicity.
Conversation