Extinction Rebellion- let's hear it for those eco warriors.

Extinction Rebellion- let's hear it for those eco warriors.

For what now seems like the umpteenth day, London has been held hostage, ground to a standstill, made to suffer for what it seems to be doing to the planet. It has been gripped in a vice, unable to function, totally blocked and gridlocked. Nothing new there you may think but the truth is that the combined forces of Extinction Rebellion, probably the most powerful set of environmental protesters ever to gather in the heart of the West End in London,  have cut off the veins and arteries of London's vital transport network.

Of course we should care about the future health and welfare of this generation and future generations to come. But the fact is that for the last couple of days, our eco warriors have been responsible for some of the most disruptive and vaguely aggressive demonstrations ever seen on a London street.

In the middle of one of the most volatile periods of political history, surely the time has come to put down all placards and banners if only to restore sanity to everyday living. And yet have they all got a point? Is there indeed a raison d'etre for their anger or are they just trying to ram home a perfectly sensible and logical point? Questions, questions and questions. The fact is that at some point commonsense may well prevail and they'll just go back to what they were doing again before sooner rather than later.

In years and decades gone past the voices of dissent and revolt have always been very visible and prominent presences on the streets of London. At the end of the 1980s there was the famous Poll Tax riot, the cause of so much hostility and division that by the end of the day shop windows had been smashed beyond redemption, bricks and stones had been thrown at huge contingents of police and everywhere there was a scene of bloody carnage.

When the breakdown of order does occur and the civilised voices are completely drowned out by their own noise you begin to question the wisdom and logic behind it all. Today we saw hundreds of protesters tying themselves down to aeroplanes, the fuselages and undercarriages of wonderfully built planes designed to keep the flow of passengers flying out from British shores to global destinations far away.

But for well over a week now these disenchanted and apparently disenfranchised members of the public have taken it upon themselves to stop London. They believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that slowly but surely the healthy existence of Planet Earth is being seriously jeopardised by critical levels of pollution, unbearable toxic fumes from billowing industrial chimneys and what they believe to be lethal poisons in the air.

 And then there's the delicate matter of plastic waste gradually eroding the great seas and oceans. We've been talking about this for seemingly years now but never has the issue been so urgently discussed and analysed by those who would seem to have our best interests at heart.  So they get out all of their instruments of war and conflict, confrontation and fury, barricading themselves in against the very people they believe are strangling the life force of the country with little consideration of the consequences and even less thought of families, communities, towns and cities, the people who matter.

At the moment the whole of the West End of London and now the City airport is now locked down, helpless, surrounded by the rebels and renegades, the unheard majority, the vast, seething masses who shout and bellow, pinning themselves to the ground, vehemently sticking to their guns, raging and ranting, fighting for a fervent cause and then standing firmly for their right to protest. Hundreds of arrests have been made and the democracy which they feel has now been irreparably damaged, has now become the centre of our attention because nobody is listening to them.

But surely the rightful democratic rights of a nation should be heard out or maybe they should be stifled  and then deprived of the oxygen of publicity. Maybe we should all be outraged because we've taken as much as we can. The people in government who should be accessible at all times would rather take up all their time with Brexit, three years of noisy chattering, babbling, waffling, going nowhere in particular, antagonising, putting off, moping, sulking, insulting and finally giving up.

So it is that the main ring leaders and cheer leaders of Extinction Rebellion go on their way, laying on the pavements of the West End of London, grinning and grimacing, struggling and striving, marching and stamping their incensed feet because they have to do what they need to do right now. This has got to stop. Stop the world. Stop those cars, buses, lorries and vans. In fact stop the world. Stop all of those nasty malodorous smells, those evil environmental impostors determined to contaminate all of us, wiping us all out with one monumental stink.

Maybe their deeply rooted fears and paranoias are indeed well founded and the world as they know it will just explode before it's too late to do anything about it. Oh what will become of our civilisation! Is there hope for us? There is an overwhelming sense that Extinction Rebellion may have the most valid and plausible of points. Perhaps they are killing off everything that is so essential and precious to all of us, perhaps they're deliberately threatening our lives with those dreadfully damaging planes. It's hard to tell.

Today though saw yet another example of what can happen when things get wildly out of control. We saw an utter meltdown, hundreds of people banging their drums, blowing their whistles and generally causing one deafening kerfuffle. They stormed the barricades, defied the law of the land and all for reasons that they felt were perfectly legitimate. Their actions were those of the repressed and downtrodden, the brave and the heroic. Let the revolution commence, time to make your feelings well and truly heard across the land. Could somebody tell us why and when exactly it will ever end? Anybody.