England is fucked!

Yes, we all know coal power is not exactly the stuff of sunny days. It is dirty way of generating electricity that spews ash and acid into atmosphere in copious quantities and leaves even larger quantities of mercury and arsenic laden solid waste to be dumped into substandard landfills.

Nuclear power on the other hand is just lovely. A small amount of actinide can keep a large power station going for years producing nothing but a small amount of contained waste, which, although extremely dangerous when handled irresponsibly, is easily handled.

None of the above makes willful damage of a coal power station on the basis of "I know better than society" acceptable. Yet that is just what a jury has said about Greenpeace's vandalism of Kingnorth power station in Kent.

Yet again, their criminal behaviour is excused because they claim "to have a point to make." It's easy, as many in the blogosphere have done, to knee-jerk against juries for this and claim that pulling proles off the streets to do the business of judgement is a misallocation of talent. But really the problem with the crap jury is not that it was a jury, but that it was crap.

The really serious issue here is that an ugly precedent has been set. From now on, Greenpeacers will be able to run amok in England with impunity causing whatever damage they want to whatever they want and yet get off scot free by simply claiming it was "to protect the environment". They'll attack more power stations, or all varieties. They'll attack cars. They'll attack roads. They'll attack planes. They'll attack ships. They'll attack oil installations. Nothing is safe now because this jury have told Greenpeace that they can do what their heart tells them. The tragedy for England is that Greenpeace's heart has long since been corrupted and now is irreversibly separated from its brain.

Also stemming from this is the exacerbation of the energy crisis. Britain needs new heavy duty power stations; nuclear would be best of course, but maybe a coal unit or two may also be needed. Companies like E.On are the ones that would be providing this. Yet, England seems to be doing everything in its power to make it clear they're not welcome. For a start, the British government is considering expropriating their profits with this windfall tax nonsense, which will send a message that there is nothing to be gained from investing in England. But now, we have the English legal system saying that even if they do decide to make a big investment, it could be attacked and destroyed with impunity by militant environmentalists.

The risk is now too high for very little gain. No need to ask the last person to leave England to turn out the lights. There won't be any lights left.

On the other hand, maybe this is an opportunity. Since it is now precedent in English law that it is okay to cause criminal damage provided it was to prevent more damage elsewhere, surely that means it's okay to torpedo Greenpeace marauder vessels. After all, we're only protecting people's livelihoods by attacking their tools of piracy. Now that's an idea!