Worcester

What you may find immoral others may not, surely the law should protect those who engage in lawful activerty?

Many dislike animal testing but how many of us reject the drugs which such research has provided? And is it moral for a tiny minority to stop such research thus denying everyone access to future drugs?

flyingcrazy

Yes!

flyingcrazy

Are you sure you are not getting confused with Scotland? I thought England and Wales had trespass laws, you cant wonder onto the Queen's land like you can up here!

stut

England and Wales do, but it's a civil, rather than criminal offence.

However, there's still a whole load of byelaws applicable to Heathrow.

UKtravelbear

No I'm not confused.

I did check before posting that comment e.g. this one for example states

As that link states there however is criminal trespass where it is an offence to trespass on crown land but LHR isn't crown land.


From other posts there does appear to be a separate offence of aggravated trespass but I'm not going to get in to an argument whether or not it is applicable in this case.

Anyway it would be up to the CPS to decide to charge people with it or for HAL to bring a civil claim and not flyer talk posters

Calchas

If it's a crime we could bring a prosecution ourselves

Worcester

Rather wonderfully these idiots are going to get their comeuppance, they have been found guilty and the judge has warned them they are going to get a jail sentance

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/25/heathrow-climate-protesters-found-guilty-of-aggravated-trespass

Calchas

There will be an appeal I am sure

Worcester

They don't appeal to me much, if they were serious about climate change they would be doing this in China, or protesting for nuclear power.

The coming Smart grid will save more Carbon than these silly protests, why not start companies which develop or at least install smart grids. If they have that much time on their hands become solar panel installers and really make a difference. Agitate for electric car points and self drive cars. A low carbon economy does not mean having to go back to the stone age.

Calchas

I agree with you (in part: I am not convinced that "smart" grids will achieve anything except improving billing efficiency and better price discrimination) but I doubt the ruling by a DJ will go unexamined by a higher court.

Worcester

With a much wider distributed network of generators with a significant input of variable renewable the smart grid will have a big impact. I am sure you know that they key technology is being able to send information down power lines. As electricity prices fluctuate devices will turn them selves on or off. I am sure that the market will come up with new ideas, fridges which store cold like a storage heater stores heat, a car which only charges when the price of electricity is below a preset level. This will even out demand reducing the base load requirement, making electricity much more efficient. I know I sound such a geek, but this stuff is exciting, it's also practical.

Mizter T

If the third Heathrow runway gets the go-ahead, then the court system could well get completely clogged up with the cases of protesters, and not just those who fit middle England's idea of what a protester looks like...

Calchas

My view is that this is fiddling at the edges, not creating a revolution. Fridges do not use a great deal of power but if one has just put in a load of warm shopping, it needs to be working now. (There are also some thermodynamic restrictions that make producing a cold reservoir inefficient compared to creating a hot reservoir.)

If one needs an electric car charged, one presumably wants it ready for use sooner rather than later, in case there is some urgent need to use it. I can see something in the electric car charging being delayed but for now I don't think electric car charging demand is very large.

Particularly large energy users are already told when they can and when they cannot use the grid. These are the consumers that really make the difference, but they just use the telephone to get that information.

There are going to be some cases when yes we are willing to delay our electrical consumption to another time. But my suspicion is that on the whole the demand shape will not change much but the average cost will go up, and pricing will become highly unpredictable as the energy companies have an excuse to charge you more during the peak periods.

We used to have this demand-price management with economy-7, and most people seemed to feel it was not worth putting their washing machines on a timer to run overnight in order to save a bit of money.

Markie

Of course it may be a suspended sentence. The maximum appears to be 3 months based on what I could find yesterday.