Doofus Of The Day #460

Today's award goes collectively to a bunch of eco-protesters in Scotland.

On Wednesday morning activists entered Scottish Coal’s Mainshill Open Cast Coal Site in South Lanarkshire to disrupt coaling operations. As two activists managed to reach and scale a huge 260 tonne 'prime mover' in the bottom of the pit, one of the two biggest machines on the site, other activists there to support them were brutally attacked by Scottish Coal employees and Trustcare Security.

The action lasted for over 4 hours before a specialist police team from Glasgow removed the people occupying the excavator, which was in the process of loading coal from the seam on to dump trucks. Police arrested four people, two of whom were only supporting the action, and all have been charged with aggravated trespass.

Fiona Reed who was at Mainshill said: "We were attacked from the minute we entered the site. At no point were we confrontational or threatening, we just wanted to do the action safely so that no one got hurt. First of all huge dump trucks were deliberately driven at us and tried to box us in, then the excavator driver swung the machine’s bucket at us, blatantly disregarding all health and safety rules. Most deaths and accidents that occur on opencasts are because of how dangerous these dump trucks are. A lot of people’s lives were put at risk. We were then pounced on by workers and site security who punched us in the head repeatedly, threw us to the ground and kicked us in the back. They also stole our video camera."

Jim Slater, another activist at the site said: "We were all threatened with being stabbed by a worker, and the people on the machine were told by an operations manager that as soon as the support had gone they were going to get beaten up. The site manager Steve Griffiths watched all this happen and was totally indifferent to it. Security has no right whatsoever to act like that."

There's more at the link.

Y'know, anyone would think those Scottish workers wanted to actually, like, earn a living, and feed their families, rather than support eco-hippy-loony types! Who'd o' thunk it?

I know the Mainshill mining project has met with a great deal of community opposition, but if people want electricity, they'll need coal to generate it. Wind, solar and wave power won't do it, that's for sure, notwithstanding all the wishful thinking in the world! I also note that one of the protesters expressed their determination to continue such actions, so I suspect we may have more tenderized-protester entertainment in store over the summer months . . .

Peter