In the news

Should that nice lady taking her kid to to the hospital be allowed trough the barrier? Nooo... let's attack her.
French petrol heads protesting is like a zombie army of Jeremy Clarkson clones.

https://www.channel4.com/news/protester-killed-during-french-fuel-demonstration

No shit.

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The people protesting were protesting increase in fuel prices? And the people who would benefit, the drivers, were pissed off? Wow. What a world we live in now.

Regardless of what they were protesting about some drivers will be annoyed at being delayed. Their $deity given right to drive is being infringed!

Also, I'm an (occasional) driver and I think fuel prices should increase, but then I can afford it, many can't.

Deep down it's got little to do with the petrol tax hike, although that they have chosen this as their rallying cause is rather revelatory.

http://www.worldtoiletday.info/wtd2018/

so do we curl one at the gates of parliament or what ?

sit down protest ?

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/watch-bill-gates-drink-water-5-minutes-after-it-was-sewage/

i'll bring the grunting sticks

Yeah? So what is the/their underlying cause?
In any case, seems very right wing grassroots to me.

Having water cannon scrapped can only be a good thing, despite the financial loss to London:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/19/boris-johnson-unused-water-cannon-sold-for-scrap-at-300000-loss

From the very brief reports I've read, it sounds somewhat similar to what ended up with Brexit here. People pissed off that politicians are out of touch and not helping them together with laws/taxes that make them feel that their concerns are being ignored. Living in London it's easy to forget how vital cars are for a lot of people and how unavoidable using them is.

Macron came to power seemingly out of nowhere and in an election with a very low turnout. His mandate is weak and he's very much a 'business as usual' president. The issues that attract protests in this kind of scenario are the usual mixture of 'right wing' and 'left wing' causes.

Fuel prices are both, because while more rural areas tend to vote more conservative, many places where poorer 'left wing' voters live also tend to be blighted by poor public transport, and what unites both kinds of voter is that they tend to live where land values are low, which means that they have to travel long distances to access better economic opportunities, whether that means driving to a job or taking agricultural produce to markets. As aggi says, in London you don't realise this so much, but commuting distances in most non-urban places are just shocking. It's not unusual for people to have to drive fifty miles each way.

While rural France has historically been quite well-structured spatially, that is changing (as it is everywhere), with jobs and economic activity disappearing from smaller places and washing up (usually with fewer jobs owing to automation and concentration) in larger places. Exacerbating it is France's comparatively low population density.

At that price surely they may as well kept them.

You never know, if things go south after Brexit, we may need them... or could at least lease them to Belfast.

The movement has no political affiliation and is manifestation of the ras-le-bol of a large proportion of the population against the government and its budget. There's nothing really new here, as the country is yearning for change yet is historically allergic to reform.
I do find it a bit sad that of all the causes worth fighting for the tax on petrol has been chosen as a unifying element, but describing protesters as petrol-heads, or the movement right wing is simplistic and inaccurate. Although the Left is divided over the subject (due to the FN support) Mélenchon and Olivier Faure are in favour of the movement.

Indeed. We'll be needing them to put out the Epping forest fires in a year or two.

Not if we get out there first and keep Epping Forest well raked...

The Beeb has somehow managed to turn the SWR disruption this morning into a 'buy a car' story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46259112

FFS.

"My partner and best friend, attending my ceremony as guests, also only commute via train, and they're stuck in the same boat as me.
"We have no clear way to get to where we need to go.
"I don't know what we're going to do."

Kingston is on the river isn't it ?

They're already stuck in a boat.

This must be related to the fact that so many tiger babies have recently been found in Europe--I remember at least three articles. Careful, don't read the article linked to below while you're eating--fairly gruesome descriptions and graphic pictures:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/19/gruesome-discovery-of-czech-tiger-farm-exposes-illegal-trade-in-heart-of-europe

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46289499

" The UK's best-paid boss, co-founder of online gambling firm Bet365 Denise Coates, has just received another bumper pay rise."

Just the £265mn annual pay. Who says betting is a mugs game ?

"Climate change protestors block a key London road junction and the bloke stuck in the car at the front by the journalists is an angry ruddy-faced Jim Davidson"

Bookies making money shocker.

What's interesting is that the company is still in private ownership, which is why she (and her family) can pay themselves huge dividends (which they'll be taxed nicely on).

Makes a change from people making billions from stock grants (i.e. Zuckerberg et al) or payouts from selling their companies (Whatsapp, PlentyOfFish, etc).