As if things in Westminster weren't turbulent enough in October, the UK anti-fossil fuel group Just Stop Oil ratcheted up its antigov-ernment actions in London this month with daily protests demanding an end to new oil and gas licences and a halt to exploration and development of fossil fuels. Some of the group's "civil resistance" activities made international headlines, as when two protesters doused Vicent van Gogh's Sunflowers (1888) with tomato soup at the National Gallery on 14 October. The painting, protected by a safety barrier, was apparently unharmed. Others have been more a headache for local commuters, with the group staging street marches and sit-ins almost daily throughout the month, including the vertiginous occupation of the Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ suspension bridge on the city's eastern outskirts, which created traffic snarls on the busy River Thames crossing early last week. That stunt provoked the Conservative government's Home Secretary Suella Braverman to rail against the "tofu-eating wokerati" and push for passage of the party's Public Order Bill, now moving through parliament, that would impose harsh penalties for the tactics favoured by Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, another group that has used non-violent protests to push an anti-fossil fuel agenda. "Those who glue themselves to the road -forcing the police to remove them - are wildly irresponsible, idiotic, and risking lives," she wrote in an op-ed in the right-wing Daily Mail.
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