Stop Press: Two Just Stop Oil protesters have thrown tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in the National Gallery. They then brought out Superglue from inside their bra’s and glued their hands to the floor. Both were young white females. Just what a painting from the late 1880’s has to do with today’s world is a mystery.
From supergluing body-parts onto surfaces, clambering on top of tube trains to stop ordinary workers from going to work, to laying down on busy roads, the red/green eco-warriors of the environmental movement never fail to push the boundaries of stupidity. Until now.
Recently a middle-class activist called Madeleine Budd, from Manchester, must really have made her parents proud after she decided that the best way to further her cause was to attack a statue of Captain Thomas Moore, who died in 2021 after catching pneumonia.
21-year-old Budd was arrested after she “poured a bucket of human faeces all over the statue” while wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “End UK private jets”. The mind boggles. How did she collect the ‘large amount of human faeces’ used in the attack? Was it all hers? How long did it take to collect it all? Was it all vegan poo or was some of it from meat eaters?
She appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court wearing a dark jumper and spoke quietly to confirm her name, address, date of birth and enter a guilty plea. Before leaving the dock, Budd asked: “Can I say something now?” to which the judge said she would have to wait until the full sentencing hearing. She is expected to receive a custodial sentence.
But why choose a statue of poor old Capt. Thomas Moore? Was he a war-criminal or the SEO of a business that is tearing down the rain forests? No. Following advice from his nurse Clare to “keep mobile”, Captain Sir Tom brought his walker into the garden where the family challenged him to do laps offering a reward.
This became a challenge – to do 100 laps of his garden, at 50 meters a time, before his hundredth birthday. The national media soon became aware of his plan and the following publicity led to him raising almost £33m for NHS charities. He was later knighted by the Queen
Thomas Moore (born 30 April 1920), popularly known as Captain Tom, was a former British Army officer who became a national celebrity during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. He was an unremarkable man of his time. Moore was born in Keighley, in the old West Riding of Yorkshire. He served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War. As part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called “Forgotten Army”, he served in Arakan in western Burma – where he survived dengue fever.
For 65 years, Moore organised the annual reunion for the 9th Battalion veterans. He died on 2 February 2021, at Bedford Hospital. Prosecutor Jordan Pratt told the court: “The facts of the case is that on September 30 the defendant attended the location of Thistley Meadow in Hatton where there is a statue, a silhouette of Sir Captain Tom Moore.”
Mr Pratt said Budd, of Kedleston Avenue, Longsight, approached and ‘poured a bucket of human faeces all over the statue’. Budd was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan ‘End UK private jets’, he said. The incident was filmed and shared on social media as part of an environmental protest.
“This offence lasted for a short amount of time, it is only 30 seconds in length but the impact of this offence is substantial,” he said.
“This is an abhorrent act. I do not need to remind the court of the impact that Sir Tom had.
“He was a figurehead that a number of people rallied around in a fundraising effort that raised tens of millions of pounds in the height of the pandemic.” Mr Pratt said people will see Budd’s act as ‘hugely disrespectful’. Budd had also breached a conditional discharge from April by committing the offence.
Pratt also argued that the offence was pre-meditated and would have required a huge degree of planning. Obviously collecting that much human faeces would have taken time and planning. Not to mention vast numbers of rubber gloves. Perhaps Budd’s local vegetarian supermarket should have informed the local plod that something was amiss.
“The defendant has armed herself with a large amount of human faeces and turned it onto a statue,” he said. Mr Pratt said that although the value involved was relatively low, the offence would have a harmful social impact.
A man in the public gallery then stood up and told the judge: “On behalf of every veteran member, thank you very much.”
Jorian Jenks was leading member of the British Union of Fascists, a pioneer of radical ecology and organic farming, and a founder of the Soil Association and Editor of its journal “Mother Earth” and is regarded by many as one of the principal architects of the Green Movement in Britain. Genuine environmentalists like Jorian Jenks must be turning in their graves.
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