Letters to the Canary: Just Stop Oil, BBC coverage of Gaza, and a Christmas poem
The Canary is excited to share the latest edition of our letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news and politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. We’ve now opened the letters page up so anyone can submit a contribution. As always, if you’d like to subscribe to the Canary – starting from just £1 a month – to support truly radical and independent media, then you can do that here:
This week’s letters
This week we have people’s thoughts on Just Stop Oil carol singing outside Starmer’s house, a poem for Christmas, and an open letter to the BBC over its coverage of Gaza.Â
Should Just Stop Oil have carol-sung outside Starmer’s house?
I don’t have anything against sit-ins, lock-ins, traffic bocks or even painting buildings with orange paint. What I do have a disagreement with is staging any type of protest at the private home of a public figure.
We are all entitled to a private life and there were people, incuding children, in there who were not of the Christian faith and so this action was inappropriate.
TBH I’d have been annoyed if carol singers had been outside my home, and I’m not religious at all; it would have just been an unwelcome noise during the hours of darkness.
Not impressed.
Paula, via email
The Week before Christmas: a reader’s poem
‘Twas the week before Christmas
The presents were wrapped
But all of a sudden
It seems something has snapped.
After 13 long years
Of Tory mis-rule
Everyone’s asking
Just who is the fool?
They push on with Rwanda
Like a dog with a bone
And then we all hear
From Baroness Mone.
She thinks she’s the victim
But it’s masses of lies
And then we all hear
MPs have a rise.
That’s 7% or 6,000 pounds.
I think that all workers
Now have good grounds
To carry on calling
For negotiations
On pay and conditions
And new valuations.
As we approach
A day to remember
The birth of a child
In late December
We ask all of those
In positions of power
To think more of others
And that this is the hour
To follow that baby
All meek and mild
Who taught us to care
For adult and child.
That love is the answer
To all the world’s woes.
Just try it and watch it
And see how it grows.
Compassion and kindness
That is the key
And that’s what we saw
In that young refugee.
Sue Wood, via email
Another open letter to the BBC re. its coverage of Israel/Gaza
Tim Davie and BBC reporters,
Last night at 22.50 on Radio 4, we heard a Labour MP speak of her daily anguish and nightly tears on hearing of Gaza and her Christian friends. The few Christians there are holed up in the chancel of their church in Gaza City, unable to leave, not even for the toilet. Earlier, she had learnt of their deaths, two of them murdered and one wounded – by an IDF sniper.
Her horrific news was duly sanitised by your presenter who rounded off the programme with your routine mantra of 7 October and how Hamas is deemed a terrorist grouping.
On TV last night BBC News spoke of the death of the three hostages, saying that the IDF feared their appearance may have been a Hamas attack. To your great shame, you again failed to say that the three hostages had taken the precaution of emerging from captivity – under a white flag!
I spoke of that flag of surrender in the earlier email shown below. Again I ask, how many atrocities and war crimes does Israel need to commit before the BBC withdraws its protection – and report their flouting of the Geneva Conventions and all conventional rules of war.
Ted, via email
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Paula, you might not be impressed that Just Stop Oil activists swung by Starmers family home, sang some carols and delivered a message. A non violent, creative action.
I am unimpressed with the conduct of Starmer since he was elected leader of the Labour Party. Backtracking on most of the pledges that he gave when campaigning for the position. For a QC/KC he has displayed a remarkable inability to marshal an argument, stand up for those who need defending or persuade others of the necessity for action.
Those who seek positions of power have to accept that they will be scrutinised and challenged. Slippery Starmer is keen to backslide on everything that would make it worth voting for him, unwilling and seemingly unable to put a convincing case forward for progressive policies.
It is worth reading the press release from Just Stop Oil to understand their reasoning for the event that Paula is decrying. I have copied and pasted it below.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, Paula and everyone.
Tom Clother.
Just Stop Oil’s Christmas message to Keir Starmer
Press / December 14, 2023
On the 14th December 2023, a group of Just Stop Oil Christmas carolers, singing ‘climate criminal’ carols, delivered the following letter to Keir Starmer:
Dear Keir,
We, alongside the majority of the British public, welcomed your commitment to protecting the lives of the British public, as well as the lives of countless others around the world, by ending new oil and gas projects in the UK.
The impacts of burning fossil fuels are plain for all to see. Floods, fires, famine and drought. This year is the hottest on record. Already, we are seeing millions forced outside of the conditions suitable for supporting human life, and scientists are warning that we are on-course for mass crop failure and potential societal collapse if we continue on this trajectory.
Since your initial statement, you appear to have wavered in your commitment to show real leadership on this issue. Your refusal to cancel the new oil and gas licences that are being approved by the current government (which includes the obscene Rosebank, a project that will emit more carbon into the atmosphere than 28 whole countries combined) is nothing short of a crime against humanity.
This is the most critical juncture in human history and you will likely soon be in the fortunate position where you can enact real, meaningful change. The ramifications of the decisions you make, if you come to power, will be felt by the next thousand generations or more. As a father, it is certain that the lives of your son and daughter mean everything to you. What is the world that they are to inherit if we continue on this path? What kind of lives will they live in a world of increasingly unstable weather, extreme heat, drought, flooding, famine, disease and war?
Our families deserve better. All of us need to consider how we will answer our children when they ask us ‘what did you do’ to avert this unfolding crisis. You have a choice. You can join a long list of politicians that promised change and delivered nothing, knowing full well that insufficient action is killing people right now and will result in the deaths of countless millions more. Or you can make a commitment to cancel all licences approved by the current government and end all future licensing and consents for fossil fuel exploration and extraction in the UK. Such a commitment would effectively end these projects now, enabling a transition to cheap, clean, green energy- cutting our bills; whilst ensuring a fair transition for those working in oil and gas into the sustainable jobs of the future.
How do you want to be remembered Keir? As the ghost of Christmas past? Or as the man who gave us a future? It’s time for action, not words.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year, to you and all your family.
Kind regards,
Just Stop Oil