UK 17:14 Friday, 23 October 2026
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It is the sort of battle where I'd normally want both sides to lose, a bit like Man City vs Chelsea. I have no time for Lyin Steve Sanderson the boss of stock market promotion, oops junior oil explorer, UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) but the rabble on the other side are not exactly my sort of folks either. Among the virtue signallers backing the nimbies & smellies are Bianca Jagger and actress Sue Jameson (yes I had to look her up on google too).
Uk Oil is seeking the injunction to restrict protests outside the, almost certainly non commercial, Broadford Bridge site as well as Horse Hill. The nimbies say the injunction breaches their human rights.
The draft order would stop lawful acts by campaigners where the “predominant intention” was to injure the company’s “economic interests”. But how does one define what that is? It seems that UK Oil & Gas is seeking to use its economic power to stop folks doing things which are actually legal, in effect it is seeking to make its own laws. Surely that cannot be right?
The order would also prevent people taking photographs of suppliers’ vehicles and establishes exclusion zones outside the sites at Broadford Bridge and Markwells Wood in West Sussex and Horse Hill in Surrey.
UK Oil & Gas states:
We do not want to prevent anyone exercising their rights to freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest. This injunction is aimed at a small minority of activists who seek to deny our fundamental democratic and legal right to go about our lawful business. Recent actions by activists that have forced us to seek this injunction include forcible entry and illegal occupation of our Horse Hill site, criminal and environmental damage, threatening behaviour and assault of our site staff and contractors.”
But that is obviously just not the case. Acts that are illegal are already illegal and UK Oil * Gas baliffs and the Old Bill on duty can and do make arrests. What Lyin Steve Sanderson is trying to do here is to make acts that are legal, illegal.
This is a pernicious assault on all of our civil liberties.
As such, for perhaps the first and last time in history, I side with the nimbies, luvvies and smellies and against UK Oil & Gas whose actions are profoundly wrong and dangerous for us all in the precedent that they set.
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