I left around half an hour ago due to being cold and the start of the rain (plus not being keen to be arrested). An ambulance was in attendance at the open part of North Bridge but I don't remember it being there earlier when I'd returned to find the line pushed back. Looks like the Prince's Street line has now been pushed back as well though and arrests have been made.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
XR Scotland closing North Bridge April 16th
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Posted 5 years ago #
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Anyone know what the arrests were for? Pictures I saw were all from Princes Street, so I guess it was people refusing to move back from there to let traffic pass?
Posted 5 years ago # -
Protestors from the front of the line on North Bridge/Prince's Street have now been arrested as well as those that were briefly blocking Prince's Street itself. I think that this was because they didn't move after being warned that they would be arrested if they didn't move onto the pavement. Not sure exactly on what grounds the arrests have been made yet though.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Posted 5 years ago #
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All over now by the sounds of it.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I was one of the sceptics on here when the location of this was announced (while supporting the agenda) but having read the idiotic, myopic comments from the morons on facebook, twitter and the EEN I'm all for it.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Not sure exactly on what grounds the arrests have been made yet though.
IIRC from my student days, for blocking a road. They give you a count down from ten though.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Really wish I'd gone today, feeling quite guilty now. Thanks to anyone who did.
Posted 5 years ago # -
They were arrested for Breach of the Peace, apparently.
https://twitter.com/EdinburghPolice/status/1118260956042354689
https://twitter.com/ScotlandXr/status/1118264310206275584
Utmost respect for people prepared to be arrested, and go to court, in order to protect our planet.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.
“
Posted 5 years ago # -
Volunteering for arrest is brave. They'll be disclosing the fact of that arrest to all and sundry for ten years regardless of any resulting conviction.
As @crowriver says, these people are due great respect for putting humanity before their own convenience.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“They'll be disclosing the fact of that arrest to all and sundry for ten years regardless of any resulting conviction.”
Not necessarily -
Posted 5 years ago # -
On the subject of the particular location, I assume one factor is that that was a place that the police would "allow" them to block (for a certain length of time, anyway). A request to block the bypass would, I assume, be met with a simple "No".
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
THERE was something of a carnival atmosphere on Edinburgh’s North Bridge yesterday as the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion halted traffic. Commuters trying to get home from work weren’t all enjoying the show, though there didn’t appear to be much antagonism towards the good-humoured protesters, with their banners reading: “There’s no Planet B”.
Unlike Brexit, Scottish independence or even CND, climate change just doesn’t provoke fierce public emotions any more. Indeed, the problem for environmentalists, in the West at least, is perhaps that they’ve been too successful. The science of climate change is now more or less universally accepted, since the BBC started banning climate-change deniers like Lord Lawson from the Today programme. If everyone more or less agrees, there’s no controversy.
...
Despite America’s objections, there may have to be resource transfers to developing nations, if they are to curb their uneconomic coal use. This is a global problem demanding global action and time is running out. In a very real sense, we are all in this together.
“
Posted 5 years ago # -
If everyone more or less agrees, there’s no controversy.
But everyone doesn't agree. Fossil-fueled economic growth is the official aim of pretty much every country on Earth isn't it?
Posted 5 years ago # -
If the police can arrest someone with a simple countdown from 10 why do they find it so hard to deal with vehicles "Parked" on the pavement/double yellow etc.
The mere fact that they managed to find time and resource to arrest any of these protesters shows the extent to which fossil fuel consumption is protected by the state.
Posted 5 years ago # -
"Volunteering for arrest is brave."
Yep. I'm far too feart. But I support those who can and do.
But everyone doesn't agree. Fossil-fueled economic growth is the official aim of pretty much every country on Earth isn't it?
Tacitly if not explicitly. Lots of talk about "sustainable growth" with no actual explanation of how that is possible.
Btw just seen Lee Craigie share a link to Monbiot on Frankie Boyle "We've got to go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it." with the comment "Right then. I’m in." I can get behind this sort of active travel stance...
@acsimpson - indeed!
Posted 5 years ago # -
“The mere fact that they managed to find time and resource to arrest any of these protesters shows the extent to which fossil fuel consumption is protected by the state.”
I think that’s ‘accidental’, but it certainly demonstrates how skewed priorities are.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@acsimpson
Maybe what matters is the de facto law rather than the de jure law made by parliaments. Pretty much everything apart from sitting quietly at home is illegal now one way or another. The actual law is whatever set of the parliaments' laws the police choose to and can enforce.
A very perceptive friend of mine said in 1995: 'The police are there to ensure that hierarchies are respected'. I've been thinking about it ever since.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Iwrats you should see what Black thinkers have to say about the police. That's a gentle critique in comparison...
Posted 5 years ago # -
If they were arrested for common law Breach of the Peace, then they should appeal. The Government introduced the statutory definition of BoP to prevent police officers making arbitary decisions about what would be frightening for the lieges. Police officers are not supposed to use common law offences where a statutory offence exists.
The definition is
"A person (“A”) commits an offence if-
(a) A behaves in a threatening or abusive manner,
(b) the behaviour would be likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm, and
(c) A intends by the behaviour to cause fear or alarm or is reckless as to whether the behaviour would cause fear or alarm."I'm not sure that any of the protesters would fall under that clear definition. It is no longer enough that the police dont like your face or actions.
Posted 5 years ago # -
That's a gentle critique
This is a gentle place.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I thought the whole purpose of Extinction Rebellion was to raise fear and alarm!
Posted 5 years ago # -
Ive not seen a single one of them being threatening or abusive
Posted 5 years ago # -
I wasn't keen on their choice of location for the protest, as I was worried that it would massively inconvenience and annoy bus passengers (who, after all, are Doing The Right Thing to help reduce their environmental impact, and so shouldn't bear the brunt), and would have preferred if they had instead blockaded a car-dominated road such as Queen Street or Queensferry Road instead.
But with hindsight, I suppose I shouldn't have been too alarmed: given the number of festivals and marches that regularly close the Royal Mile and Bridges to motor traffic, Lothian Buses have well-rehearsed diversion routes in place and so I hope that disruption for bus passengers was minimal.
My journeys yesterday evening by bike took me northwards over North Bridge, although the police requested me to dismount (boo), and then later on, southwards, by which time they were not allowing access to the bridge and so I had to take a hillier route instead (bigger boo).
What was particularly noticeable, going north (near the end of what is normally peak evening travel time), was that Clerk Street and Nicolson Street were almost completely empty of traffic, no cars, just the occasional bus, and it was oddly, but pleasantly, peaceful.
There was a police road closure diverting traffic along Chambers Street instead, but I don't know if there might have been another one at, say, Preston Street, or if drivers were choosing their own diversions spontaneously? My guess is that more traffic would have been diverting via Holyrood Park or Melville Drive instead of trying to continue as far north as possible? Did anyone notice if those routes were much busier than usual? That's the dilemma we have in Edinburgh: those two routes do help to reduce traffic through the heart of the city centre, and do make quite an effective inner city bypass (and probably show that road capacity for car traffic in the city centre really could be reduced further), but, at the same time, we don't really want to be encouraging the use of parks as main through traffic routes, either.
Posted 5 years ago # -
That's the dilemma we have in Edinburgh: those two routes do help to reduce traffic through the heart of the city centre
Intuitive, but wrong.
Traffic is more like a gas than a liquid - it expands to fill the available volume. It is also self-limiting over time, so removing alternative routes does not increase traffic on the original route in the long term.
See traffic-evaporation and its counterpart induced-demand.
Posted 5 years ago # -
You may see an increase in overall point-to-point traffic, but it's reasonable to imagine you'd see an increase on the routes through the Park given that it's not yet at capacity. It would be interesting to look at the traffic count data to figure out how much evaporation and displacement happened during the Leith Street closure. There must have been a bit of evaporation as there's definitely less traffic now, but the corridor has definitely got busier again which suggests a bit of displacement too (or 're-hydration' perhaps.
Posted 5 years ago # -
If a city had increased its road capacity by 10 percent between 1980 and 1990, then the amount of driving in that city went up by 10 percent. If the amount of roads in the same city then went up by 11 percent between 1990 and 2000, the total number of miles driven also went up by 11 percent. It’s like the two figures were moving in perfect lockstep, changing at the same exact rate.
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Interestingly, the effect works in reverse, too. Whenever some city proposes taking lanes away from a road, residents scream that they’re going to create a huge traffic snarl. But the data shows that nothing truly terrible happens. The amount of traffic on the road simply readjusts and overall congestion doesn’t really increase.
For instance, Paris in recent decades has had a persistent policy to dramatically downsize and reduce roadways. “Driving in Paris was bad before,” said Duranton. “It’s just as bad, but it’s not much worse.”
Posted 5 years ago # -
@neddie this is my understanding! @jonty I think the above suggests it is precisely traffic "rehydration" - maybe precipitation?
Meanwhile in London:
Climate-change protesters disrupt London docklands train service - great image on this Reuters tweet. Made me think about how commentary online about XR protests supports the notion that climate & similar protestors are either unemployed unwashed student hippie crusty vegan weirdos who should be dismissed accordingly OR normal citizens in clothes from a shop who have mobile phone and drive and work for a capitalist company hypocrites who should be dismissed accordingly.Posted 5 years ago # -
@jonty
you'd see an increase on the routes through the Park given that it's not yet at capacity
How do you know that it's not at capacity?
The capacity of the roadways through the park isn't determined by the fact they look empty most of the time. The capacity is determined by the wait-times at the junctions at either end - the fact that the park roads connect to narrow and congested "feeder" streets at either end.
If only a limited number of vehicles can enter and exit the park, then of course the park roads, with very few junctions in between, will appear empty (and hence the resulting speeding, only to get stuck for 5 minutes once reaching the junctions!).
Posted 5 years ago #
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