JAN MOIR: My Christmas was even happier because the Just Stop Oil protesters are still behind bars. Let’s hope the courts continue like this.

I don’t know about you, but my Christmas was greatly improved by the heartening thought that the Just Stop Oil protesters who blocked the M25 in 2022 are still behind bars.

Every spoonful of festive sugar was made even sweeter by imagining a bleak prison landscape with JSO ringleaders feasting on porridge and darning mailbags in their freezing cells.

You’d think they’d be happy about the undeniable benefits of incarceration during the climate crisis: living communally, consuming fewer megawatts, burning fewer fossil fuels, not driving cars, and being exempt from boarding gas-guzzling public transportation… but no.

The unfortunates want out and are appealing their sentences. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace UK have now been allowed to intervene in support of the famous five when they challenge their jail sentences in court next month.

But why? Surely the law should be concerned only with the effect, not the cause, no matter how just and justified these fanatics consider their actions. Few need to remember that for his role in disrupting traffic on the orbital motorway around London, JSO leader Roger Hallam was jailed for five years, while activists Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin received four years each.

You may remember Cressida’s mother elegantly complaining to the court that her daughter’s sentence “means she won’t be present at her brother’s wedding next summer.” Well, that still makes me cry… with laughter.

It also perfectly illustrates the sanctimony and selfishness at the heart of today’s activists and those who support them. They may disturb your lives for the sake of their cause, but God forbid that they themselves suffer any inconvenience.

However, if you are willing and prepared to break the law because you believe passionately in your chosen crusade, then you must surely accept the consequences. There is no negotiating about being a martyr. Ask Joan of Arc.

Friends of the Earth said it would argue that the JSO rulings violate human rights legislation, but what about the human rights of the thousands of innocent citizens whose plans were ruined and their lives damaged by the M25 protest?

More than 40 activists climbed the highway gantries for four consecutive days, sometimes paralyzing traffic. It caused 50,000 hours of vehicle delays, an economic impact of almost £800,000 and cost the Metropolitan Police more than £1.1 million.

And, of course, the endless delays and frustrations took a human toll; students missed exams, travelers missed flights, patients missed hospital appointments, the bereaved missed funerals, the misery and frustration was limitless.

That’s why I hope the law remains firm. Because this is not a case for leniency, despite JSO’s claims that they are “not real criminals.”

I beg to differ. At the time of this particular crime, the five JSO activists were out on bail for at least one other set of proceedings. Leader Hallam, a career agitator, has 13 convictions for direct action protests. The only thing that has finally stopped being a threat to the public is a custodial sentence.

And his master plan, as revealed during the jury trial at Southwark Crown Court, was to cause even more damage. He wanted to bring all of London to a standstill and to hell with the horrendous public safety problems that would have resulted.

Next month, JSO, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace will argue in court that there should be “proportionate” sanctions for climate change protesters, as if somehow their motivation in itself was a mitigating cause.

However, one thing has become clear in 2024: the public is deeply fed up with these woke, progressive disruptors inflicting extremism on us for their myriad causes. The trans rights lobby and the “river to sea” mafia, to name just two more, preach about tolerance and acceptance, while they themselves show very little tolerance.

JSO are environmental extremists who claim that their direct action campaign (pouring soup on paintings, unsuccessfully trying to spray orange paint on Taylor Swift’s plane, clogging public transportation systems, using fire extinguishers filled with powder paint in an attempt to ruin to the Duke of Westminster The wedding has to be disturbing to draw attention to the urgency of the “emergency”.

However, all they have achieved is to distance themselves from their fellow citizens, who do not like to have their lives ruined by such grandiose idiocy. They think they are on the moral high ground but they are not above the law. Nor do they have the right to designate themselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change.

And I sincerely hope that this is reflected in the appeal decision.

A pat on the back for the little royals

Having been a frontline observer among the royal crowds, I can faithfully report that not everyone who lines up for hours for the chance to meet the Windsors is… how shall I put it? – completely free of mental health problems.

Some are just realistic, pure and simple. Some feel alone or needy – and God bless them. However, there are also some who are slightly unhinged, as is the case at any event involving public figures.

And it always seemed clear to me that there were those who had projected the personal need for a close family relationship onto Charles and Camilla or William and Kate, and also onto their children.

That’s why I was so impressed with the younger royals negotiating the crowds outside the church after the Christmas Day service at Sandringham. The cries for attention, the gifts of chocolate bars or flowers in the garage yard, the crazy exhortations for affection and the incoherent good wishes.

It can’t be easy, but they all (little George, Charlotte, Louis and little Tindall) handled it with aplomb. They turned out so perfectly and were so lovely that they deserve a little festive pat on the back.

Can it really be 20 years this week since the Boxing Day tsunami? The horror seems too recent, the unimaginable terror of all those trapped in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent times.

There is something very raw about tragedy during the holiday season.

It makes everything much worse, although it shouldn’t be that way. The plane crash in Kazakhstan, the massacre at the Christmas market in Germany, the eternal horror of Lockerbie.

Maybe it’s the thought of people planning to be with their families and loved ones for Christmas – but never coming home – that makes it all so sad.

Can we trust mental health gurus?

This might not surprise anyone at all, but staff at mental health company BetterUp have apparently hinted that the US-based company is a “toxic train wreck” where “everyone feels uncomfortable.”

Can this be true? These were comments left on a website and have not yet been verified, but they suggest some degree of trouble at the company that pays Prince Harry £1m a year to be its Chief Impact Officer.

And what main impact has it had, please tell us? Harry credits BetterUp for improving his mental health after Megxit and there are surely others who have benefited from its services.

However, in California in particular, the mental health business is big business; the wild new frontier of business and profit. Some BetterUp customers are reportedly disgruntled and complain about a lack of confidentiality when talking about their most intimate problems, a bleak prospect when you’re baring your soul to strangers in hopes of feeling better.

However, this lack of privacy about personal matters is not something that worries Harry. For years he’s been telling anyone who will listen about every slight tick inside his tac; every little mistake in every little matter inside his feverish brain.

Harry has always been outspoken about his insides and what BetterUp has done to improve it, including the EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) techniques he uses to treat anxiety.

So it helps, but one wonders to what extent we can trust the mental health industry and those who claim to be inspirational gurus. These include actor and director Justin Baldoni, who has been accused of sexual harassment by Blake Lively on the set of her recent film, It Ends With Us.

Baldoni emerged as a profound thinker on mental health. His book, Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, was intended to tell men how to respect women and be better men, like him. Now this so-called feminist has been fired by his agent and punished by Lively for disgusting behavior toward women and ungallant conduct.

Baldoni denies all the accusations, but it would be terrible to think that there are those who simply set out to profit from the misery of others, although sometimes that is exactly what it seems.

I’m not going to lie, I loved this wonderful ending.

Oh my god, as Pam would say. I’m not going to lie to you, as Nessa would say. The Gavin & Stacey The Finale (BBC1) was absolutely wonderful. As simple as.

From the moment Pam (Alison Steadman) showed up with her party plates, “checking the flow” of her buffet, and planning to set up the charcuterie next to the cheese shop, this 90-minute farewell extravaganza was a success in every way. .

There were so many magical moments, from Smithy saying that “tomorrow is my bachelor party, the most important night of my life,” to Neil the Baby singing at the wedding and Pam (once again) “eating granola in preparation for my second life.” “. everything was magical.

Written by James Corden and Ruth Jones, who also play Smithy and Nessa, left, this show has always been a heartwarming celebration of family, friendship and love.

More importantly, it’s also a drama that – for once – celebrates working-class people instead of mocking, fetishizing, or belittling them in any way. Nor does it show them as the perpetual victims of life, the clumsy oppressed, who send the clowns. Gotta love him for that alone.

Mick (played so perfectly by Larry Lamb) was always my favorite character, and he certainly got his due and his big moments in what is supposed to be the last show.

His speech in the pub about welcoming Smithy into the family and the moment at the wedding when Smithy looked to him for support and validation… well. I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear. Oh Mick, as Pam would say. All the drama, I just love it.