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So I went to Aldi today, and in Germany you have to put a coin (50 Cent, 1€ or 2€) in a shopping card as a deposit. So I put 50 Cents into the shopping cart, but couldn't get it lose. Like that thing was still stuck to the shopping cart infront, and my 50 Cents were also stuck. I tried pulling, pushing, everything. Stuck. So I thought fuck it, it's only 50 Cent and went to take another shopping cart instead. A few moments later I saw a young woman getting my 50 Cents out of that other shopping cart with ease, and she put it in her pocket. I didn't say anything and let her have it. It reminded me of those experiments were Chimps have to retrieve a nut or a piece of fruit out of something, to see how clever they are. I was the dumb chimp, and that young woman was the smart chimp. So I think she fully deserved those 50 Cents.

Justified.

Has anyone noticed a shortage of salt in the supermarkets? I think it’s all been used up in the Manchester United vs Everton match day thread.

Niklas Schmidt has signed a contract extension

No they won't do it, but that doesn't make it worthless. Activists have a role to play within our political system even if they are in denial about what that is. There's a pendulum in which on one side is the activist bringing a topic to attention of the public and gaining support for it, on the other side is the activist making the topic seem that of cranks, hippies and lunatics. That is where the activist must be careful within this political system, what they all know is that in reality they need to completely overthrow the system to truly get what they want. The Labour Party have already put a figure on how much £ to dedicate to this issue as a result of this topic becoming prominent. Public support for action is growing. The incumbent governments policies so far have failed and in order to sustain their power they will have to address the topic to some extent. Ultimately in the end the activist does not get what they want but they can and often do cause positive change. Long term disruption however risks that pendulum swinging to the hippy crank side. The topic of interest to the public will shift from insulation to how to stop the disruption. A government who can get them to stop will likely get approval rating rewards for it. My main fear, within this system, is that unlike the US and to some extent Australia and Canada right now, mainstream anti-climate positions are non existent and anti-climate is the crank position still, but activists moves risk feeding those cranks if they are not careful. I understand that however on climate it is impossible not to be a hypocrit in some aspect of life. You can make many changes and many decisions but there will always be something that someone finds to wave at you. On housing insulation, at current market prices you're looking at maybe £10-35k per house. So on that subject we are simply not going to make the changes to this countries housing stock without the government's help. Policies so far on this matter have flopped.

If your response to a campaigner for a cause you largely agree with is to call them a hypocrite because you can point out one or two things that they aren't doing in their personal lives to contribute to said cause even though they alone make a negligible difference, then you are a part of the problem. It's like when all those angry, balding 50 year old men saw a picture of Greta Thunberg on a plane once and decided that was sufficient evidence to invalidate everything she's ever said or campaigned for. Insulating homes in Britain would make a large, positive difference. If it was cheap to do, the government would probably just do it, even the Tories. It's not an unreasonable demand from that campaign group. However, as others have said, with both these guys and Extinction Rebellion, their methods are just the absolute worst way to get the public behind them. ER have some particularly extreme idiots in their group who want to "bring down capitalism, man" and stuff like that but my understanding is that they're an environmentalist group who want to slow down climate change. The public broadly agree with taking action to prevent climate change yet Extinction Rebellion have a net -60 or so approval rating with the public because of their blocking of roads and preventing people from going about their lives. It might seem necessary but it's counter productive to their cause. The Insulate Britain guy is a moron as well. He was on GMB last week and he stormed off stage after being asked simple questions and looked to be one bad sandwich order away from a mental breakdown. If you want to convince people to get on your side then you can't be picking people like that to rally behind as the face of your movement. The problem is with these groups is that they all get together in this echo chamber, wind each other up about how much the world is against them, end up radicalising themselves and completely losing touch with the people they need to convince to support them before they go and make their case to the public. The Greenpeace Downing Street advert (look it up) from a couple of months ago was a good example of how to go about these things. It was powerful without disrupting anyone's day to day life so when it got them trending on social media platforms people saw the British government portrayed in a negative light for not taking enough action rather than the campaigners themselves.

I think you need to lead by example if I’m honest. If you believe in this so strongly, make sure you’re doing the most. That doesn’t mean only hammer the government, but make yourself personally responsible as well.

The guy heading ‘Insulate Britain’ and protesting hasn’t insulated his own property and drives a diesel Range Rover. Go figure.

What about all the additional emissions from stationary vehicles stuck on the motorway, with their engines running for hours?...

What's ironic surely is that with their protests and road blocking, they're keeping cars and lorries on the road for even longer...

When I was living in student halls, an Italian once had a huge argument with a Canadian, because the latter said Alfredo sauce was her favourite part of Italian cuisine