Staging sit-ins, slow marches and protests throughout the spring and summer, Just Stop Oil (JSO) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been doing their best to hammer home the cost of climate change to the planet. But have they ever even thought to consider the cost of their protests to the public purse?
Might the slogan ‘Just stop wasting our money’ feel more apt?
Dealing with the antics of JSO and XR between April and June this year have cost the Met over £9 million, according to police data seen by Mr Steerpike. Nearly 24,000 police officers were roped in to deal with climate activists – and more than £1.2million was paid out in overtime. Officers, drafted in from across the country to deal with the protests, were also put up in hotels at taxpayers’ expense: £16,266 was spent on hotel rooms over those three months.
The numbers show that it cost the Met £917,000 to police XR’s four-day protest in April, dubbed ‘The Big One’, in which members of the group, as well as protestors from JSO and other climate groups, gathered in Parliament Square to stage the ‘biggest climate protest ever held in the UK’.
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