Four brave individuals, Simon Roscoe Blevins (26), Richard Roberts, 36, Richard Loizou (31) and Julian Brock (47) were absurdly convicted of causing a public nuisance in recent days.
Left to Right: Loizou, Roberts and Roscoe Blevins
Their crime? To stage a protest by camping on some lorries involved in unlawful destruction of our countryside. These lorries were delivering drilling equipment for evil fracking company Cuadrilla. The incident took place at around 8am on 25/7/2017.
Richard Roberts managed to get through a police cordon and climb on top of the first lorry, bringing a fleet of 7 lorries to a standstill. Richard Loizou climbed on to the cab of the last lorry.
Simon Roscoe Blevins climbed on top of one of lorries at about 3:18pm and in the early hours of the next morning, Julian Brock climbed atop one of the lorries in the convoy.
Food, water and blankets were provided to the men and Richard Loizou spent 45 hours on one of the lorries, Simon Roscoe Blevins just over 73 hours on his lorry, Julian Brock it is believed spent 76 hours atop enemy weaponry and finally Richard Roberts spent 84 hours on his lorry.
The sentencing of Judge Robert Altham will now be investigated as we continue below.
Roughly 2 years ago in 2016 he sentenced Geoffrey Taylor to a 40 week sentence, which was suspended for a year and placed him on a 30 week curfew.
Read the Lancashire Telegraph report by clicking here.
Taylor pleaded guilty to the possession of over 10,000 indecent and extreme images after police raided at his Blackburn home.
There were 684 category A images, and 228 extreme pornographic images, depicting the abuse of animals. Also in the haul were 5448 computer generated pseudo images.
Keeping in mind here the punishment handed out to the 4 brave men sentenced this week, you would expect Judge Altham would be dishing out quite the sentence to this man, but he got something quite different.
Judge Robert Altham remarked whilst sentencing Taylor:
“When one looks at the real images, each and every one of them represents the sexual abuse and sometimes rape of living, breathing children.
Somewhere in the world there is a child who has been sexually abused or raped in order for people like you to gain some form of gratification of them.
It is beyond any reasonable person to understand how anyone could gain any sort of gratification from watching a person perform a sexual offence with a young child.
These are not girls in their early teens. They are children under 10 - certainly in one image a child who can be no more than two or three years old.
That must make the matter more serious.
People like you, by downloading and looking at these images generate a demand and people like you by generating that demand perpetrate the abuse of little children.
For that reason you ought to be, and I hope you are, thoroughly ashamed of yourself.”
If we pause here, you would again expect a big sentence coming, but instead the judge accepted Taylor’s good character and mused that he is unlikely to appear before the courts again.
His sentence was the aforementioned 40 weeks jail, suspended for 12 months and Geoffrey Taylor was also placed on a curfew for 30 weeks.
Now Geoffrey Taylor quite clearly had some sort of problem to derive any pleasure from that material, but he is not really the focal point of this article. Altham effectively gave him a slap on the wrist and said "Naughty boy, don't do it again". Yet anti-frackers operating for the good of us all get jail. It is now seemingly the case that paedophilia is more acceptable to the courts than challenging the evil behaviour of big corporations.
To put the tin hat on this debacle, I am informed that Judge Robert Altham adjourned sentencing on Tuesday to sleep on it and somehow after that, he sentenced Simon Roscoe Blevins and Richard Roberts to 16 months in prison and Richard Loizou to 15 months on Wednesday, after the jury at Preston crown court convicted them in August. Julian Brock was given a 12 month suspended sentence after pleading guilty.
I include Judge Altham's sentencing remarks for the four heroes below:
"I do find they provide a risk of re-offending.
Each of them remains motivated by unswerving confidence that they are right. Even at their trial they felt justified by their actions."
We seem to be descending into some sort of 1984 style nightmare here.
I would like to finish this article by saying Craven Freedom views Cuadrilla as an enemy of the nation and I, the Editor sincerely hope their company goes bust. This is not out of anger, it is simply that their business is wrong and it going bust would be beneficial to the people of this island.
Also, to conclude with a quote from one of the victims:
Simon Roscoe Blevins (from Huffington Post):
"As a soil scientist I know that fracking poses a great threat to the ground beneath our feet through leaks and contamination. Soil takes thousands of years to form, but its health can be lost in an instant. We depend on healthy earth for our food and water – it is the bedrock, literally of our existence. That’s why I decided to join this protest.
My sentencing forms part of a broader clamp down on the right to protest in the UK. The stakes are higher than ever, but all of us inside and outside the criminal justice system will be impacted by climate change*. And all of us have a role to play in creating a better, more just future. I will continue to work for that.
So I have one ask of you, which will give me hope as I sit in jail. If you share my concerns and intentions, then please find your local anti-fracking group and continue this fight."
*I will add that the Craven Freedom may have different views on climate change to Simon Roscoe Blevins.