Un-Framed

Nine Extinction Rebellion activists have been acquitted of criminal damage to the London headquarters of a well-known drug money launderer. They took hammers and chisels to HSBC's custom-glazed windows at an ungodly hour of the morning in order to publicise the company's investments in fossil fuels, causing damage which the unfortunate multinational criminal enterprise was forced to repair at a cost equivalent to nearly a dozen executive lunches. Although the prosecutor noted that the legality of a protest is not determined by the justice of its cause, the jury apparently disagreed; which, should the precedent be followed with undue effect on profits, presumably means that jury trials will shortly follow legal aid, the courts and the prison and probation systems into government-accelerated decrepitude.