Charlotte Hawkins paused an interview on Monday’s Good Morning Britain to shut down Chris Packham after he made an error. The Springwatch presenter kept calling Charlotte, her co-star Susanna Reid‘s name, as he spoke via video link.
When discussing the recent Just Stop Oil protests, Chris began: “I am not happy at all, no, Susanna simply because they’re unduly punitive. We see people who are committing violent crimes, we see people that are committing sexual offences, getting less time than these protesters.
“They are the canaries in the coal mine and I would ask you to think that whilst they have caused the disruption whilst they do annoy people, in terms of the amount of damage that they’re doing to the environment and people’s lives, it pales into insignificance compared to what’s been done by our fossil fuel giants that are continuing to fill out the sphere full of carbon dioxide and radically changed the world’s climate.
“So I think we just need to keep things in perspective, and one other thing I need to be very clear about is the laws that punish these protesters are not specific to climate activism.
“They could be implemented at any time to persecute and prosecute people who want to complain about gender rights, trans rights, the right to strike, it could be anything. So we have a broader concern about the way the judiciary is acting and the way that these laws are being implemented.”
Richard Madeley went on to point out it wasn’t “just about free speech and the right to protest”. He said: “We all accept that those are very important values that we want to preserve in this country and around the world.
“It’s the tactics that were used, and as the judge pointed out, you know, you had ambulances that couldn’t get to any units, you have people seeking extremely important cancer treatment who couldn’t make their appointments and had to defer their appointments.
“I mean, this wasn’t just about standing somewhere with a megaphone and delivering a message.”
Chris hit back that the IT outage that caused chaos worldwide last week was “far greater than this”. The wildlife expert added: “The M25 is pretty much a car park as we speak, so people will be missing appointments and so on and so forth.
“Nevertheless, of course, we manifest sympathies for those people who were inconvenienced. But let’s think about something else.
“A few weeks ago, two more Just Stop Oil protesters threw some cornstarch over Stonehenge. It was all over the media.
“Everyone focused upon that and was condemning that protest because it’s a national monument, which we love and treasure.
“The following Saturday, I and others put 100,000 people on the streets of London in the largest march before our election to highlight our concerns for biodiversity loss. It was covered by none of the media.
“If you guys don’t actually get the message across and only focus on the means of protest, then, of course, protesters will have to escalate their protest, and that’s to make sure that peaceful direct protest is properly covered by the media.”
Chris’ remark seemed to anger Charlotte as she paused to shut the GMB guest down. She fired back: “I just want to say you know, we do a lot here to talk about climate change.
“Laura, our weather presenter has been talking about the fact that it’s a climate emergency today. She’s got a clock ticking and is counting down on her desk right now showing people very visibly about that. So you know, we do kind of cover those things as well. But I think in this particular one…”
“Susanna, you do,” Chris interrupted as Charlotte quickly corrected: “It is Charlotte, by the way.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.