Yup. That's easily fixed.

As I said after the Kingsnorth Six were acquitted:

A little tip for E.On: in future don't press criminal charges in cases like this. Take a straightforward civil case, in which case there are no criminal penalties, you just put in a claim for the costs of cleaning off graffiti and loss of earnings from having to shut down operations for a couple of days etc.

I was thus delighted to read this in The London Paper:

CLIMATE change protesters face being sued for more than £2m after admitting bringing chaos to Stansted Airport. Twenty-two demonstrators from the group Plane Stupid have been sentenced after pleading guilty to aggravated trespass in a demonstration on 8 December.

The protest, to highlight the impact of aviation on the environment, closed the airport for five hours and caused the cancellation of 57 Ryanair flights that were due to carry nearly 7,000 passengers. A further 52,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted as later flights were also delayed.

Ryanair suffered £ 2m in costs and airport owner BAA is considering whether to claim back the losses by launching a civil action . Eighteen protesters have been ordered to complete community service orders of between 50 and 90 hours. Two have been given fines of £ 130 and £ 160, one was given a referral order, and another was handed a conditional discharge.

As ever, the criminal penalties were derisory, but in this case, that's not the point. Let's assume that the judge who hears the civil action lives in the real world (unlikely, but bear with me) and actually awards BAA £2 million damages plus costs. Great, there were about 50 protestors in total, so that's £40,000 each, which they probably won't be able to pay so either they'll go bankrupt (result!) or these Greenie organisations will have a whip round and pick up the tab (which is far more likely).

Then next time they try it, BAA will up the ante, on the basis that the 59,000 passengers ought to be compensated as well let's say £100 each for a wasted day, loss of holiday etc, that adds a princely £5.9 million to the claim. If the respondents wail and moan and claim they can't afford it (notwithstanding that this is not a mitigating factor), the claimants will just point out that the Greenies will do a whip round for them. So that's an award of £7.9 million plus 50% mark up for the shyster lawyers.

So the Greenies have a another whip round and some other bunch of cranks does it again. At the next civil action, BAA then demands exemplary damages on top, call it £10 million plus legal fees, the Greenie organisations have another whip round...

And so on, until an ever smaller number of Greenies gets sick and tired of stumping up ever larger amounts of cash for these protestors and one day a bunch of them really are made bankrupt.

All right, unlikely but possible.