I am reminded of a scene from BECKET in which King Henry is soaked in a rain storm and goes to a hovel demanding “FIRE AND WARMTH!” and finds none.
BECKET: “Each hovel is allowed two measures of wood a year. One stick more and they are hanged.”
Henry: “My edict?”
Becket: “Your edict sire.”
I agree in general with the absurdity of the protests, but the fact is that British homes are rarely heated by oil, the majority use natural gas and electric heat. The same trend has been taking place in North America, the percentage of homes using oil has been dropping as people convert to natural gas, propane (not something I believe is part of European heating options), or electric heat. I have not lived in a home using heating oil as its primary source for quite a long time (since 1983) and when I did briefly rent one, I looked at all other alternatives because oil is really expensive compared to other options. In Canada a lot of people outside large towns use wood stoves for their basic heat and augment that with electric heaters as desired. The cost of a woodstove is about half the cost of fuel oil and a little better than natural gas too.