[subscribed]

Yeah, I'll tell my family we need to move to the mouldy 1 bedroom flat because a guy in the internet says so. That'll help with the mortgage bit;

Also kids need to manage their expectations and instead of having active hobbies (that require some minimum hardware but lots of activities), they should try sculpting with clay instead. Especially that with the asthma they'll get from the black mould they'll be in no position to be very active anyway.

I've seen clay on the field, so we'll save money here. We can also collect their art through the winter to bake them in the sun once they're ready (to save on the oven).

School? Right, we need to move to the closest one, why let them have friends or aspirations.

Now work, hmm, that's easy. Instead of going to the work I get paid a lot but commute cost over £5k a year, I'll take something that pays 1/6 of my original salary but we can save on the commute. Will he'll with arguing why we need to move to the smaller place and ditch their activities.

Living costs a lot.

And if I sound absurd so do you by suggesting your life choices are applicable to everyone or they're just convinced by adverts to spend.

[ben_w]

You're inventing a fictional narrative unrelated to anything I just said.

Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school, and furthermore in the context of "how does she manage to be a full-time activist with no obvious means of support?" where such things as "commuting" is more like "hitchhiking on someone else's yacht for 2 weeks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_voyages_of_Greta...

You can do a lot of travel very cheaply when your reputation alone is sufficient for people to give you a free lift across the Atlantic ocean as part of your own activism against, in that case, the CO2 emissions of flying. Should that be limited, given the travel itself was part of the attempt at activism to move people away from air travel, but also it took 2 weeks and therefore probably wouldn't do any such thing?

(For those without this advantage, I'm reminded of Tom Scott explaining how he managed to do so much on-site filming around the world for relatively little money; my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination).

[wolvesechoes]

> Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school

And comes from the rich middle-class background. But let's ignore that, because all that matters is small financial discipline.

[vintermann]

You are both ignoring what my actual point was, which was that some organized propagandist wants the discussion to be about Greta Thunberg's virtue or lack of it.

[ben_w]

Noted.

That means I phrased my comments badly, to whit I was trying to make the point "this attempt to dig dirt is simply not interesting because…", which is neither virtue nor lack of it, but a lack of stickiness to what appears to be an implicit claim of vice.

[ben_w]

> And comes from the rich middle-class background. But let's ignore that, because all that matters is small financial discipline.

I didn't say to ignore it.

I said it's possible to live cheaply.

Vimes' Boots isn't nothing.

You said this was a "serious question"; but do you now recognise that a simple observation of "oh look, she's from a rich middle-class family" (a fairly large group) means it is not?

[jacquesm]

> my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination

The cost of any trip to the UK is a constant...

[K0balt]

Copium is a powerful drug.