Björn recorded a video message in support of Great Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist who had made headlines around the world in the preceding 12 months.

He said, "A spin-off of "the Greta effect" is that the Patriarchy is pissing in their pants in fear of the 16-year-old girl with super-powers. She has become a populist nightmare. She says signs and enlightenment are what we need right now, not stale old nationalism and conspiracy theories. I think the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren would have liked Greta. She is like a straight-forward, stubborn and deeply reflective Pippi Longstocking.

If I'm not mistaken there's a quiet sense of humour when she dismisses her worst critics who unfortunately, to a great degree, are older men like me.

I don't think it has been her intention, but in a way Greta gives new momentum to the #Metoo movement. She is a feminist challenge from a different angle. She drives some people, mostly men, crazy and I find it difficult to understand where all that anger comes from. How can you stoop so low as to criticise the looks of a child?

Young people need role models and as such Greta is a blessing in the world of influences and reality TV stars. She's completely serious when she says, "We need science to help us mitigate the effects of climate change. We won't find answers anywhere else."

Even if you don't think everything that Greta says or does is unquestionable, you have to admire her guts and her focus. It's a monumental achievement to create a global mass movement from scratch in such a short time. The pressure from millions of young people that we feel right now wasn't there before, and we don't know exactly what it will lead to, only that it will lead to something which wouldn't have happened had she not decided to school-strike outside the Swedish Parliament a little more than a year ago."

The Irish Times;

Thanks to Monique Hoevens c/o ABBAtalk and Jan Bach.