As a new statue commemorating climate change activist Greta Thunberg is unveiled at Winchester University, one has to wonder quite who thought it was a good idea to spend £24k on it in a time of austerity.

Angry students at the university, who have been learning remotely for the past year due to the pandemic, have blasted the life-sized statue as a ‘vanity project’.

Megan Ball of Winchester’s Student’s Union  said ‘We are calling on the university to match the statue cost by committing £23,760 in additional funding to student support services across campus. We urge them to publicly face the critical issues which students are highlighting and provide a transparent breakdown of additional and existing financial support.’

We wonder what Greta herself must be thinking about all this. She’s a young woman who has inspired a generation but by doing so has attracted the ire of many and more trolls than she’d find lurking near her local fjord.

We can’t imagine she’d be loving this, at the end of the day she’s more of a low key gal so will probably be experiencing a full body cringe coupled with a teenage eye-roll right about now.