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LIKE MANY LONDONERS, Sam Cookney was fed up with apartment prices in the UK capital.
So the 32-year-old social media manager began to look beyond the North Sea for an affordable apartment.
Cookney now gets on a plane each morning in Barcelona, Spain and is seated his desk in London by 9:30am.
He has tweeted and blogged his big move, which has gone viral as he begins his new commute.
In an October 2013 blog post, Cookney posted proof of his number crunching, and evidence that a 713-mile commute was, in fact, worth it.
Cookney is able to fly from Barcelona’s El Prat Airport to London Stansted, just north of metropolitan London, for about €34 each way, and in a little less than two hours.
However, he told BuzzFeed that the flight prices were the most unpredictable part of his plan, and that they can climb as high as €150, or more.
It’s €6 to and from Barcelona’s el Prat airport (and I can walk to the airport train in 5 minutes from that flat),” he writes. “And then £14 (€20) return to Liverpool Street with Terravision [a bus service].”
According to FlightAware, Ryanair flight 9811 was on time during a recent trip and has averaged early landings for a week.
For anyone not convinced, Cookney has kept us updated on his first few days of international commuting, posting pictures of boarding passes and even a selfie on the plane home.
Business Insider has reached out to Cookney, and will update this story as we learn more about how the daily international trekking is affecting his lifestyle.
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I’m generally not a green freaky type but I do value life in its entirety, no, not vegan either lol. This, to me, is senseless waste of life, leading to extinction of life forms, and for what. It’s not like it’s helping world hunger. It’s so very sad and those responsible should feel great shame.
@Anna Carr: “and for what”? it makes money for for people and makes the big co-ops lots of money.
@Anna Carr: genuine question but why do Irish people see green people as freaks or vegans as a joke?
@Lad: I’m not sure about green, but the opinion about vegans, I dare say it’s the inability to grasp a concept differing from what they and their parents grew up with. Possibly also the refusal to even consider in the slightest the thought of learning new skills and change the way of earning income. Who knows. I’m often thinking about a story my grandmother told me when I was young.
A man had trained as an apple picker and for 20 years made a good living reaching up into the trees harvesting apples. Then the orchard burned down due to a terrible wildfire and work was only available in the neighbouring town, and only as a potato harvester. The man refused the work because after 20 years of reaching up into the apple trees, he didn’t want to learn how to bend down to pick up potatoes. And so he got no work and died of hunger.
The ability to look towards the future, to learn skills that are in demand and that actually have a future, is what I often see totally lacking in people here sadly. So much about a mind set speculation.
As to the article, I’m as usual totally amazed at the short sightedness of everybody involved. Instead of looking over the brim of the bowl and seeing the whole (our seas and oceans on this planet), talk is about this little part of it. If I were sarcastic, I would say, fear not, for in a small decade the oceans will be dead zones, there’ll be no fish to catch, and the air quality on our planet will be so bad that survival will be questionable. Yes, the oceans are a larger oxygen provider than the rain forests. Everyone intelligent enough to have seen Seaspiracy et al. and understood what was aid and shown, knows the solution to the problem. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.
Opinions are like noses. Everybody has one. And that’s my opinion. No need for verbal abuse if you have a different one.
The pillaging of the sea continues unabated.
The biggest virus on this planet is the human race.
@Patrick Corr: That’s an insult to viruses. They normally don’t kill their host.
@Padraig Kavanagh: LOL I admit I must agree with you ;)
Seaspriacy a must watch on Netflix, very factual about sea vessels and the damage they cause the sea life.
@Sadie b: agree seaspiracy is a documentary everybody needs to see urgently! A revolution is needed before we destroy the oceans.
@Sadie b: if the oceans die then we die. Industrial fishing the biggest polluter on the planet and speeding up the path to self destruction. Agree seaspiracy is a must watch
@MB: No revolution needed, just an amending of eating habits.
@Sadie b: I watched Seaspiracy and think each individual section should be addressed separately. Below is a view by Ray Holborn who is respected internationally by many on both sides of the debate.
@Brendan Barry: Ray Hilborn has a vested interest and his points are so totally out of date and off the mark, I doubt anybody with an open mind would agree with him. The argument of animals being killed in crop farming has been refuted years ago due to it’s incorrect relation as proven by scientific studies and evidence. And he really misses the mark when he talks about well managed fisheries. What Seaspiracy is showing (amongst other things) is the devastating impact of the gigantic fishing fleets. The native people doing coastal fishing for their dinner in Africa or in the Pacific are certainly no threat to the oceans.
What Hilborn totally ignores is the point of unnecessary and intentional suffering and killing. Just saying.
A very interesting but depressing report. So we are told to lay off criticising the fishermen for the vast numbers of creatures suffering as by-catches as they will stop reporting them. Who’s to say they are reporting accurately anyway? The figures could be much greater and we will only know when endangered species have disapeared altogether. Nobody is there to see what is actually happening on these boats. I fear that like so much legislation meant to protect our struggling planet new regulations will be either ignored or go unenforced.
@Pat Forster: perhaps cameras on every vessel in the Irish Sea, accessible by a monitoring agency? It would be a huge operation, but to allow these guys do what they want and self report is crazy!
@Padraig O’M: Absolutely not! I’d imagine a large amount of super trawlers have cameras on board and there I can agree that companies should be obliged to show evidence that they observe practise on board their vessels and ensure it’s moral. There are fishermen who do not cause harm at all to the environment and entire communities who rely on people like these hardworking people of goodwill for fish. Small trawlers operated by father and son or whatever should not be effectively stalked by the government or any agency. That would also cost millions for the infrastructure alone and monitoring each vessel would require hundreds of staff. What is essential is that the European Union’s opinion on what our national territorial waters are is not listened to. The navy should not have ships stuck in dry dock half of the year because of poor pay. The pay must be increased so that our naval officers can protect Irish waters from foreign super trawlers, who probably aren’t familiar in the first with Irish maritime law.
We have a fantast fisheries here and we allow it to be raped and pillaged by foreign fishermen. And I know people will say we get money from the eu. Money cant be eaten. We giving future generations food away purely out of greed
The EU have only just begun trawling our waters. #KillingUsSlowly
Good to hear of better monitoring of discards. I’d like the idea of cameras on every shipping vessel and personally think a government representative should be on every trawler to document all activities. Be nice if we could start being more proactive with our great sea resource.
The answer is quite simple – so simple in fact that ye will all reject it in an attempt to keep the status quo.
Stop abusing animals – all animals – if you love your dog/cat then love chickens/cows/pigs.
You can look down on Vegans all you like but that is the plain and simple path – Save Lives – Go Vegan
The average person feels very helpless in the face of all this .We know that the ocean will eventually be destroyed by pollution ,plastic, over fishing etc etc bu what to do .And indeed by all accounts any attempt to challenge the status quo brings swift reprisals .
DON’T EAT FISH .and never will again after seeing Seaspiracy
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