http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jul/25/big-blue-(*)(*)(*)(*)-trafalgar-square Sacrebleu! Linkie no work cause word "c.o.c.k" banned on PF.... dirty-minded bastards!
And completely and utterly awful. It's about time a statue of a great man in the calibre of Nelson or George IV was permanently erected on the fourth plinth. Every few years one silly statue is taken down from the fourth plinth and replaced by another silly statue. I dread to think what's going to be up there next. The fourth plinth was originally intended to hold a beautiful equestrian statue of King William IV, but it remained bare due to lack of funds. And after years of wrangling about what to put up there the powers that be decided to put up one daft statue after another. So since 1999 - when it all started - we've been "treated" to a marble torso-bust of a woman with no arms and short legs; an architectural model of a 21-storey building made of glass; and people standing on the statue for one hour at a time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, over the course of 100 days in which they could do anything they like and could carry anything that they could carry unaided. And these are just a few of the "gems" the fourth plinth has hosted. In February 2008, Terry Smith, the chief executive of trading house Tullett Prebon, offered to pay more than £100,000 for a permanent statue on the fourth plinth acceptable to "ordinary Londoners" of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park in recognition of his work as commander of No. 11 Group RAF during the Battle of Britain, as it was this Group that was responsible for the defence of London. It's about time this statue went up on the fourth plinth and the blue (*)(*)(*)(*) came down.
Have to say I was right at the back of the queue when God was giving out artistic sensiblities and don't particularly give a toss about stuff like opera and most classical music (though I do connect with the lyrics of more modern songs), paintings which don't look like blurry pictures of something off a pre-1960s chocolate box or real people, or sculpture which is newer than that created more than five centuries ago..and I loathe the unmade beds and heaps of bricks type pointlessness we told are art nowadays. So what is on any plinth in London (or anywhere else for that matter doesn't phase me at all. I can't see how commemorating a large blue male hen is any less ludicrous than commemorating with statues on plinths of two punters who presided over the conquering of chunks of India...and George IV for the love of Pete..what did he ever do to warrant a statue except live,,,.and not even live as a good role model for anyone but the dissolute and profligate? And all in a Square commemorating a naval battle. But then, in a country which intends to celebrate the start of a war which cost the UK the lives of 996,000 British Servicemen and 1,663,000 wounded.and which cost the world, on both sides of the conflict, around 16 million dead and 20 million wounded, I suppose one can't be surprised that a large blue male hen not wielding a gun to commemorate some imperial war would be considered inappropriate. The only man who did anything for the population of the UK, bar presiding over killing members of that population, and who did once have a statue in the square was Jenner...but he would have been commemorating the conquering of pointless death, so was likely deemed inappropriate and moved elsewhere.
