Skip to main content

Thoughts from Penny pretty worthless

Nicholas Penny, Director of London's National Gallery, has claimed that Trafalgar Square is being 'trashed' and has become 'bloody awful'. It seems the great unwashed are playing music, drinking, climbing on plinths and so on and this is upsetting the equilibrium in what he describes as his 'temple of art'.

It's this kind of elitist snobbery that drives countless people away from high culture. 20 years ago, the great British public rioted in that 'bloody awful' square to protest against a poll tax that penalised the poor. Sports fans gathered there more recently to hear the news that London was to host the 2012 Olympics. Lord Nelson gazes down on an iconic stage that has played a massive part in the vibrant culture and history of the capital. And I'm not sure he pays much attention to the prima donnas and intellectuals who snipe from the sidelines.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Captain Birdseye and other people of rank

Regular readers may recall that I once doubted the existence of Yeo Valley. I'd never heard of the Yeo mountain range and I therefore rated the likelihood of there being a valley at somewhere between 0 and 5%. Of course, I had yoghurt all over my face when I discovered that the place really does exist. Somewhere in Somerset, I seem to recall. Today, having read an article in the latest edition of The Marketer magazine, I'm astonished to discover that there really was a Captain Birdseye. Well, I need to qualify that just a little. There was a Mister Clarence Birdseye who invented the fish finger back in 1955. The avuncular, uniformed figure who dominated our TV screens for about thirty years may have been an invention of over-eager advertising creatives, but he didn't blow in on a trawler during a squall. There was actually some connection to a real human being. These revelations about fish and yoghurt are causing me considerable disquiet, because I'm wondering h...
3 comments
Read more

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.
1 comment
Read more

When one name isn't enough

You may have heard the news reports about the turmoil in Kingston, Jamaica, resulting from the government's attempts to pin down a notorious drug lord on behalf of the US. I was struck by the number of self-styled monikers this guy has given himself. He is, depending on the channel you listen to, known on the street as 'Dudas', 'The Big Man' and 'The President' - worshipped by many impoverished Kingston residents as a benefactor to slum dwellers. It's his real name that seems most appropriate, however. If you were a drug baron called Christopher Coke, wouldn't you leave it at that? It's certainly not a name to be sniffed at.
Post a Comment
Read more