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Sculpture cost row is set for council airing
Wednesday 9th December 2009, 10:45AM GMT.
Council leaders are being grilled over the spiralling cost of Shrewsbury’s controversial Quantum Leap sculpture – with one critic demanding to why it does not look like the artist’s impressions.
The sculpture and a Darwin Memorial Garden in Mardol Quay have been created to celebrate the town’s most famous son Charles Darwin and to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth.
But the project sparked uproar after it was revealed that Shropshire Council had been forced to spend an extra £100,000 on the artwork, with the final budget adjusted to £450,000.
It came after the sculpture was reconfigured after it was estimated to be out of alignment by 18 inches.
Now Councillor Jon Tandy, Shropshire Council ward member for Sutton, has posed a series of questions to the authority’s portfolio holder for leisure and culture, Councillor Stephen Charmley, demanding to know what went wrong.
In an official question to be tabled at tomorrow’s full council meeting, Mr Tandy asks how the overspend has arisen and whether any mistakes were made in the “site investigation, design, budgeting and artists impressions, particularly the prominent solid concrete bases?”
In his reply Councillor Charmley will say the sculpture had to be deconstructed and re-built to protect trees in the area as instructed by the council’s tree conservation officer.
Mr Charmley said the council did not believe that the finished sculpture was different to the original sketches and drawings.
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Well done One Critic have fun and get stuck in! Hopefully you’ve not been ‘placed’ to throw soft questions in a show of Democracy In Action. Hopefully someone with a genuine point to make, a pair of eyes in his head and a normal functioning memory {unlike most ‘admirers’ of the dratted thing}.
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It’s just the wrong time to throw money, public money, away like this.
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This money could have been spent better on health on things like hip replacements and gastric bands for the obese if they really can’t stop eating as is claimed.
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The whole thing has been a complete farce from day one. A complete waste of taxpayers money and heads should roll especially those heads that remain either in the Shropshire council or the farcical Town council.
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Good Art is wasted in Shrewsbury, New Theatre moaned about, new sculpture moaned about, New Football stadium moaned about. Is there a pattern here. I just think its a good job the column was built a long time ago before the current population were able to moan about it being an eyesore and costing too much..
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twisting my melon said:
“I just think its a good job the column was built a long time ago before the current population were able to moan about it being an eyesore and costing too much.”
You’re not keeping up to date – the Shrewsbury Feminist Multicultural Sisterhood Collective have launched a campaign to have it demolished on the grounds that anything that’s taller than it’s wide is a phallic symbol and a token of male beastliness…
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Better to have spent the QL woodlouse sculpture monies on a rEVOLUTIONary design for 1st floor level to the Frankwell car park. The entrance is accessible when flood protection is in place but the car park is closed. Cost me £1.80 for 45min parking (nearest pay-n-display is til 8pm) when I went to see Chris Wood at Theatre Seven last month. Travelling from the North of the County I can’t use park-n-ride as finishes before the performance end, same with multistory car park closing at 11pm.
Went to Cannock where multistory car park in town centre is free after 6.30pm for next door Theatre patrons & exit remains open after midnight.
Stupid to have Council Offices & Theatre parking unavailable during times of flooding/prevention especially as buildings in an area with scant alternative public parking & a traipse across the river bridges in inclement weather isn’t ideal start/finish to an evenings entertainment.
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How can anyone compare this £1/2m Darwin monstrosity to the ‘Column’?
The Column only cost 5972 pounds, 13 shillings and 2 pence – it is the largest Doric Column in the world, 13 feet taller than Nelson’s Column and 2 feet wider!!!!
And it celebrates the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, who wanted to impose his European Uniformity on us all with European Laws, Administration and a Single European currency.
Come to think of it, the Battle of Waterloo didn’t really change the course of history in the end, did it?
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Of course you can always trawl through wikipedia to make out as though you know all about the classical Greek architectural orders. Note to self, marks deducted for not referencing. Harvard e.g.
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Well I still quite like it, but I do agree that it’s cost far too much.
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The costs of building the column were a mite lower because materials were obtained from quarries where workers were two a penny and ditto no doubt, the poor devils that built the structure.
In those days celebrating the aristocracy was very popular and not always justified as in the case of our statue to Clive of India.
The sculpture to celebrate the life of Darwin is as successfully controversial as he was and reaches a much wider audience than the supply of gastric bands could ever do. I can easily see that the Quantum Leap could look very similar to an extremely large concrete gastric band however:)
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eva land said “[Darwin] reaches a much wider audience than the supply of gastric bands could ever do.”
I think those requiring gastric bands are in fact quite wide, probably wider than evolutionists and creationists put together.
By the way, the Column is quite paltry compared to the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig 1813 (to commemorate the coming together of the German Tribes to form what we know now as Germany, to give Napoleon a damn good seeing to, which sent him into retreat to Waterloo). By the way I haven’t Wiki-ed that – I’ve been there and climbed to the top where you can see the Eros Centre near the VW garage. (feel free to google the Eros Centre, Leipzig).
Would thoroughly recommend a visit (to the monument not the Eros Centre). Was nice to see that those East Germans had a life sized cardboard picture of Hitler at the monument and tackled the issues of nationalism in a reasoned manner. The café across the road the excellent as well and I am told that the crematorium and cemetery (next to the monument) is well worth a visit.
It’s a pity we couldn’t tackle the issues of Clive of India and nationalism in the same responsible manner.
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@ Lucy, 6k was a lot of money in 1814-1816 ( i also have access to wikipedia ) when two chickens would get you a three bed house on London road 6k was a comparative amount to 500k..
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@tmm #13, but it was from private funds!!! Not the tax payer during one of the greatest economic down turns ever – greater than the great depression.
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