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The toppling of Edward Colston in Bristol (let’s forget the slavery bit, shall we?) has raised an army of ‘heroic defenders’
Ah yes, statues: the only subject powerful enough to wrestle the news focus away from the pandemic, the oscillating UK infection rates, the Dominic Cummings road trip movie, the global Black Lives Matter movement and the looming prospect of a second coronavirus wave.
As the statue of the slaver Edward Colston was toppled into the harbour in Bristol, a sort of statue-shaped bat signal went out to Britain’s patriots, a special pheromone that somehow can only be picked up by those blokes who are always in the audience on Question Time: Our Statues Need Saving. Now the patriots are going in to bat for mediocre town centre statues that would otherwise collect hot, white streaks of bird shit. You’re right, they are the real heroes of the hour.  Continue reading...