On 10 Feb, 14:19, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 10 Feb 2009, Mizter T wrote:
I'm sure people will scoff, but my take on it is 'why not?'. The Angel
of the North was widely regarded as an extravagant indulgence when it
was being planned and built, but it has since won over a great many of
the sceptics and has become a genuine landmark.

To answer your question, because the Angel of the North was something that
had a deep connection, through being a huge thing made out of steel, to
the community around it, a community which has been through hard times but
maintained a strong sense of self, and was thus ripe for the adoption of
an icon. The Ebbsfleet Big Horse is just a big horse [1], and is being
built in a dormitory suburb of London.

The Angel of the North was of course ultra-controversially fabricated
on Teesside not Tyneside which didn't help to endear it to local
people. The sense of self thing in the North East is interesting - I
think it does exist but there are also strong local rivalries too (I
recall a Geordie exclaiming that 'they shouldn't be building a Me'ro
line between Newcastle and Sunderland, they should be building a
f***ing wall'!). FWIW the Angel was actually a Gateshead project.

Ebbsfleet a dormitory suburb of London? I'd say dormitory town, it's a
bit too far out to be a suburb in my books, though of course the high-
speed service will mean it will take just 17 minutes to get into St.
Pancras.

But yes, they are indeed different - the Angel served to bond together
an existing community, whilst the Horse is intended to help to create
a new community, providing it with a sense of place. Worth a try in my
books.


Also, the Angel of the North is a visually striking object and an
interesting piece of engineering, even if you don't think it was value for
money. The big horse isn't even that - it's just a big horse. You can get
the same visual effect for a fraction of the cost by finding a normal
horse and standing close to it.

It'll surely still be an interesting engineering challenge. And a
normal horse does not tower over a big chunk of a county!


tom

[1] Yes, a big horse is the symbol of Kent, but if someone built three
hundred-foot-high scimitars in Chelmsford, i don't think i'd get
particularly attached to them [2].

[2] Although that would be pretty cool.

So perhaps that's what the big'orse will be - pretty cool.

I think Tower Bridge is great, but it's basically a somewhat absurd
Disneyland-esque take on ye olden days by the Victorians. The ornate
Palace of Westminster is a similar architectural sleight of hand. The
modern day London Eye is a somewhat absurd oversized bit of a theme
park stuck in the middle of central London, but it's also great. Heck,
Nelson's Column can be seen as a bit bonkers, but I wouldn't have it
any other way.