Duke of Wellington Cone Prank

image For almost twenty years Glaswegians have enthusiastically upheld a tradition of placing traffic cones on top of a statue of the Duke of Wellington that stands in the city center. You can even buy postcards and t-shirts displaying a cone-wearing Wellington. But now the fun might come to an end on account of art historian Gary Nisbet who claims that the cone prank threatens to seriously damage the 160-year-old statue. He's campaigning to get people who climb up on the statue charged with vandalism. Unfortunately this would make a number of the city councillors vandals. Nisbet's proposal doesn't seem to be going over well at all with the residents of Glasgow, most of whom seem to think the cone is the best thing about the statue.

Art Pranks

Posted on Wed Jan 26, 2005


Comments

Theres a statue of Churchill near Manchester University (whose colour is purple) wearing a pair of purple pants (US: underpants) on his head.

theyre supposed to be there.

the mind boggles
Posted by Nick  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  09:29 AM
Americans make fun of Europeans a lot, but they're often a lot more laid back and relaxed, and possibly happier than we are. If it were here, people would already have been charged for putting the cone on the statue. And there's no way that you'd find city council members doing such things.
My plan: give us 5+ weeks of vacation like Europeans instead of the measly 2 that we have, then we might not be stressed out all the time.
Posted by brian  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  11:26 AM
I would also reccomend not going to war just cause someone 'looked at you funny'
Posted by Nick  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  12:29 PM
True, but you in England are guilty of that also.
Posted by brian  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  12:47 PM
Nick: As an American, I feel I must take exception to your comments that Americans go to war because someone "looked at us funny". That simplifies a complex strategy based on national interests. Americans do not rush into war. On the contrary. We bombard our citizens with months of demonization of our "enemies", and anyone who may oppose our actions. Then we flood the airways with fear, and reduce Americans to whimpering consumers in bedslippers. Then we pick a country that really has done us no wrong and is no real threat to us, and beat the crap out of their pathetic armies. After we start stealing their rescources, we build permanent military bases. All this benefits the Military-Industrial complex, and keeps us perpetually scared of the threat of war, which makes us compliant. So... I hope you'll reconsider your observation, Nick. It's really much worse than that. Cheerio. I'd ask you say "ello to Tony Blair, but he looked at me funny.
Posted by Hairy Houdini  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  01:03 PM
I sort of like the Duke's orange dunce cap. I'm wondering how one of those cones would fit on General Lee's statue in Lee Park, which, by coincidence, I have to pass on my way home tonight...
Posted by Big Gary C  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  02:48 PM
First saw the article I thought it was a "clone" hoax. Guess I'm just waiting for the day an army of Abraham lincoln clones battles an army of Hitler clones for the fate of the world.
Posted by Shawn  on  Thu Jan 27, 2005  at  08:22 PM
This used to happen in my home town of Chatham to the mounted statues. It was particularly spooky as at the time there wasn't even a university in the town.
Posted by fenix down  on  Fri Jan 28, 2005  at  08:16 AM
Yep, here in the US, we go to war when people look at us funny because we don't have federally manditated holidays. Nothing to do with you know, constantally ignoring the agreement involving the ending of a war some years ago; being in line with the type of people who fly planes into buildings; paying money to parents who raised up nice little homocide bombers; wanting increase the number of countries in the world that have free elections; suspecting a country of having WMD when they do not provide proper documentation about their weapon stores, and they also do not allow full inspections of suspected weapons manafacturing sites, and also required notification before the sites that could be inspected were inspected. I'm sure its more due to the lack of vacation days. I might have something to do with not using the Oil for Food program for lining our own pockets also, but that would probally just be silly.
Posted by Drunk Stepdad  on  Sun Feb 06, 2005  at  07:05 AM
Take a day off, Karl
Posted by Hairy Houdini  on  Sun Feb 06, 2005  at  09:02 AM
Yawn. Is that the best you can do to explain why Iraq should not have free elections?
Posted by Drunk Stepdad  on  Mon Feb 07, 2005  at  05:46 PM
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