To the Anglo-American freepers, the statue of a disabled woman is "nasty".

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sterlingtimes/vpost?id=646794&trail=15#2

Yes, I know why some DUers would like to pretend that assholes like this don't exist but reading this shit made me want to throw up and reminded me why I hate them so much. My late partner was a disabled woman at the end. And she deserved a plinth in Trafalgar Square too ...

For those outside the UK who may not know about the statue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1571296,00.html

And a feature on the remarkable woman who inspired it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1561014,00.html

The Skin

[Mnemosyne]

1. What an amazing life and

what a completely amazing woman!

Thanks for sharing this Skin. I feel so grateful to know we have souls as strong as hers in this world.

How anyone could not feel love for those children is beyond me. Shouldn't our love go out to those in the most need?

[LeftishBrit]

2. She is indeed a remarkable woman

I first saw her and her son on "Child of Our Time". Here is an report:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/closeup/lapper.shtml

Her own artwork is really impressive.

I had not realized how many difficulties, social as well as physical, she had to overcome. I could murder those abusive care staff!!!

[emad]

3. Saw it the day it was unveiled. Personally don't like it because

it looks plastic and amateurish as a piece of art.

Hope some bolt of lightning strikes it from the blue!

[Mr Creosote]

4. Check out this bullshit

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/09/17/do1701.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/17/ixportal.html

"The damp cloth was pulled away and the sculpture was seen, impressive in its mass, slick in its machine-made smoothness, repellent in its fascistic assertion of propaganda as art."

well if that is propoganda as art then what the fuck is Nelson's column?

[non sociopath skin]

5. Er, excuse me. Didn't fascists do away with the disabled ...

... rather than dedicating statues to them?

The statue has brought to the surface British right-wingers' contempt for and disgust with the disabled, just as the Katrina-NOLA tragedy has highlighted the US freepers contempt for and disgust with the poor.

Fine. Let them wear their hearts on their sleeves instead of serving up the "Compassionate Conservative" bullshit.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

6. What else do you expect from Charles Moore?

[emad]

9. Trafalgar Square/Nelson's Column = UK's premier military

monument TO THE DEAD.

Always thought is naff to erect statues to anyone still alive.

A more fitting permanent memorial might be to Douglas bader who lost both legs flying in the Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe....but then got some wooden ones made and went up in the skies AGAIN and shot down dozens more of the enemy's planes.

Now THAT would be an appropriate memorial.

[Mr Creosote]

12. Premier miltary monument to the dead

is the cenotaph surely?

[emad]

16. Cenotaph = monument to fallen of World War I and II. Trafalgar

Sq is UK's ulitmate military monument, honoring Nelson, Napier and Havelock (I think) after the routing of Napoleon.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. And the other existing statue on a plinth is George IV

who did bugger all, militarily or otherwise. So it's already a bit of a mish-mash - Nelson in the middle, who actually did do something to save Briatin, a couple of generals who helped secure India for the Empire, and have been of little interest to anyone since, and one of the most despised monarchs we've had. There's also, in the square, one of Charles I, a highly controversial figure, but at least it balances Cromwell at the other end of Whitehall.

I wouldn't say it's the UK's ultimate military monument. If it was, it ought to have Wellington, or Malborough, or someone representative of the Armada, in it.

[emad]

18. Wellington was deemed of such major importance that he got his

own monuments - plus Apsley House - at Hyde Park Corner. Marlborough got Blenheim Palace - commissioned and paid by by the Government.

The Crown Estate Property Commissioners define the Nelson monument and Trafalgar Square as 'UK's premier military monument' and the budget for it's upkeep, maintenance and care belongs to the MoD.

Previous attempts to bring it under the aegis of Westminister Council and also the GLC all failed after examination of the statutory charter rights that govern its status.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Charles Moore is revolting

Sick, sick article. What exactly is his point, other than that he hates Ken Livingstone, which we knew already? WTF has Alison Lapper got to do with terrorists or fascists? And how is her statue showing us all 'how bad we are'????

And as regards nastiness toward disabled people - there has been some revolting stuff in the 'Spectator' from time to time, e.g. by Rod Liddle. It's my impression that the more 'intellectual' right-wingers indulge more in the viciousness toward disabled people, while the more populist variety focus more on viciousness toward foreigners, asylum seekers, and those from ethnic minorities. All quite depressing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. I didn't know Liddle had a track record on this

He has a comment piece in the Sunday Times today, slagging off "the fashion for disability": http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1785269,00.html

The thing is, he's obviously knows that when Lapper talks about a "tribute to disability", she's talking about a tribute to the disabled, and what they've done to overcome the difficulties in their lives. And yet he takes it as an excuse for claiming that people actually want us all to be disabled. I've come to the conclusion that Liddle has always said anything to get himself printed - at one time, when he wrote for The Guardian, it might have been something I agreed with, but that was pure chance.

[Kicked in the Taco]

20. Liddle really is pond life.

He gives alcoholics a bad name.

[Kipling]

8. It is a bit nasty. It looks kind of plastic. Well-carved though.

[emad]

11. The fashion for disability, ROD LIDDLE, Sunday Times 18/9/05

The fashion for disability
ROD LIDDLE



Sir Edwin Landseer forsook the opportunity to be a truly inclusive artist when he made all of the lions at the foot of Nelson’s column able-bodied. Or at least, able-bodied so far as we are able to discern. It maybe that one or two of them are afflicted by hidden infirmities which would these days classify them as being disabled.
That lion on the left, for example, gazing implacably towards the Mall: is there an intimation of stress in its frozen rigidity? Today stress is, officially, a disability — so perhaps I am underestimating Landseer and he was actually being more subtle than I gave him credit for.

The easy option would have been to put a couple of the lions in wheelchairs or put a white cane in one of the lion’s paws — so perhaps Landseer had a more modernist take on disability. Maybe another lion is — silently, invisibly, bravely — suffering the effects of whiplash. It’s for us to decide, I suppose. Disability is in the eye of the beholder.

The chap towering over the lions is, unquestionably, inclusive. An eye lost in cavalier fashion at Calvi, a head wound inflicted during the battle of the Nile that sent him a bit mental, an internal rupture sustained at St Vincent and, of course, the famously absent arm, resulting from an ill-advised escapade at Tenerife. That’s four compelling disabilities in one.

It would be nice to think that our forefathers bunged up the statue of Nelson precisely in order to celebrate disability; but I suspect it was more to do with all those battles he won for his country.

Just along from the good admiral we can now gaze upon a marble effigy of a pregnant woman called Alison Lapper who has never, so far as I am aware, routed the Spanish, the French or the Danes. But she is certainly disabled, as evidenced by a comprehensive absence of limbs. Lapper, who seems an agreeable and doughty sort, has said that the statue is “a modern tribute to femininity, disability and motherhood”.

--------------------------

I do not like the statue of Lapper in Trafalgar Square. Not because, as some critics have argued, it is a poor work of art by Marc Quinn; “slimy” and “machine made”. I do not like it because I do not wish to revel in disability. I do not think disability is something that deserves a “tribute”. The ugliness lies not in Lapper’s actual form — something we are easily able to accommodate when we gaze upon her neighbour, Nelson — but in the delusional ideology behind it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1785269,00.html

[LeftishBrit]

13. Horrible article!!!

The article I was referring to is this one, published in 2003, entitled "Crippling burden". You have to register to access it now; and I wasn't prepared to register, even for free, with the Spectator, but anyway, here's the evidence for anyone who wants it!

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_archive.php?id=3222&issue=2003-06-21

[mr blur]

14. Speaking as one of The Diabled...

"Disabled people are not vulgar, or ugly, or grotesque, and hopefully people will recognise that."

The neo-Fascists at Sterling Times, however, are all three of these things.

[Nihil]

15. Mixed feelings on this

Personally I think this is a particularly uninspiring piece of "art".
I would much rather Whiteread's resin block or Woodrow's bronze tree
than Quinn's mediocre effort.

On the other hand, I loved the programme on Alison Lapper & her son
a while ago - I think she is an interesting artist and totally admire
her courage. I just don't think this is captured in the statue.

I have a strong suspicion that Quinn just used Lapper as an excuse to
generate controversy and hence get his name recognised - the Damien
Hirst & Tracey Emin school of "art" ... otherwise known as "marketing
the talentless".

[Kicked in the Taco]

19. Couldn't agree more

As a work of art, the only thing it's got going for it is its subject- it completely fails to capture Alison Lapper's clearly immense humanity and vitality.

[Taxloss]

21. It's a leaden bit of sculpture.

Considering the liveliness and fire of the subject, you'd think the statue might have a more animated quality.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

22. Tory deputy-mayor: Disabled children should be "guillotined"

A VETERAN Tory who said disabled kids should be "guillotined" has been forced to resign.

Owen Lister's outburst came at a council committee discussing funds for handicapped children.

The 79-year-old retired GP outraged colleagues by saying it was too expensive to look after severely disabled children and they would be better off dead.

Lister has now quit the Tory Party and his post as deputy mayor of Swindon,Wiltshire.

(...)

But Lister was unrepentant yesterday. He said: "There was a decision about the placement of severely disabled children in a home at a cost of £3000 per child per week.

"We agreed this and I indicated at that point that really perhaps the guillotine might be better.

"These are children you cannot educate. It's merely a matter of caring for them until they die."

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16167876&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=tory-s-off-his-head-name_page.html

[non sociopath skin]

23. Not sure that moderates like Lister are typical of the Tories as a whole.

I mean guilloting doesn't hurt very much, does it? No fun at all ...

The Skin