Essay by Eric Worrall
University of Winchester is moving a “controversial” £24,000 statue of Greta Thunberg from outside the University building to “the less-visited courtyard of the building”.
Greta Thunberg statue moved from outside university building
20th July
By Christopher Atkinson @TweetsFromLimboA CONTROVERSIAL statue of Greta Thunberg is being moved from outside the University of Winchester’s West Downs Centre.
The Chronicle has heard that the statue, titled Make a Difference, has been a target for anti-social behaviour with it becoming slightly unstable.
It is being shifted from the busy concourse in Romsey Road to be re-installed in the less-visited courtyard of the building.
…
Read more: https://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/23668315.greta-thunberg-statue-moved-outside-university-building/
The statue was controversial from the start, the Student Union was furious when the statue was commissioned and installed in 2021.
Greta Thunberg statue at Winchester university sparks anger
Published 30 March 2021
A £24,000 statue of Greta Thunberg installed at a university has sparked anger among students who have branded it a “vanity project”.
The University of Winchester believes it is the world’s first life-sized sculpture of the “inspirational” Swedish environmental activist.
But the students’ union said the funds could have been better spent.
The university said “no money was diverted” from student support or staffing for the project.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-56565683
No doubt the statue was made from metal ores dug by hand, transported by by eco-friendly sailing ships and horse drawn carriages, and refined using solar energy and hydrogen.
Winchester might not immediately spring to mind as a deprived area, but there are some serious pockets of poverty and crime. I once spent a few hours on a business meeting with someone on night patrol of a building site just down the road in Basingstoke. He could barely sit down – he and his scary guard dog literally had to get up and chase out intruders every 2-3 minutes.
So I completely understand the student union’s fury at the University spending money on a statue of someone who rejects schools, money which could have been spent helping students from poor families, regardless of the University’s in my opinion less than credible claim that the money wasn’t diverted from other uses.
Pity they didn’t move it to the local rubbish tip!
The statue was “becoming slightly unstable” according to the Hampshire Chronicle. I’m guessing someone else tried to make off with it or just knock it off its pedestal, either to steal it and melt it down for scrap, or because they just couldn’t stand it anymore.
““becoming slightly unstable””
Just starting to take on the attributes of the original..
Betty Parris, Abigal Williams, Elizibeth Hubbard, Mary Warren … and Greta Thundberg.
Psychotic little girls all. Greta, if sent back to 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, wouldn’t have missed a step. She would have likely fit right in and proudly accused all the local witches of destroying her childhood.
(although, Greta being a little odd, may have easily been lumped in with the other witches)
As Shelley put it “Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,”
Is “slightly unstable” a waypoint to totally unhinged?
As I said.. Just starting.. 🙂
Ahead of time.
nah, first melt it down- then make a new statue, maybe of a heroic climate “denier” willing to challenge the nonsense 🙂
The statue is hideous. That alone should justify it being melted down and turned into something more useful or less ugly.
From the photo at the head, I thought the statue was made prettier than the original flesh.
How dare you!
The University Administration is trying to avoid being a focus when the violence erupts after Joe and Mary Smith finally realize how they’ve been taken for fools. Those responsible for the longest ad biggest scam in human history can run but they cannot hide. Hawaii and New Zealand, if you’re smart you’ll kick them out.
Not much longer to wait for schadenfreude. I can feel it in the air like that sensation just before a thunderstorm.
but, but…. Greta is getting a PhD from a Finnish university.
Religious Cult Honors Their Icon | Real Climate Science
Isn’t a back-handed compliment to give a theology degree to someone dealing with climate and who wants all of us to “follow the science”, oops, I mean “follow the science™” so as not to confuse the political cult with the actual field of study of the same name.
Giving a theology doctorate to someone who declares that global warming is bad from one of the coldest countries on Earth might be a subtle joke on Greta Thunberg.
For less than £99 one can get a life-size cardboard cutout. Such could be put in a plexiglass case (400 ?) and displayed on special occasions; like if GT visits or gets arrested. The remaining £23,500 could have been used to provide the community with free beer.
When no longer of interest, it could be shipped to the young lady.
“For less than £99 one can get a life-size cardboard cutout”
Now why would any sane person do that ?
Errrrrr…
To signal virtue.
Actually you could get a life-size one for around £45 – cheaper than buying a dartboard!
I bet SHE banks with Coutts. Curse their black hearts.
One small step for Winchester, but a giant step away from Greta.
It says a lot about the University of Winchester if they make a statue of a drop out. A place for intelligent students to avoid!
That the students already enrolled regarded this statue as a complete waste of money suggests that they have more intelligence than students at some more august institutions. Yes, prospective students might want to think about the university’s priorities – but are there any alternatives which haven’t surrendered to woke ideology?
Winchester has one of the finest private schools, Winchester College, in the country. It also has one of the finest 6th Form colleges, Peter Symonds, in the country (both my kids went). Then there’s Winchester Poly (renamed university).
University of Winchester used to be King Alfred’s College, a prestigious teacher training college, until 2005 when it became a University.
Good news
Labour lost in Uxbridge – ULOSS! People there voted against Khan’s ULEZ
He won’t change tack….
“”Just Stop Oil protesters were surrounded by a group of Londoners led by social media stars Josh Pieters and Archie Manners – preventing them from launching another crippling “slow walk” protest.””
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23121418/eco-clowns-taste-medicine-youtube-pranksters/
Kudos to those anti-protest protesters – there’s not a lot to laugh about at present but this was hilarious. Now we need to see those whose property has been damaged by JSO or have otherwise suffered financial loss as a consequence of JSO antics sue the funders of the organisation.
A couple of weeks ago the Tories won a council seat in Cambridge for the first time in over a decade – the bloke who won being a local taxi-driver who stood on a platform of opposing the council’s plans for a ulez (or 15-minute city, or whatever) system.
Eric,
Please don’t confuse Winchester with Basingstoke.
Basingstoke is awful, luckily there’s the A30…
Fair point. I liked the Cathedral in Winchester. Nevertheless I suspect there are students at Winchester University who could have really used a slice of that that Greta statue money.
Winchester has an eponymous Public School which was founded many centuries ago. It used to be renowned for being an academic hothouse, with a large proportion of its scholars and pupils gaining Oxbridge places. The teaching establishment started being infiltrated by left wing ideologists in the 1960s. Old Wykehamists as its alumni are known are often of the same persuasion. One was thrown out of my college a matter of weeks after arriving for activities incompatible with being a student: he had attended extreme left wing party events since the age of 15.
Rishi Sunak is an Old Wykehamist.
The late Oswald Mosely notorious leader of the British Union of Fascists was also educated at Winchester College so an old Wykehamist.
My kids went to secondary school in Blazingrad and 6th form in Winchester. Winchester is a nightmare to drive around, but then so is Blazingrad.
I was born in Basingstoke, not been back since.
I’ve just made a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, and I reckon the CO2 produced to melt down all that bronze and forge it into something useful is justifiable. Far more so than it was to create it.
Given the current price of copper, a solar powered induction furnace would almost be economically viable. If it is made of copper / tin alloy, the tin is even more valuable.
Story tip
“”Eco-Loon entrepreneur extraordinaire and Labour mega donor, Dale Vince, is set to launch his own domestic airline. In a press release, ecotricity say their new airline, Ecojet, will be an “aviation revolution”, paving the way for “the world’s first electric airline powered by renewable energy.” The trouble is, the technology hasn’t quite caught up to Dale’s ambitions…
Vince’s jets will, eventually, be powered by hydrogen-electric powertrains. However, hydrogen-electric powertrains aren’t yet approved by the Civil Aviation Authority. Until then, his domestic airline will run on… jet fuel.
Yes, you read that right. A major bankroller of Just Stop Oil, the group blocking Britain’s road to demand an end to oil, will burn tonnes of oil. Just to boost his own bank balance. If all goes to plan for Ecojet, retrofits will begin in 2025 – after they’ve been running domestic flights, which are more carbon-intensive than any other form of travel, for over a year. The sky’s the limit for Dale’s hypocrisy.””
https://order-order.com/2023/07/20/labours-just-stop-oil-loving-bankroller-to-launch-emission-intensive-domestic-airline/
Vince’s pragmatic approach involves getting the planes in the air and swapping the engines when the technology becomes available
https://vegnews.com/vegan-news/ecojet-electric-airline-vegan-meals
You have to laugh
That plane is a turboprop!! It runs on avgas, not unicorn farts.
Dale Vince is clueless if he really believes an electric plane will be able to fly the length of Britain on one charge.
He imagines he will have his hydrogen powered planes in a year and capable of flying 19 passengers between Edinburgh and Southampton and is planning a second phase, 18 months later, with 70 seater planes capable of flying to Europe. Staff will wear environment – friendly uniforms and serve plant based meals.
He is making an initial investment of £1m and plans to raise further money next year so up and running in a year is pie in the sky – indeed pie powered planes may be running before Dale’s hydrogen ones are. 🙂
Pie in the sky is almost certainly not what the passengers will be getting, unless it’s some sort of vegetarian or vegan concoction.
G’Day Richard,
“Pie in the sky…”
Food doesn’t even get a mention in “Cheap flights”, with subtitles
Pie in the sky !
Anyone whose property has been damaged by JSO or have otherwise suffered any financial loss as a consequence of JSO antics should sue those who are bankrolling the organisation.
Is a hydrogen-electric powertrain any sort of jet? If not, calling the company Ecojet seems kinda stupid.
It is possible to use hydrogen as a jet fuel if you were desperate enough but I think the hydrogen-electric powertrain is using hydrogen fuel cells and an electric motor to drive a propeller. Hugely uneconomical, slow and antique, but great for government subsidies and incentives.
Of course they moved it: Greta’s work is done
Yes, you heard that right. Greta can now retire to a beach house in Malibu
Why: I was watching a guy in the field at end my garden, he’s hand-pulling weeds from among the Laurel they’re cultivating.
(I never knew that stuff grew so fast. 13 months ago they were 10″ twigs with maybe 5 or 6 small leaves. They are 4ft x 3ft impenetrable shrubs today)
Popped out for a craic and thought, “FugMe, it’s cold out here innit”
<checks thermometers>
The one on the washing line tells me 14.5°C
It’s twin, in the big conifer, tells me 14.7°C
My nearest Wunderground says 14.5°C (Exact same as mine, amazing)
<goes back in time> to ‘nearest Wunderground’ at 08:45BST July 21st
2020: 22.6°C
2021: 22.8°C
2022: 18.7°C
2023: 14.5°C
Thank you Ice Maiden Greta – you can ‘move along’ now
(While composing this, The Sun came out (briefly) and inside those 10 mins, nearest Wunderground went up to 16.5°C
Now: Tell me how Carbon Dioxide made that happen……)
“I never knew that stuff grew so fast.”
Blame it on climate change!
You can tell that guy he’s wasting his time … the Laurel will kill anything growing under it.
Hey, all that bronze would be worth a few bucks at the scrapyard or melted into ingots.
“This is all wrong!” she said, ever so stiffly.
Crisis?
Stiff upper lip, old girl.
Maybe she has a future in popular music! Heavy metal.
She can certainly play the fool.
“She can certainly play the fool.”
She is not “playing”!
I think they got the metal wrong – she must be brassed off!
***cough***
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a32870657/remove-statue-science/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_disease
***cough***
It would be a shame if something like this happened to her statue…
Perhaps she should pay a little … insurance to make sure nuffin’ nasty happens to the statue!
How dare you!
The university said “no money was diverted” from student support or staffing for the project.
Money is fungible, it’s all the same. The tuition money isn’t any different than the money paid to park a car or buy lunch.
Building idols of those they worship in a false religion.
Do you know how many Swedish meatballs that could buy at IKEA???
just down the road in basingstoke? basingstoke is a million miles from where i am sitting within a mile of this statue!
Statue inflation is a thing now. Everyone gets one.
I cringe with embarrassment every time I hear that hectoring scripted rant she gave st Davos to the browbeaten elites
Greta is not just a petulant teenager, she is also an important philosopher:
“Philosophy Could Have Been a Lot More Fun: Two recent biographies, of Plato and Diogenes, show the divergent path Western thought could have taken.” By Kieran Setiya
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/06/western-philosophy-plato-athens-diogenes-cynic-books/674368/
You would have to be a specialist in 17th Century English History to know who Winstanley was, but Thoreau is an important figure in American Literary History who is still widely read.
OTOH, Greta? There is no evidence that there is, or ever has been, a thought in her little head.
The Atlantic used to be a good magazine. Lately it has sunk to Greta’s level of intellectual rigor: i.e. none at all.
I think Greta is a perfect symbol for modern academia and should have been placed and kept right outside the gate of this University.
Or in the toilets. One or the other.
This statue must be kept in a prominent position. It is of great importance to remind students what happens to them when they don’t attend school!
The pigeons should still be able to find it.