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Residents of Glasgow will be very familiar with the statue of The Duke of Wellington in Royal Exchange Square. It has sat outside what is now the gallery of modern art since it was unveiled in 1844. These days, however, it regularly sports a traffic cone (frequently the horse has one too), placed there by students until removed by the authorities. More recently it’s been the wind that’s taken the cone off, as the authorities have long since given up protecting the statue. Somehow I doubt it’s the pale and gaunt looking teenage Goths who hang about the square on an almost permanent basis. They look like they’d pass out at the effort.

I think the cone reflects a wonderfully irreverent humour on the part of the Glaswegians. It’s also so much a fixture that almost every painting I’ve seen of the statue features the traffic cone: The people of Glasgow have clearly embraced it.

None the less there has been some debate in the Glasgow Metro (and Evening times) about the damage that has been done to the statue, by the (usually) students climbing up and replacing the cone. Some seem to think that it needs better protection from defacement. One person - and I have to agree - thinks that the solution is to embrace the idea, and glue the cone on permanently. That way, the wind can’t remove it, and people won’t climb up to replace it (The horse deserves one too).

Plenty of people (well, the three people in Glasgow that I’ve asked about it) don’t seemingly even realise that it’s a statue of the Duke of Wellington, which illustrates that statues has lost almost all of it’s relevance (not that it ever had much: A famous Englishman honoured in such a way in Glasgow?): Look at the situation in Trafalgar Square, where many of the statues are of rich - and long dead - 19th century “dignitaries” or military men. The Mayor of London hopes to replace them with “more relevant” people.

I think the people of London should take a leaf out of the Weedgies book and start putting cones on their heads (perhaps apart from Nelson, who might be a bit tricky for pissed students to reach at over 56 metres off the ground) until, well, David Beckham is put up (c’mon, after that goal against Argentina? the stunt doing just that caught the mood of the nation). Better still, embrace the idea of the Fourth Plinth project and put pieces of art on there to provoke debate.

I suppose it’s just that I dislike statues. They’re relevant for a short time, and the people are soon forgotten. So they just become pigeon roosts, and spots for tourists to eat their lunch. Use the space for more public art exhibitions, or to poke fun at figures of authority. It’s an idea the Glaswegians have embraced, and I think that merits a permanent cone on the statue of Wellington: It’d survive for longer, and continue amusing people.

Now, on an tenuously related note, Mr Monkey can be seen here wondering if it’s an orange witch during his tour of Glasgow.