Winchester University’s decision to splash £24,000 on a life-sized statue of Greta Thunberg – who needless to say, has zero connection to the city – was met with both outrage and hilarity.
Outrage because since the effigy was commissioned in 2019, the university has enacted swingeing library cuts and two rounds of staff redundancies (despite the vice chancellor’s salary of £233,207). And hilarity because the statue looks rather more like an extra from the Hunger Games than the 18-year-old climate campaigner. Which might be part of the messaging, I suppose.
Locals were less than impressed, mounting a brief campaign to replace it with a statue of the local Big Issue salesman. ‘When they unveil it I’m going to push it over, so there,’ one vowed on Facebook. Another pointed out: ‘They can always tear it down and throw it in the river’.
As someone who lives down the road from the site – and who used to teach at the University – I was hardly surprised by the news.
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