What’s your view on the Fourth Plinth?  

Tim Hedges

The reason no one objects about individual designs is that no one except Livingstone wants the fourth plinth to be for modern art, out of place in a 19th century square. Join the campaign for the statue of Edward Jenner, inventor of the smallpox vaccine and saviour of millions of lives, to be returned to where it was. Jenner's work is something we can be proud of.

Bruce, UK

The Abandoned Soldier.

Frank Stringer

It should be TOM PAINE. He has no statue in London - shameful.

Tom

The Lapper statue was a disgrace as well. A far greater testimony to the bravery of the disabled was already on show in Trafalgar Sqaure. On top of the column. The plinth was designed for pieces of grand sculpture not plexi glass - a sad testimony to modern Britain.

Fergus Pickering

Of course it's horrible. But courage, it won't be there for long. Art, by the way, isn't supposed to be controversial. Startling perhaps, in some cases. But most of the time it's supposed to be beautiful, to lift the spirits, all those things that Nelson's column does by itself, and the Houses of Parliament, and Saint Paul's and Paddington Station and the War Memorial therein and nothing much put up in the last hundred years in London. Bridges are nice. And Henry Moore type sculptures in parks. What we are good at is machinery. Trains and boats and planes. They are often startling and beautiful. Oh, and the monsters the Brits build for films like Alien. That's Art.

Lavandula

The Queen!

Daniel

I don't often walk through Trafalgar Square, so in all honesty I haven't seen Model for a Hotel. But it must be terrible if it manages to illicit even a backhanded compliment from you about Lapper's abomination. If only the Ken and his team could focus on artistic beauty as opposed to picking out trash based on the politically correct credibility of the artist (I use that term very loosely!) or their subject matter.

julian.warren

I think you should have a sculpture of a giant pigeon on the top!

Andrew

the fourth plinth should display a Spitfire as a memorial to those who fought for our freedom

dexey

Why not a living sculpture? Ken in a cage.

Phil

I agree wth TOM. A permanent statue of anyone from the vast choice we have of English (!) people who have actully achieved something for the Nation. Bits of plastic, arty-farty rubbish - this PC claptrap is one of the reasons I no longer live in the UK.

alan scott

Leave it empty. There is little, if anything or any person, in our present world, worth such "glorification". The idiots with empty minds would not be troubled to think why it should have some "significance" and the rest of us would not be afflicted by yet more rubbishy gestures.

Austin Barry

Unhappily my initial suggestion, a daring visual comment on religion, fanaticism, the death penalty and Gilbert and George was moderated out. So by way of a more prosaic suggestion howabout a statue of Chief Constable Ian Blair being kicked in the balls by Detective Inspector Jack Reagan, late of the Flying Squad. It would represent the existential struggle between a police service and a police force.

Lee Jakeman

It's actually very fitting - a monument to our pretentiousness.

Stewart

I think Private Baldrick hit the nail on the head. How about a statue of a British Tommy, with a look of horror and disgust on his face, standing over the body of a dead nun what's just been brutaly done in by an evil Hun. Failing that I think Captain James Cook doesn't get the recognition he deserves (No one mentioned him in that 10 greatest Britons programme a few years back)and should be installed. Failing this, we should leave the plinth empty until such time as is appropriate to place upon it a statue of Her Majesty the Queen.

Max Kaye

A giant plexiglass bowl for pigeons' shit to accumulate in and thus portray the true nature of contemporary art.

(I promise you that if realised, within 2 weeks Charles Saatchi or Damien Hirst would make a multi-million pound bid for it. They need to keep up market interest in their expensive 'art' collections).

Matthew Lloyd

I agree with the Spitfire idea. It would fit in well with the military 'narrative' of Trafalgar Sq. and is unquestionably a thing of beauty and heroism.

Kevin

The space should be left vacant as a reminder of the good old days not so long ago when we didn't have a mayor.

Fergus Pickering

Yeah but if you have a Spitfire it should be a REAL Spitfire or at least a full-size replica threof, not some artist'sm pissy evocation of a spitfire. Good idea though. Clear the plinths altogether, make bigger ones and stick up a Spitfire, the Flying Scotsman, a bloody great Peter Wimsey Bentley and the Queen Mary. Perhaps the Queen Mary is a bit big. An original mini then. You'd have the crowds flocking in.

Curbishly

A Spitfire.

Number 312

Pedantry, OK, - but how come this pedestal became known as a plinth?

john problem

It seems to me to come down to two options - either one of our heroes from the past or a banana.

Gerald Roberts

I was going to suggest Ken Livingstone in a tank of formaldehyde but someone suggested a more humane version of that. So 1st choice is Alternatively keep to the nautical theme and have another famous British sailor. Drake? (no may offend the Spanish. Cunningham? (sorry no will annoy the Italians). So how about Joseph Bazalgette the man who built London's sewers and saved our city from the Great Stench.

Robert Diday

I would have rather had a statue of Tim Henman....

Graham Weeks

A gallows. Red Ken hanged and left there in chains for the pigeons.

Ann Lornie

If the fourth plinth was originally intended for an equestrian statue; Red Rum leaping the final fence would be inspirational, timelessly encompassing magnificence and courage.

Colin Broughton

The Square is a military memorial dedicated to those who served the country in its armed service and were prepared to die in doing so. To put anything other than a distinguished commander on the plinth would be to spit in Nelson's remaining eye. An obvious candidate is Montgomery of Alamein. If this kind of tribute to unselfish dedication in the service of our country is now so out of fashion as to be unthinkable, may I suggest that the plinth is left vacant? That would seem to be a good reflection of the moral emptiness and selfishness prevailing as the highest good in Britain today.

Symphorien Swann

What about J Merrick 'the Elephant Man'? He would compliment that other malformed monstrosity.

Stephen

I would like an equestrian statue of King Willima IV. It was designed for that but the old did not leave any money for a statue and no one else bothered to cough up the cash. The square would then be complete. I don't mind modern stuff but I think Trafalgar Square is there to comemorate Britain's greatest naval victory. We should keep some of our past it is important. It is about who we are. Here today and gone hopefully in May political hacks like Livingstone should not be able to deface the centre of London willy nilly.

David Chorley

I think it should have a sculpture of an endangered species, the blue whale, and then be known as ... the plinth of whales

Jon Dean

For the fourth plinth: Who was that gay ponsy guy who broke the German Enigma Code and and built the first computer at Bletchly Park and without whose genius the war would not have been won. Alam something-or-other. Shot himself because his sexual lifestyle was not tolerated. So, let a statue be of him as a personal menorial and for all those homosexuals who were vivtimised. Anf futhermore the Queen can unveil it.

Jeremy Hawker

I like the meercats, but the Plinth of Whales is the best idea. A whale would look good on the plinth, it links up to Nelson and the sea, and the name is perfect, suggesting lots of other associations.

John Raybould

Can nothing stop the decline of London into the demotic capital? The great and graceful city of my youth has descended into the perfect reflection of a wealthy, crass, materialistic, inefficient, anodyne-seeking, vulgar and poorly led society that abuses its birthright and is seduced into acquiring the mass-manufactured products of an industrialised bad taste. I vote for Dr Johnson. And Red Ken with a stake through his heart at the foot of Nelson's Column. And Tony Blair, disembowelled.

Andrew Cadman

The plinth stands just across from teh Canadian embassy, so the most obvious way the Plinth should be used is for a statue honouring the Canadian war dead. As I understand it there is NO memorial to the Canadian dead anywhere in London, when there are several statues of prominent Americans, even though in terms of altruism and proportion of population the Canadian sacrifice was much greater. As a Briton I think this is profoundly shaming.

Paddy Briggs

John Raybould - do keep taking the tablets old man. In the meantime you might like to ask why the Mayor of New York came recently to London to learn from London's success and to acknowledge that London is the greatest city in the world!

Drusilla

Andrew Cadman, have you never visited the Canadian War Memorial in Green Park just by Canada Gate, almost in the shadow of Buckingham Palace? It's a dignified, handsome memorial, and much loved, although the police really shouldn't let visiting language-students use it as a water-slide in the summer.

Peter

Charles Darwin. 200th anniversary in 2009, I know he's a dead white male who did great things in the unfashionable age of empire, but any chapter of The Voyage of the Beagle contains more discovery and insight than if you stacked Trafalgar Square six deep with artists and their outpourings. A great Briton who laid the foundations of much of our biology.

David Joseph Gome

Since Trafalgar Square represent the British Navy what better than having the Rock of Gibraltar on the fourth plinth?Gibraltar has served Great Britian for 304 years. I think its time we recieved a bit of gratitude.

yellowbo

http://www.xfire.com/blog/loppana/207127/