Margaret Thatcher was certainly a figure that divided opinion and plans for a statue of the ‘Iron Lady’ have proved to be just as controversial.
The sculpture of Britain’s first female Prime Minister was due to be put up in Parliament Square, but has run into a few stumbling blocks.
One of the problems seems to be the lack of Mrs Thatcher’s iconic handbag in the creation. Her daughter Carol complained to the Public Memorials Appeal, who commissioned the statue, that this part of her image should have been included.
Objections have also been made by residents in the area that the statue would become a target for vandals.
Mrs Thatcher, who was Conservative Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, died in 2013. The statue, costing £300,000, was due to be placed on the west side of Parliament Square between the statues of George Canning and Abraham Lincoln.
Perhaps the statue would look good with a traffic cone placed permanently on its head – like the famous Duke of Wellington statue in Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square.
Vandals regularly place a cone on the head of the statue and this has become an iconic image of the city. Glasgow City Council says it spends over £10,000 removing the cone 100 times a year.
Plans to raise the height of the statue, to prevent the cone being placed on its head, were dropped after an online petition called Save Wellington’s Cone received huge support.