125 years versus about 25 hours

As I reported yesterday the statue of Jen Reid (a black lives matter protestor), was put up on the plinth where the statue of Edward Colston stood, before being unceremoniously torn down by protestors, dragged along the street and thrown into the harbour

The new statue of Jen Reid, making a black power fist salute was made by artist Marc Quinn and was put up in the very early hours of the morning without any permission from the council, or having been checked by health and safety that it had been erected properly.

Edward Colston was indeed a rather large figure where Bristol iwas concerned at the time several hundred years ago he was a merchant, he traded in all sorts of things, fruits, spices, materials, and unfortunately slaves.

A perfectly normal, if abhorrent thing to do back in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and unthinkable in today’s polite society, but at the time pretty much normal.

His fortunes although some of it made off the back of trading in people, were put to some very good uses around the Bristol area, with philanthropic gifts which built schools, foundling homes and homes for wayward children.

The statue of Colston stood for 125 years, through world wars, depressions, extreme weather and political upheaval, and it was a supposed peaceful protest organisation on one of their ‘peaceful’ protests that pulled down the statue and threw it into the harbour

Earlier today not even 25 hours after the statue of the protestor was illegally erected, a truck with a crane on the back of it came along and council workers removed the statue, placing it in the back of the flatbed truck and took it to the local museum, where Bristol Councillors have said “the artist can come pick it up, or he can donate it to the collection.”