The Green Goblin Blog

I quite like the Spinnaker Tower - it looks very impressive and can be seen from miles away but I can see why some of the older members of my family are not so happy. Nobody was consulted as to if they actually wanted such a building and it was completed 5 years too late for the Millenium with a taxpayer bill of £11,000,000 after the councillors originally promised that every penny was to come from lottery funding. According to the BBC last year, "In 2004, council leader Leo Madden resigned over delays and spiralling costs, while a council legal adviser, Barry Smith, retired after being suspended on full pay."

A local person interviewed for the website said that she was "not really into that sort of thing" and would "rather have an Ikea here." So the tower is on the edge of a 500,000 square foot shopping complex and she feels that the continent-sized 8,000 square feet taken up around the tower's base would be better spent on a branch of IKEA. An Ikiosk, morelike.

But I'll conclude with a reference to the title. As my daughter and I were walking along the seafront we took various photos of the Tower but the best one was when we were hurtling around the Skyways at Clarence Pier. Even when we weren't taking photos of the Tower, it still managed to gate-crash the party:

Labels: Portsmouth