• WESTMINSTER City Council have voted to spend £900,000 on a temporary attraction, an earth mound, at Marble Arch – Marble Arch Hill!

It will be there for six months and a spokesperson promises 200,000 visitors climbing it, 25 at a time, for a nominal fee.

This enthusiastic horde of visitors will have to book in advance as they forsake the London Eye, Westminster Cathedral and Madame Tussauds to catch a glimpse of Hyde Park from a height of 25 metres.

Missing from the details of its “tree-lined approach” and environmental legacy is its location on a pigeon-infested traffic island.

As Westminster Council prepares to undertake massive financial cuts to vital services this is their “blue-sky” thinking.

Remember the “Grand Old Duke of York” marching his men up and down for something better to do? Oxford Street is a ghost town, and this folly is the blue touchpaper of recovery.

Councillors should get out more and broaden their consultation beyond design company visualisers and public art advocates, and reconsider their “here today – gone tomorrow” attitude to taxpayers’ money.

ETHAN POD
Address supplied