Millenium Dome

WHAT THE FUCK MAN?!?!?!?

Silly Chaki.

http://Millennium-Dome.com/dome/images/aerial981019.jpg

man, i say we hotbox the m-dome, fa shozy

750 Million + WASTED !

they could have built a new national football stadium and a national athletics stadium for that - that would have lasted for decades.

Remember in 1997 this woz one of the first decisions Blair had to make. The figures never added up, there never was any value for money! it woz short termism

Instead look at the Welsh Millenium stadium, cost a fraction of the money compared to the dome (125 Million) and this facility will have lasting legacy of use for decades.

How many wasted years have various bodies (including DCMS) been dithering with Wembley/ new national football stadium. Then the fiasco of fucking up the Picketts lock stadium for World Athletics Championship by that completely incompetent duo of Jowell and Caborn of trying to re-route it to Sheffield. Funny that Caborn is a Sheffield MP.

DJ Martian do you like Littlejohn?

the view of the MD as you drove up the motorway to the blackwall tunnel was fab, as it was much BIGGER than you expected

so money well spent as far as i was concerned (i saw that view twice i think while the dome was operational)

not the DOME that cost all that money. more the RUNNING or some shit.

I like the DOME. I guess whatever they had INSIDE [I don't know] was crap.

haha. DOME looks really funny to me, now.

It wasn't the fact that they spent the money on the Dome, which could certainly have had the potential to recoup what was spent on it ten times over, it was a combination of the fact that:

A - They filled it with crap. B - Virtually every section of the media, left and right had it in for the Dome from the start, meaning that public cynicism was high and a lot of people just didn't bother going.

It's been bought by a consortium who are turning it into a big sporting arena/gig venue, which is a far better use for the space.

It looked great at night though.

Incidentally, back in 1997, the preparations and design for the Dome and (I think) a fair few of the initial contracts were already in place. It would have cost almost as much to have scrapped the plan back then as it would to have built it, maybe even more.

I think that Heseltine actually commissioned the dome, Blair and Mandelson decided to retain the project, while the bulk of the incoming Labour Cabinet, including Jack Cunningham who had shadowed the project, wanted it scrapped and this had put off early sponsors. Mandelson was responsible for filling it up, so maybe it was all his fault.

DJ Martian do you like Littlejohn?

No I hate the tory plank, never listen to his radio 5 live show, talksport for me.

Well worth it, for the aesthetic reasons described above. I lived in SE10 in the period around its completion/opening, and loved the swirly lights inside the structure in the evening gloom. It also meant massively improved transport links for that area. And the eco- Sainsburys!

I'll admit to being part of the general cynicism towards the actual exhibition; as a Greenwich resident, it would've cost me something like £2 to go inside and I never did. I was quite happy to use the M- prefix shuttle buses from the tube station though (do they still run?).

i read iain sinclair's "sorry meniscus" (short book about the dome) the other day. pretty good. also you can see it across the river from trinity buoy lighthouse, which is always good when yr out of your brain in the middle of the night. so yeah, the physical strucutre = good; the waste of money + what was inside (probably - i never went) = ultradud.

I think the building (and its architect Richard Rogers) got unfairly abused because no one knew what to do with it, and it was eventually just filled with crap and was a waste of money. I think it's a wonderful structure, and my last girlfriend's flat was right across the river from it and we could look out on it - beautiful. Actually, I briefly went out with a woman since then who was a close colleague of Richard Rogers's, as it happens.

Of course, had the underachieving apparatchiks at "New" Labour had the foresight to retain me as adviser for the contents of the Dome, things would have turned out very differently, I do believe. How well I remember my first meeting with that intellectual pygmy Peter Mandelson... (drone drone drone etc etc etc continued in any broadsheet Sunday supplement you may care to pick up on any week ov thee year)

I went to see the millennium dome exhibition and so did Isabel! It was EVEN WORSE than all the people said (yes including S Bayley). The building is nice though.

hurrah! let's remove all blame from architects!

they just wanted a lot covered in a COOL MILLENNIUM way. they sure got it. much like paxton and whoever's crystal palace. I suppose they put better things in that/people were easier pleased in THOSE days.

haha Norman Phayley icu!!

I don't think it was any worse than any other exhibition I've been to - better probably. It's just that stuff in cabinets and [necessarily] wordy stuff on the walls and even interactive stuff just generally isn't very exciting or sexy. It was quite poorly arranged and edited. And the crowd control was appalling in the popular bits.

It was all worth it just for the gang who tried to nick the diamonds with a daring & bold scheme involving JCBs & speedboats. Wasn't there supposed to be a film about them with Craig 'Dan off Eastenders' Fairbrass (I think that was his name. He had an orange tan and shagged Bianca)?

(as ever Emma yore Eastendahs knowledge is second to none!)

It was quite poorly arranged and edited. And the crowd control was appalling in the popular bits.

Well yeah exactly. It was worse than most exhibitions in that:

- its themes were so vague as to be completely banal

- its sponsorship was intrusive

- its textual elements were unexciting

- despite expecting the hugest visitor numbers ever each zone was based around 1 or 2 big exciting interactive things to do i.e. massive queues and disappointments were inevitable. It was trying to apply a theme park model of the queue time/'ride' time/excitement equation to what were basically museum exhibits.

Can I just try to explode the myth that the building is actually any cop? Because its RUBBISH.

I reiterate that the lights were nice though.

Emma, I'm afraid the 'Dirty Dan The Diamond Thief' prog has been and gone - but it was on C5, so they're bound to repeat it. Next week, prob.

THEY SHOULD HAVE FILLED IT WITH KITTENS. EVERY... CUBIC... INCH. then people would have come to see from miles around to see such a modern day wonder. perhaps walked across the roof listening to the mewing, and perhaps crackling.

http://www.minicombat.com/files/b3ta/absolut4.jpg

The money should've been spent building more prisons

what's so rubbish about the building?

that it's not any cop?

in what way isn't it any cop?

in that it's rubbish?

(I just want you all to know that I was going to run to the logical horrbible place with Alan's comment, but I didn't. I am not the Very Bad Mang you all think me to be.)

What would they have done when the kittens became proper cats though?

I am not the Very Bad Mang you all think me to be.

*tsk* Then WHY BOTHER.