A MONUMENTAL mason who planned to present a statue of Diana,
Princess of Wales to his home town has withdrawn the offer after the council
leader said it was "demonic".
Andrew Walsh, 38, of Walsall, West Midlands, said he was hurt by the
"racist" comments after councillors realised that the £16,000 figure was in
black granite. He had envisaged the one and a half ton life-size figure, showing
a bejewelled princess in a ball gown, becoming a popular attraction in a park
or street.
Instead, the statue now stands among the memorial headstones at Mr Walsh's
showroom in Cannock. He has written to the council cancelling the gift and its
future is uncertain.
Mike Bird, the leader of Walsall council, said he expected something "angelic
and virginal" made from a white stone. "This isn't Diana as most people
remember her. Frankly, I find this figure a bit creepy and certainly wouldn't
like to bump into it coming round the corner on a dark night."
~*~
Scientists defend research against Charles tirade(Yahoo: Reuters)
By Paul Majendie
LONDON (Reuters) - Tampering with nature is an affront to God, says Prince Charles.
Rubbish, say scientists who argue they are saving humanity by helping to feed the world more
efficiently.
But few would argue with the timing of his latest "green salvo", launched during a BBC lecture on
Wednesday.
The heir to the throne fanned the flames over biotechnology with an impassioned defence of nature on a day British farmers
discovered they had been unknowingly growing genetically modified crops after buying contaminated oilseed from Canada.
Charles, surrounded by green gurus, has warned of the "disastrous consequences" of cloning and GM food. Tabloid
newspapers rail against "Frankenstein Food".
On Thursday, battle lines were firmly drawn.
Plant scientist Chris Leaver dismissed the future king's comments, saying: "He has selective religious beliefs to suit his own
lifestyle and should be careful of preaching to others."
Writing in the Daily Mail newspaper, he bluntly told Charles to listen to the scientists trying to find ways of feeding six billion
people on the planet today and another three billion by 2050.
Leading geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer launched a passionate defence of GM food technology. "The potential it offers for solving
the problems that face the so-called Third World is enormous," he wrote in the same paper.
Across the scientific spectrum, the message was the same.
CHARLES ACCUSED OF WOOLLY THINKING
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, said Charles was a woolly thinker.
"He is mixing up theology and science. The best thing he should do is go back to school...I have no time for understanding
people who prefer ignorance to knowledge," Jones told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
From planting wildflower meadows on his country estate to sitting at the feet of South African mystic Laurens van der Post,
Prince Charles is a fiercely committed environmentalist.
He adds to the potentially explosive green cocktail an ever widening interest in the spiritual thinking of many differing religions.
Those passionately held views were spelled out on Wednesday in a BBC lecture that stirred up a fierce ecological debate.
"Nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience...and in which anything that
happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity," Charles complained.
"If literally nothing is held sacred any more...what is there to prevent us treating our entire world as some great laboratory of life
with potentially disastrous consequences?"
When he eventually takes over as King and head of the Anglican Church, Charles sees himself as "Defender of Faith" in a
country that is a multicultural mix.
And his plea for spirituality in a consumer-driven society did not fall entirely on deaf ears.
"Thank Heavens for Prince Charles," said Professor Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the
Commonwealth. "Once again he has introduced a note of sanity into our scientific future. He has made us stop, think and
question where we are going."