Fresh off the revelation that taxpayers footed a £3 million bill to an art charity which went on to create the “nuanced and thoughtful“ “HEY STRAIGHT WHITE MEN” posters, the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has now unearthed even more eye-watering spending of taxpayer cash on ‘art’. Since 2019, councils across the UK have forked out £14,678,074 on public artwork throughout the country, with a further £3,770,135 coming from various government-backed grants and schemes to bring the total cost to almost £20 million. The biggest individual spend comes from Gloucester City Council, which splashed £1,865,000 on “artistic sculptural stone and decorative feature lighting and fountains in Kings Square”:
Now the TPA is running a contest to find the worst offender, with “Britain’s worst council art” to be crowned on Friday 2nd September. Here are a few of the nominees…
Guido can imagine some of these accidentally being destroyed by council-employed cleaners, rightly mistaking them for general vandalism. Cast your vote now…
