Robert Marshall-Andrews

|

Praying for the Dome (from New Statesman)

On the day that the Dome got its first parliamentary debate (one hour) and the minister refused all interventions Bob Marshall-Andrews QC MP offers his orisons.

Let us pray for the Millennium Dome. Let us all pray. Let us all pray for twelve million pilgrims a year with fifteen quid each. Let us pray. Let us pray that the Jubilee Line gets there on time and the trains run as well. Let us pray. Let us pray for two hundred million pounds from the Private Sector. Oh God, let us pray. Let us pray that it is not a Disney World or Alton Towers or Chessington Zoo. Above all, let us pray for success for the price of failure is terrible indeed. And let us all pray, even those that regard the whole ghastly thing as vulgar, decadent, ephemeral and grandiose, let us pray. Let us pray for there is no alternative to prayer and it is there and rising. Whether we like it or hate it, love it or loathe it it is a part of us, a resonant cord in a public symphony.

And, at the end of the day, let us understand what it is and its critical importance whatever it contains and whatever it costs. Let us understand that, whatever the ridicule or reservations, whatever the wilful waste, the Millennium Dome is the ultimate metaphor for the twentieth century. It illuminates a time in which all things became disposable. A century when forests and cities, art and marriages, animal species, races, religions and even the Earth itself became ephemeral. What greater monument could there be to this totalitarian, cocksure, fragile age than a vast, temporary plastic bowl erected from the aggregate contributions of the poor. So let us go in awe and see it for what it truly is, a massive pantheon to the human ego, the Ozymandias of its time. Let us understand as well that it represents the final emphatic resolution to the historical and intellectual divide between the Renaissance and Rome. Forget the Medicis. Caligula and Nero have won hands down.

Let us have no more whinging then about the schools and hospitals or woodlands that might have been; the bridges or universities or grand and permanent buildings durable for a second Millennium. Let us recognise this monster as a vast and satisfying reflection of our own indulgences, the Grand March without the muttering slave to crowd the chariot.

And so with the money. Why should we have the accounts? After all, if we don't know what's in it why should we know what it cost? This is not some miserable municipal erection, a Clochemerle, a hospital, a school or a charitiable trust. This is big. This is the greatest quango of them all. Half a billion blown in two years to place the ultimate spectacle before a hungry astonished and, so we are reliably informed thoroughly jealous world. It will be September before we know about the money. And by then the party will have begun. Miserable curmudgeons and party-poopers will pore over the bill and ring their hands but underneath a million sheets of Teflon, Camelot and the River Café will be united in the greatest junket for a thousand years. Rumours abound, finally spun no doubt, that the centrepiece will be a colossus, a human Amazon affording entry and exit through every orifice at no extra charge. Inside the wonders and functions of the anatomy will be, no doubt tastefully, revealed but whether the face will be recognisable or not remains a speculation.

And afterwards, when the second millenium reaches 2001 on a grey cold January day, what then? As the winds sweep across the Greenwich Peninsula and bits of yellowing plastic fall into the void, someone, inevitably, an old Labour Member of Parliament perhaps, will write the legend of Ozymandias on the wall. "Look ye upon my works ye mighty and despair".