General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

A man, woman and child standing side-by-side hardly depicts in an accurate way coal mining. If, on the other hand, you are making an appeal to the emotions of the majority of people in Wigan who have no idea of what it is like underground then your charming little effort might whet their imagination alright. A man and woman and kid stood vacant on the top of the so-called pit brow is a laughable creation. First off, the so-called pit brow was the Screens...men and women seldom met at pits since the shafts and screens segregated the men from women. How many people, I wonder, who wrote the cheque for this commision ever once consulted with human beings who know first-hand just what it really is like underground ? Take a look at at Hitchens Foods, for example, where you can still see pit-brow lasses although the name has changed more recently to female production-line workers. Picking lettuce off a conveyor belt in Wigan might be a little bit more cleaner than picking coal but the degredation is still the same. What's the next attempt at art from Wigan Council then ? A mural depicting some poor Pole and her bloke walking hand-in-hand along Dobson park way ? Yes, coal mining in Wigan was and is a precious sentiment. And to lash out hundreds of thousands of pounds in commisions, fees, consultations plus the rotating monthly salaries of all who ride that gravy train called Council is far more tragic thn any mining disaster. Let's not gloss this over.... in a coal mine Morphine, for instance, didn't hang on chains from the roof for nothing....It was a dangerous and unimaginable environment only a man who has ever been there day in day out would understand. There were no toilets underground too meaning that your much vaunted sculptor would have given his creation just a little bit of realism had he portrayed the man taking a d***p. That ridiculous, sentimental, bronze is testimony only to the ignorance... should I say ambition.... of the obsequious, snivvelling, people who cast and commissioned it in the first place. You can insist and exaggerate and manipulate minds as much as you like ...a man a woman and a kid stood vacant is a scene that could depict virtually anything. If the statue hadn't come with a description in the headlines of the local press people could draw virtually any conclusion as to what the statue meant. All told, it bears little, if any, meaning to the working life of a coal miner.