Beauty is ultimately too subjective to justify so monstrous a gew-gaw created by someone who has nothing to do with the region. Public art on this scale, or any other, is a blight on the already blighted landscapes, just as the upper-middle class celebrity culture that inspired it is an affront to the dignity of the working-class people of the North-East of England who have to live with it 24/7.

Of all the local people I've talked to I'd say 50% hate the bloody thing, and of those who like it now, the majority of them would have voted against it if they'd been given a chance, which of course they weren't.

In the North-East we're seeing more and more public art; and more and more bewildered locals being forced to have an opinion on something they've never had to give a second thought to hitherto - and rightly so.

At least they might have made the Angel spin round and connected it up to the national grid, then it might have have been of some use, but even so it's nice to see it being increasingly dwarfed by the neighbouring wind-farms, which do at least serve a practical purpose whilst also making a valid aesthetic contribution to the post-industrial landscapes of North-East England.

So another icon: Wind Farms - for whilst it might well take 4,000 of the bloody things to generate as much electricty as your coal-fired power station, at least their beauty derives from function and not some art-school educated bourgeois conceptualised clap-trap which serves no practical purpose whatsoever.