Bloinggg! Workers assembling the 60m “Aspire” sculpture in Nottingham were following the traditional engineering practice of whacking recalcitrant bolts with a dirty great hammer. Bloinggg! Watching the monument rear upwards earlier this week, spectators were supposed to feel inspired. Bloinggg! I felt only dread.

These days, outdoor art is all about having a bigger erection than the town down the road. “Aspire”, which resembles an anorexic shuttlecock, is 8m taller than Nelson’s Column. The 50m horse likely to loom over Ebbsfleet, Kent, could trample the puny “Angel of the North” beneath its hooves. Others will follow, commandeering the skyline from the clouds and pigeons. In a few decades the UK could be as littered with outsized monuments as Easter Island. And we all know what a pickle such statuary got the Easter Islanders into.