How many people went to the British Museum specifically to see them

that wouldn't have gone had they not otherwise been there? Given that the BM has free entry what was the incidental revenue generated by those extra visitors, through the gift shop or the coffee shop or the rather charming resto on the top floor?

Approximately the cube root of f**k all, would be my uneducated guess, and we evidently nicked what is clearly a major part of Greek heritage.

The real problem for the BM is that this evident truth applies to pretty much everything there. It's a museum full of stuff we've nicked from other countries and you start returning one piece, you might have to start returning them all.

Some kind of rotating deal is surely the answer - we'll give your stuff back but please lend us some other stuff maybe changing every year or two years and we'll lend you some other stuff too so your museums and our museums are both interesting enough to keep people coming through the doors.

At the minute, the BM is basically a collection of stuff we as a nation have nicked, and I'd be so bold as to venture that's not a great look. Bad enough to nick stuff in the first place, imagine your local tea leaf then having a display of all the stuff she'd filched from the neighbourhood and charging you a fiver for a mediocre cup of tea after you'd traipsed round it all.

Posted By: Old Man, Nov 28, 11:52:31