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Is the Dome Doomed?Dateline: 28th May, 2000 77 per cent of the 120,000 callers to the BBC TV programme Weekend Watchdog have given the "thumbs down" to the Millennium Dome: less than 28,000 thought it should stay open. More than fifty Labour MPs have signed a Commons motion protesting about the financial chaos surrounding the Dome and demanding that no more money be spent on it. One of the MPs, John Cummings, the member for East Durham, said, "Ministers should accept that when they are in a hole they should stop digging." "The government," he went on, "should offload the Dome as quickly as possible, to any taker, and cut its losses and run away. Those millions would have produced many important schemes affecting people's lives if they had been ploughed into the regions instead." On Radio 4's Today programme, the Dome's architect, Lord Rogers, condemned the Dome's contents. And all of this, of course, happened in a week when the Millennium Commission gave the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) an extra £29m to stave off bankruptcy. A condition of this extra grant was that NMEC chairman, Bob Ayling, should resign, which he has done. The £29m brings the total of public investment in the Dome to £538m, 71 per cent of the total cost, £758m. To be fair... The Dome was never intended to be a Disneyworld, nor even an Alton Towers. It was not planned as a theme park, nor as a circus. Its aim was education and celebration of Britain's achievements. It was to be the 21st century's Great Exhibition. It is giving more than 200,000 schoolchildren and young people the opportunity to tell their area's story in a once-in-a-lifetime performance in their "day at the Dome." Many of those who have visited it in the spirit of its designers' original intentions have come away impressed and enthusiastic. On the other hand... Its situation in London makes visiting it a very expensive proposition for a very substantial proportion of the population of England, let alone Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The fact that advanced booking is essential means that impulse visits are impossible - or, at the least, very difficult to organise. Although it is true that there is a tremendous amount to see and experience, it is perceived as being very expensive. Is it doomed? I'm very much afraid that it is. Rumour has it that amongst the debts paid off by the latest Millennium Commission grant was its wages bill. If that is the case, if it is not taking enough money to pay its running costs, then it is trading insolvently and therefore legally should be wound up. Of course we don't know whether that is true: it is, after all, just a rumour. It is, in fact, one rumour among many. I heard, for instance, just two days after the announcement of the latest grant, that insiders have admitted that another £30m or so will be needed in a month or two. Now they are probably just that, rumours without foundation, but the fact is that people believe them, and so the Dome's credibility is undermined yet again. And so the downward spiral continues. Next page: Why is the Dome doomed? Articles Indices:
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