{"id":1065985,"date":"2026-07-03T13:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065985\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:42:21","slug":"putting-cones-on-statues-is-in-good-humour-but-a-safety-hazard-says-councillor-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1065985\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting cones on statues is in good humour but a safety hazard, says councillor \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

People in Edinburgh have been warned against putting traffic cones on top of statues as it could pose a safety hazard.<\/p>\n

A senior city councillor admitted the trend, made famous by a statue in Glasgow, was in \u201cgood humour\u201d but said it should not spread elsewhere in Scotland.<\/p>\n

Cones have begun to appear upon statues around the city in recent days, in an echo of the trend in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

The equestrian statue of the same duke at Waterloo Place in Edinburgh sported three traffic cones on Friday morning: one on the Duke\u2019s head, another on the horse\u2019s head and another on the horse\u2019s raised foreleg.<\/p>\n

\"Collection<\/a>\"Taylor<\/a>\"ConesCones appeared on statues in Boston, Massachusetts, after the arrival of the Tartan army for the World Cup (Martin Rickett\/PA) <\/p>\n

Other statues in Edinburgh, including those of Adam Smith and Sherlock Holmes, have also been \u201cconed\u201d.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0traffic\u00a0cone\u00a0tradition is most associated with the statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

Since the late 1980s, a\u00a0cone\u00a0has been atop the statue\u2019s head and it has been persistently replaced whenever it is removed.<\/p>\n

When Scotland fans travelled en masse to the US for the World Cup, the Tartan Army chose to decorate statues in Boston and Miami with cones in a similar way.<\/p>\n

Boston\u2019s mayor Michelle Wu took to the practice and even put a cone on a\u00a0statue herself.<\/p>\n

However, the City of Edinburgh Council has said work has been ongoing to remove the cones which have popped up around the city.<\/p>\n

Edinburgh\u2019s transport and environment convener, Stephen Jenkinson, said: \u201cWhilst I\u2019m sure these have been put up in good humour and with the best intentions, we need to consider the safety of the public above all.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnsecured traffic cones could potentially cause injury or present a road safety hazard, which is why they\u2019ve been removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we can all agree that there is only one statue in Scotland that has truly immortalised the cone, so I\u2019d urge people to not attempt any imitations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People in Edinburgh have been warned against putting traffic cones on top of statues as it could pose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1065986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8816],"tags":[4573,748,30441,1102,918,4884,28066,712,292427,24130,16,15,48868],"class_list":["post-1065985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edinburgh","tag-boston","tag-britain","tag-city-of-edinburgh-council","tag-edinburgh","tag-glasgow","tag-great-britain","tag-heritage","tag-scotland","tag-stephen-jenkinson","tag-tradition","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-vandalism"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116856341977072797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1065986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}