A month of community service repairing paths in the Lake District would be more useful and less expensive.
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Whoa whoa whoa, itâs not like he took that mickey.
And very Beuysian.
Obviously some sort of flat-earth terrorist.
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Leave only footsteps (too dark?)
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They are just mad because hugh grant has to come back and verify it is no longer a mountain.
Not even close.
Im guessing there are thousands of rocks âmissingâ from that peak, and not one them has made the news until now.
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It is in the same category of, âthis is why we canât have nice thingsâ, closing off Stonehenge to casual tourists, and banning drones in Yellowstone.
Erosion and upheaval are strong and relentless enough, they donât need help 
Not sure how easy it is to know if youâve taken the highest bit. I guess loose bits donât count?
ETA: Hereâs the Torygraphâs take. But take it with a pinch of salt, because the journo spends the whole article talking about the wrong peak (Scafell vs Scafell Pike, tsk).
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Stonehenge and Yellowstone can easily be damaged by people traffic, but im not sure what damage has been dealt over a few thousand rocks missing from the peak over the last hundreds of years. This is nothing like graffiti or destroying an interesting natural formation, this rock is nothing more than a symbolic token.
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Urban Dictionary providing authoritative etymologies? Well, itâs been cited on court cases in the United States.
Thatâs precisely what I was thinking.
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Well, Iâve never heard the expression âtaking the mickeyâ before, so I, for one, am pretty clueless about what youâre getting at.
So is Scafell Pike.
The tourist board could have handled this better, instead of asking for the meaningless gesture of having the inch returned they could have asked the artist to help with path maintenance as a way of saying sorry. Maybe the gallery could help with funding future maintenance and repair?
But people would be offended if you put a pebble from somewhere else INTO Death Valley.
Itâs quite close in meaning to âtaking the pissâ and has nothing to do with anything about where anyone comes from. If anything âmickeyâ in this phrase probably derives from its use as a (childish and largely obsolete) term for penis.
Which obviously fits in with the whole concept of satire as it has come down to us from the ancients.
Stonehenge wasnât really closed off because of damage but rather the authorities lack of appreciation for peoples attempts to revive the site as a place of psychedelic sacred ritual: i.e. taking lots of drugs and listening to loud music and dancing all night.
Again I fail to see how a few hundred thousand rocks missing from the top of the peak has caused any visible damage. Are there any articles pointing to the peaks shrink rate and compared that to man made damage? The trails are surely a problem and have to be maintained no matter if they are at a national landmark or the local park.
I wonder if all of this fuss is because the artist declared this particular rock as âthe topâ. If he wasnât so specific and simply stated the rock was âfrom the topâ, it wouldnt be nearly such a big deal. So that leads into⌠well what is the highest rock? There is no marker or velvet rope claiming THAT rock is the highest one from what I can tell. And is that rock there naturally, or was it stacked there by man like thousands of other rocks are stacked there?
The debate starts with an insignificant rock, a random person declares it to be special to millions of people, then removes it giving the illusion of insulting those millions of people. Now we have people posturing about meaningless declarations and illusions that have no real world significance and maybe even detracts from the real problems we are ignoring/dealing with.
A wonderful example of art imitating life. I have a difficult time deeply appreciating this type of shock art, but the way it can move society is profound.
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I think the object lesson that people are trying to present is actually âit isnât racist because itâs not about the Irishâ. All of the googling I did on the termâs etymology points to âCockney rhyming slangâ and the origins of âMickey Blissâ seem to have been lost to the mists of time (there are some comments about a BBS radio personality, but that appears to be unproven, another theory is that mick was short for micturation, but that seems like a stretch to me). It may have, indeed, originated as some kind of Irish slur or morphed into one at some point, but I have never seen or heard it used in that context, and havenât been able to find any definitive sources pointing to that definition (and no, Urban Dictionary does not count for all the reasons mentioned above).
And going slightly back on topic, I had originally thought the artist was Argentinian, and figured this was just more blowback from the Patagonia Special. Sadly, upon re-reading I see that he is from Ecuador. Dang.
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Pretty much.
I am trying to argue that this could have been an opportunity to make people aware of the long term erosion caused by visitors and attempt to get more volunteers for maintenance of the pathways. Instead we have a fuss over a pebble that people are laughing about.
You could clear every loose bit of rock of the top of the Scafell Pike plateau and it would still be higher than Helvellyn. I wouldnât support anyone who did that, but I recognise that it would have little impact on the height of the mountain.
Thereâs still no mention of it from local news sources, theyâre more concerned about the reintroduction of lynx into the area.
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