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Wales Online
Wales Online
Politics
Cathy Owen

Man 'selling eggs' for £10 each outside Margaret Thatcher statue

A man has been pictured selling eggs for £10 directly outside a new statue to Margaret Thatcher that has been unveiled in her home town of Grantham. The new memorial to the first female Prime Minister was hit by egg within hours of its opening at the weekend.

. The £300k statue, first approved in February 2019, stands at St Peter's Hill, in the centre of Baroness Thatcher's home town and has proved divisive in the town.

Twitter user @sport_badger, or Em, shared a picture online of reporter Oli Dugmore, head of news and politics for publication JOE, selling eggs for £10 a piece directly next to the statue. This comes following videos of it appearing to be egged by arts centre woker Jeremy Webster just hours after it was unveiled.

Lincolnshire Police said no arrests had been made, but the force did receive a report of criminal damage to the statue of the former Prime Minister who died in April 2013, aged 87.

Officers attended the scene on Sunday, and egg residue and a piece of shell could be seen on the statue's lower half.

The contents of a thrown egg drip down the newly installed statue of Baroness Margaret Thatcher in her home town of Grantham, Lincolnshire (Joe Giddens/PA Wire)

The statue had been lowered into place atop a 10ft (3m) high plinth under CCTV surveillance to minimise the risk of vandalism.

Reacting to the egging, Mrs Thatcher's daughter, Carol, who lives outside the UK, said she had not seen the sculpture but remarked that it was "not a good time to be a statue anywhere these days, it seems".

Meanwhile, Welsh politician Neil Kinnock, who led the Labour party between 1983 and 1992 and who regularly faced Mrs Thatcher in the Commons during that time, condemned the egging, adding: "The statue should be respected, full stop."

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