Olympic bell

[fartwell2000]

--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "Dickon" <dickon at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> > the Contractors should be ashamed of themselves
> 
> But this is the phrase that bugs me.  What has Whitechapel done wrong???
> 
> DrL
>

What I actually said was "LOCOG and the contractors should be ashamed of themselves".

Firstly, a lot of people are under the impression that LOCOG required the bell to be made in the UK and that Danny Boyle (amongst others) wished the bell to have an East end connection (East end of where?).

Sadly, Whitechapel don't have the capacity to cast such a bell-Taylors do and there must surely be other foundries who don't cast bells who have the required furnace capacity? Whitechapel quite clearly haven't explored all possible alternatives in the UK-remember, part of the request from LOCOG was a UK bell, which Whitechapel quite clearly could not supply by casting "in house".

The big question is why didn't Whitechapel ensure this bell WAS made in the UK? Like I said before, the name on the bell doesn't matter as long as it shows that the UK CAN produce bells of that size. Made in Holland is still made in Holland and not a good advert for what the UK founders really CAN produce. Why didn't Whitechapel liase with other UK companies to make this bell an excellent advert for buying large bells from the UK?

There is much anger/frustration-call it what you will, by members of the general public on many forums and newspaper websites regarding this bell being made in Holland.

UK bell founding needs all the business it can get-the days of lots of new large rings and even new rings being installed is long gone.

Sometimes, there is more to business than wanting a bigger gross profit. What a fantastic advertising opportunity for UK bellfounding has been missed.

Alan