The Millennium Dome has gone cap in hand to the Lottery lot for yet another handout.
It seems that us Northerners are not trekking in our thousands to stand about under the communal brolly...

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Come on, hands up! Who's actually been down and done the Dome then? Come on, there MUST be someone. No? It's actually cost £780 million squid already. Most of this is "good cause" lottery loot that could have been better spent elsewhere. The equivalent of a tenner for ever man, woman and child living in these islands. And that's before you've forked out the rail fare and the ticket price. So you might has well make the most of it. Any takers?

On present forecasts, £150 million in sponsorship combined with unpredicted ticket sale revenues and over £400 million in Lottery funding, the Dome has to do some serious work to balance the books. It must attract 12 million visitors in 2000 with a ticket for a family of five costing £57, and £20 for a single adult. Single-parent families have to rope in friends or relatives to qualify for the discount. Otherwise they must find the full price of £20 for an adult ticket and £16.50 for a child (unless Jr is under five). But it's falling well short of the 12 million visitors and is having to redo it's sums almost daily..

Obviously the Dome-boys know nowt about the art of a good Day Trip. They have never gotten up at five in the morning to catch the Working Men's Club coaches to Brid or Rhyl or the Blackpool lights. Sat supping pop and crisps with tipsy grown-ups trying to remember the words to "Ilkley moor Bah't At". Or loaded up the Volvo Estate with sullen schoolkids glued to Nintendo or Pokemon cards. Day trips have to be planned like the Normandy landings. Every last detail has to be plotted and every mishap anticipated. One small detail that the Dome-heads seem to have forgotten is that you've got to know where you're going in the first place.

Much of the impetus to get ourselves Day Tripping comes from the kids. It's called Pester Power. And these days the little buggers have a hunger for culture like we've never seen before. OK, it's a culture that we literally haven't ever seen before, and comes pre-packaged by obscure computer gamers and hard-nosed media corporations, but culture it is. Ask the average ten year old what he wants to see in the Dome and it is a big sticky nightmare. Manchester United play the Rest of the World in between mega-bouts by the World Wrestling Federation. A Virtual Reality Pokémon swapping session. S Club 7 played at ear splitting volume all day every day. A massive ice-cream fight and a Sunny D swimming pool. A two-mile high rollercoaster ride that leaves you screaming like a banshee and covered in green slime. And that's before lunch.

But, as any parent knows, giving kids what they want is asking for trouble. The idea is to take a bit of a lead. Give that eager beaver a bit of direction. A sense of discernment and taste. An idea that this particular trip is not just about buckets and spades and Coke and crisps, but a chance to widen horizons and be inspired. And a chance for us jaded oldies to be inspired too. A communal experience. The big idea of the Millennium Dome held out that promise as the last millennium drew to a close.

THEN AND NOW

"A huge vote of confidence in the people of this nation and their ability to create and deliver an event of world significance" RICHARD ROGERS Architect of the Millennium Dome structure June 19th 1997 _______________ "You can't just go and say I want to make the most popular place - that isn't a vision... There was no visionary person who had a clear brief in charge of it...It should have had a vision of the culture of the future" RICHARD ROGERS Speaking on Radio 4 Today programme May 26th 2000 _______________

. Signs that the project was going to emulate the World Exhibition of 1851 (which gave us the Victoria and Albert Museum and Crystal Palace) up until then had been quite encouraging. A sensation in it's day, the exhibition provoked a world-wide taking stock. A re-evaluation of the creative arts and the progress of industry and technology. A debate about the relationship between machinery and artistry. The exhibition managed to provide a means for propagating knowledge of the arts and the principles of design, especially amongst the ordinary worker who flocked in droves to see the exhibits.

Today Britain again finds itself at the cutting edge of creativity and high technology. And that's not just "Cool Britannia" spin. We lead the world in every field of popular culture. We are constantly providing a creative lead to the world. Computer games. Popular music. Broadcasting. Mass Communications. Trends. Fashions. Street culture. Every child grows up in this extraordinary hot house of ideas and invention. The ways that the next generation (bless 'em) could marry this élan vital to emerging new technologies could open up whole new ways of living and thinking. The Millennium Dome was the perfect opportunity to take a look at the extraordinary future that lies ahead of us. Science fiction made fact. A chance to create a fantastic new vision of what this next millennium could be. Another Great Exhibition. Imagine the possibilities.

The big trouble began when style guru Stephen Bayley smelt the stale cappuccino and walked out at the planning stage. Bayleys exit coincided with then Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson's fact-finding trip to Disneyland. The highbrow 20/20 vision became lowbrow myopia. No more debate about "quality" and "idealism". Curators were replaced by interior decorators. Philosophers by marketing executives. The need to challenge perception was replaced by the need to tap visitor interest. The Dome now was a private self-funding organisation run by boards of trustees and funded by gifts, corporate sponsorship and a whopping great grant. This meant profit and loss. The Great World Exhibition of 1851, run by some of history's hardest nosed entrepreneurs put on their big show for free. No expense spared.

The Millennium Dome-heads lost sight of the Big Idea. The sheer scale of the enterprise bogged these half-wits down in focus groups and market context. Managed by a corporation and totally tied to market forces it was inevitable that they developed an antipathy towards genuine creativity and education. Architecture writer Jonathan Meades observed that the British heritage industry has become "a game, a lark, a smart alliance of the repro trade, showbusiness and 'popular' education which combines to package epochs into tripper-friendly displays". The Dome, now struggling to maintain public interest, emerged screaming into the bright new millennium as a six ring circus with little ambition beyond bums on seats. Nothing else.

The biggest problem that the Dome has now is that it's shine has worn off. Any decent day-trip veteran knows that a trip to London has a whole heap of shinier, brighter and better focused attractions. Most of them are also genuine cultural attractions too, not just a interactive gimmicky "experience". Who on earth is going to traipse down to the Dome from Yorkshire when there's much more interesting, challenging and inspiring options available for a tenth of the expense? London Aquarium. The London Eye. Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge. HMS Belfast .Tower of London. Tussauds. The National Gallery. The BBC Experience. Even good old fashioned pleasures like riding upstairs on an old London Routemaster Bus or feeding mangy pigeons in Trafalgar Square have far more glamour and attraction than the dozy old Dome. Handier for Kings Cross/St Pancras and the happy journey home too.

A poll of the public has found that 77% now want the Dome closed down. This in a week when another £29m has been handed out to the project. A second chairman of the New Millennium Experience - former British Airways man Bob Ayling - joined Jennie Page in standing down in the face of mounting debts and falling figures.

Other Millennium Commission projects like the National Botanic Garden of Wales, the Lowry in Salford, and Scotland's Dynamic Earth Centre are genuine lasting cultural landmarks that will still be here in a hundred years. As are a thousand community halls, village greens and new woodlands that have also grown from Lottery funding. The Millennium Dome will only last as a tribute to mediocre marketeers and "design by committee". The public has woken up to the fact that the Dome is doomed, and is voting with it's feet.

For Northerners watching the pennies, the Dome is a trip too far. Day trip to Skeggie, anyone!?!?