An MP has joined an Australian row over whether to remove an inscription from a statue of Captain Cook by criticising the demand as “gesture politics”. The inscription on the statue in Hyde Park, Sydney, says that Cook discovered “this territory” in 1770. Simon Clarke, the Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said: “James Cook was one of the greatest explorers of his age and is rightly Middlesbrough’s most famous son. He was recognised in his own time as someone who worked for the benefit of mankind. The current trend for trying to revise the past is deeply unhistorical and most sensible Australians…

Source: The Times August 25, 2017 10:52 UTC