The Famous Tay Whale Dundee city centre. Paul Godfrey described McGonagall on the strength of the "Tay Whale" and other verse as "the worst poet in the English language". Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of the "Tay Whale" that "what this [the verses about John Wood and the Tay Whale] amounts to, of course, is simply what quite uneducated and stupid people—the two adjectives by no means necessarily go together, for many uneducated people have great vitality and a raciness of utterance altogether lacking here—would produce if asked to recount something they had read in a newspaper." MacDiarmid continued that "in their retailings of, or comments
Martyrs Bridge (Bamako) palace. From the south of the bridge runs Avenue de l'Unite Africain, the major route from the city centre south to Bamako-Senou Airport. In 1982 a second road bridge, the King Fahd Bridge, was opened just 500 meters upstream. Both bridges connect the central city neighborhood of Commune III with Badalabougou. Prior to the 1950s, the only crossing of the Niger at Bamako was at the Sotuba Causeway, 8 kilometers downstream from the city, which is a low water crossing of cut stone at the location of a natural rapids. The Aigrettes Dam, 200 kilometers upstream, is a hydroelectric station