Should we give them back?

[LadyGlencoraPalliser]

The Elgin marbles that is.
Personally, I think they should be returned to Greece but I would be interested to know what other people think.

Damn right we should give them back. It's an embarrassing disgrace that we still have them. They're not ours to keep.

nope

finders keepers, losers weepers.

I was quite shocked when I saw them how you could see where they'd been hacked away from their original site.

Yes I think we should return them. We'd sure want them back if it was the other way around.

The fact that we have them at all stems from a lofty period in our history where rich collectors on world 'tours' thought they had every right to help themselves.

that bloke on fifteen to one used to go on about the elgin marbles

In truth, I would be happy to see a replica in the BM. I'm not an expert classicist, and would get as much from seeing a good copy. However, a real expert / afficianado would presumably get more out of seeing them in the original setting. The original setting is obviously vastly improved by being as complete as possible.
And I would love t see them in the splendour of the original context.

Half the dinosaur bones in the NHM are replicas.

Good point about replicas Blu. I wonder if that's what the BM would do though. It might be that if they went back, Greece would be very kind and loan lots of different things which they could use the space for instead - Greece has huge amounts of wonderful stuff in store-rooms they don't have room to display and have made some generous offers re loans in the past.
This is the irony of it all.... both sides could benefit in many ways from the return.

We've got tons of stuff in store-rooms too.

Yes we have, but not Classical sculpture of that quality.
There is, though, lots and lots of stuff from other countries that could usefully be loaned to the source country.