Kerrywoman points me in the direction of this article by Vincent Browne, about the corporatisation of public space, and the way we blithely accept that corporate interests should trump all other concerns.
Browne objects to the way that the new national rugby stadium in Ireland is known as the Aviva Stadium instead of the old Lansdowne Road, despite the Irish taxpayer funding well over half the project. Names are important in Ireland - plenty of streets, towns and counties had their British colonial names replaced with Irish ones (e.g. Dún Laoghaire used to be Kingstown), but would anyone in Britain object?
Certainly Stoke City's new ground was the Britannia from day one, and I haven't heard anyone object to the Emirates - but how would you feel about the Tesco Wembley Arena or Twiglets Twickenham? Bodyform Buckingham Palace?
3 comments:
The Andrex St Andrews? sounds about right to me.
Seeing as how Wembley is a preposterously expensive, architecturally inferior version of the old stadium, corruptly located in London and with one of the worst playing surfaces in the modern game, I fail to see how calling it the Asda Stadium will make it any more of a laughing stock than it already is.
I didn't know any of those things, having little interest in England. Is it really that bad?
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