Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Irish rugby unveiled its new home on Saturday.  The Aviva Stadium, situated on the site of the old Lansdowne Road ground, is a gleaming glass and steel structure which, despite reservations about its capacity for Six Nations matches, instantly becomes Ireland's most impressive sports' venue. In Northern Ireland the chances of a multi-sports arena being built in the foreseeable future died with plans for a stadium at the Maze.   In today's Belfast Telegraph I anticipate the complaints that we too could've had a world class facility and I argue that the middle of nowhere was never a plausible location. a city centre arena, like the one unveiled in Dublin, was never on offer in Northern Ireland. The Government, backed by Sinn Fein and the DUP's former Culture Minister, Edwin Poots, repeatedly stressed that it was the Maze or nothing. The prevailing wisdom of town-planners, developers and academics was against an out-of-town development. Examples of similar project...

I wouldn't normally condone any form of vandalism, but I have a degree of sympathy with Dubliners railing against a monument to a Nazi collaborator being re-erected in their midst. Gombeen Man has a rather good post describing why this memorial is so unpopular amongst the public down south. A substantial constituency does not want to be reminded of "the IRA man who colluded with fellow nationalist fanatic Hitler".