New Stadia

I went in on the train from Cambridge to London today for the first time in a year or so.

Just south of Finsbury Park there is now a new monument reaching for the sky. It is Ashburton Grove, the new stadium for Arsenal. In that year an awful lot has been done.

Why is it that Arsenal can get things right and Ascot can build a new grandstand in twenty months, whereas it has taken years to build Wembley? Perhaps, the first two are strictly commercial ventures funded by their owners, whereas the latter has all sorts of hangers on, lottery funders and Government ministers to be buttered up?