Alex Deane: Tower Bridge, redux

Last year, in the days of CentreRight, I wrote a piece about plans to sell advertising on Tower Bridge during repair work. I was critical. Not so, many of Con Home's doughty readers. Regulars disagreed with me on several grounds.

• Entirely sensible, said Dominic - it's only for 12 weeks.
• A short one-off, said IRJ Milne.
• I was voicing mindless conservatism, said Greg.
• Hang on, said Jack C, they are covering up that part of bridge with scaffold anyway, I really don't see the problem.

Well, I give you the latest Tower Bridge advertising news: English Heritage "objects strongly" to Olympic sponsor logos which will dangle from the bridge like a peculiarly developed goitre for the period of games we have to endure.

Where and what next..? Some people will have a wholly market-driven outlook on all this (If anything we should be asking the councils to be more adventurous with their plans, said Nonny Mouse last time). And there are some who think the Bridge is ugly and not worthy of heritage status in any case. But for others, who then thought that my "slippery slope" line was alarmist... have you changed your minds, yet?

[That's not just a rhetorical question. There were other commenters last time whose positions were more nuanced: Norm Brainer, for example, held the view that "I don't see a problem if it's not going on the bridge itself but hiding scaffolding and helping to pay for the repairs" - so presumably, he was against me last time, but with me this time.]