Stained Pants

It was reported this morning that councillors of Staines Town are considering changing the name to Staines-on-Thames as they believe this will make the town seem more attractive to investors. Residents of Staines will no doubt be donning their “this is an outrage” caps and furiously tutting and shaking their heads at such a notion while the rest of the nation, world and universe couldn’t give a shit.
If the theory that adding “-on-Thames” to a name increases the attractiveness why not add it to more things? Newport-on-Thames, Baghdad-on-Thames, and what about Susan Boyle-on-Thames? They are probably employing “style consultants” as we speak (I bet some prick has given himself that title), charging thousands of pounds to make Staines sexy with every idea inevitably being absolutely terrible yet costing unspeakable amounts of money.
Slough is going through something similar and is failing miserably. People may remember a few years ago the programme “Make Slough happy” and if you watched it and are wondering if it worked the answer is a resounding no. Slough is of course famous for The Office which gave the town quite a bad name yet it would benefit greatly if people like David Brent and Gareth Keenan actually lived there.
In the past year banners have been put up everywhere in Slough with slogans like “Proud to be Slough”. There are a few meanings of the word slough in the dictionary, my favourite being “A state of deep despair or moral degradation “ which sums Slough up perfectly. So does “Proud to be in a state of deep despair” really make Slough seem like a better place? Another banner simply says “The heart of Slough is beating”, I always read this as “The heart of Slough is beating you up and stealing your phone”. You can plaster every slogan thinkable over Slough but you will never make it sexy because it is a massive slab of concrete with a permanent grey cloud hanging over it not to dissimilar to my stereotypical image of Eastern Europe which I believe is what England looked like in the 70’s.
The landmark feature in Slough is Brunel Bus station which is currently having the Gok Wan treatment done to it and if true to the plans will end up looking like a giant chrome piece of abstract art.
Of course the simple solution is to change the name. Slough is a horrible name and not even Slough-on-Thames would improve it, maybe Rape-on-Thames but that’s not going far enough. My suggestion is to change it to something like Unicorn, or Ribbons, you know, something nice that doesn’t say despair.
Staines will still have a horrible name if it changes to Staines-on-Thames because the word Staines conjures connotations of dirt and mess and uncleanliness. Keep the -on-Thames bit, just change Staines to something nicer, or what about just naming it Stainless? That sounds better already.
Certain people are arguing that Staines has been given a bad name as the fictional character Ali G resided there but I’m sure that real people who are like Ali G do actually live in Staines. Ali G mentioned my home town a few times and like every place he mentioned it’s a shit hole so maybe he has given it a bad name. If Staines isn’t a very nice place then would changing the name make it a better place? No, of course it wouldn’t.