Now that I have found a real alternative,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/, I have finally abandoned Google Maps totally because I am thoroughly sick to death of the way it's been taken over by the Irish language nationalists.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is way way better, I find, with a lot more local information. Tragic that google will not given us access to an English language version of google maps. English, our language, the one 90% of us speak, and the one our parents and their parents and their parents speak.