the abyss means...

Let's be honest for a minute. The loss of the pier is not the tragedy that people like to make out. For most of my life it has been an eyesore and while I like ruins, to many people it is simply a rotting husk. Besides, nobody is even prepared to pay to prevent it deteriorating further.

All the options to save the pier have been turned down - the raised sea-front was the last price to save it, and people said no. Let it fall into the sea, as at least that will be a spectacle.
(The worst thing to happen to that pier, in my opinion, is its Grade 1 listing. While that may have saved it from being destroyed it has made the restoration more difficult)

And if we do spend millions on the pier, what are we actually going to get out of it? As the president-elect of the Royal Institute of British Architects, George Ferguson pointed out "Piers were built for promenading and we don't promenade today. The piers that are left have become very tacky experiences, so we should be thinking what we want piers for. " Are we going to make it into another set of amusement arcades, when we already have that? And if people want a community centre, we could build it somewhere cheaper and spend the money saved on equipping it.

Or maybe we could ignore the pier altogether and spend the money on something far more valuable, such as providing support for the thousands of extremely vulnerable people in the town. If people cared about the pier it would have been saved before now. It is a waste of time and money.

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Right on! First the pier, then the ruling classes!

The revolution is here comrades!

X on January 2, 2003 10:02 PM

I think it is a great shame that such an evocative building is allowed to crumble because of intransigence, fear of change, and naked profiteering. However, I cast most of the blame at the Noble group, and SoS. I was tempted to align with SoS, and go around campaigning for the pier to be torn down "to preserve our sea views" (=property prices) but I suspected the irony would have been lost...

Dave Ph on January 3, 2003 12:11 AM

I also think that it is probably a good thing the pier has now started to plummet. Finally this means that someone has to make a quick decision about whether it is renovated or whether it is destroyed.

Either way, we will no longer have a rotting husk on the horizon. We will now be certain to receive either a sparkling monstrosity, which will rival the foulness of the Palace Pier, or a wonderful view of Shoreham. I'm not sure which is worse.

As an afterthought... would it have been cheaper to dismantle the pier while it was still stable, or will it be more expensive to remove a dangerous collapsing structure?

Pete on January 3, 2003 02:58 AM

Local civil engineering chaps I've spoken to *really* want to blow it up.

I can understand why Noble might be slightly aggrieved that a competitor can receive vast amounts of public money to compete with them; but the SoS folks have always bothered me. Do they want to live in a lively tourist town? If so, then accept that ongoing development is a part of that, even if it does mess with your lovely sea view. If not, and they just want sea views... there are plenty of places to move to.

Having said that, I think we ought to distinguish the romantic notion of what the west pier should have been from what it would have been. Realistically it was going to end up a commercial entity, with all that entails.

Tom Hume on January 3, 2003 06:58 PM

I care about the pier. On the other hand, I no longer live anywhere near it.

I also think it's pretty picturesque as a ruin, so why restore it? Especially as it would certainly be restored to something every bit as ghastly (though, possibly, fun in a horrible sort of way) as the other one. Or end up with a pretty ghastly nightclub at the end, like Worthing boasts.

The best restoration would be in a National Trust sort of way, but that's never going to happen.

So it's crumbling away, is it? Well, I have a couple of nice photos of it - that'll have to do.

Robin on January 6, 2003 10:35 AM