Brighton’s West Pier has been giving joy to residents and visitors for over 130 years, from its heyday as an Edwardian pleasure palace to its current status as nesting place for starlings and dilapidated art object. But the storm clouds are gathering. The West Pier has been hijacked by the pernicious construction-heritage industry and is in danger of being turned into a plastinated corpse that serves no one but the bankers.     These interfering busybodies can’t bear the fact that the West Pier, second only to the Pavilion as a Brighton landmark, is currently generating zero income for the city. What profit is to be made from the sight of half a million starlings wheeling gracefully above its stark outline? Where’s the revenue stream from a winter sunset blazing through the ancient cast iron? And the projected yield from poking around its occasional flotsam at low tide is a big, fat zero.     As a city, we should think very carefully before sacrificing this beautiful and unique structure in the name of profit. If you believe all the talk of ‘sympathetic restoration’ and ‘appropriate use’, just look at the Aquarium terraces, where an important Victorian building has been topped by a burger-infested steel and glass turd. Do we really need another temple to tourism and consumerism? Rant continues here....
	Restoration is not conservation
						If you think we're talking nonsense, check out some of the official statements of the (other) West Pier Trust here:   The reality of the West Pier 'restoration'
	Links View the WPDT Guestbook - Leave your whinges here West Pier Trust - The competition. Don't trust 'em Starlings - More on our feathered friends Send us an e-mail: info@westpier.org.uk