LETTER: Dose of Blue Room blues

Ladies and Gentleman of Eastbourne. Am I missing something here? Am I being a bit thick? Please let me run this one past you. The Blue Room on Eastbourne Pier burns to the ground. The police, fire brigade, every TV reporter in the western hemisphere and even the Prime Minister comes to Eastbourne to say how sad the loss is of our 'iconic', 'historic' and 'Victorian pier' and yet, almost two years on ... still no replacement of our 'historic iconic Blue Room'.

Now, I like a bit of quality carpentry and woodworking skills as much as the next man, but the vast expanse of bland boarded nothingness that we have at the moment is pushing it a little bit too far.

So my question is simply this – after the pier (which we are told was fully insured) has had its insurance money paid out, and the two million which the Prime Minister gave to the town was received, where is the replacement Blue Room, that everyone was gushing about not so long ago? Surely with all the fuss people were quite rightly making we should now be looking at a beautiful new Blue Room where the old one once stood? And surely the whole point of the insurance money was to replace that which was destroyed? I am quite confident that the people of Eastbourne would rather see the Government’s donation go to putting the pier back to its former glory, rather than “community projects” or one-off light shows, as nice as they were.

Now, I am sure the flamboyant gentleman who now owns the pier is a thoroughly smashing bloke, but to be honest I don’t particularly want to see gold lions painted on every lamppost he can find, nor do I particularly want to view his big, gold-plated Bentley parked on the promenade, flouting parking restrictions that the Eastbourne wardens are so eager to enforce with everyone.

Surely its as simple as this – it has burnt down, it was insured, then rebuild the damn thing.

S Powell

Langney Road

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