What has happened to Brighton?

[sir albion]

Right. Let's just put this to bed shall we?

Brighton is a truly wonderful place. It's edgy, it's street, it's urban, it's gritty. Bits of it have been hit by the ugly stick but there are also areas of immeasurably beautiful splendour.

We must cherish our beloved seaside city through this time of austerity. Yes it might have seen better days, but has its heart beaten any less vigorously?

I can assure you austerity has absolutely nothing to do with the state of Brighton
The 80's and 90's were very poor times yet it was a far cleaner place.Its blatantly clear that Brighton is attracting the wrong people to it and very few business's that generate wealth and prosperity....strangely it's way to expensive to stay in but always has hotels booked out regularly.
The whole seafront needs an uplift and all business's should be falsed into painting and repairing their buildings as clearly many haven't had any TLC for decades.The image needs to be protected at all costs and the council need to get moving !!!

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I can assure you austerity has absolutely nothing to do with the state of Brighton
The 80's and 90's were very poor times yet it was a far cleaner place.Its blatantly clear that Brighton is attracting the wrong people to it and very few business's that generate wealth and prosperity....strangely it's way to expensive to stay in but always has hotels booked out regularly.
The whole seafront needs an uplift and all business's should be falsed into painting and repairing their buildings as clearly many haven't had any TLC for decades.The image needs to be protected at all costs and the council need to get moving !!!

Brighton's "industry" is tourism, always has been. And by your own admission it's doing well. So what do you propose? We rework the economy and turn Brighton into what?

 

[Colossal Squid]

I can assure you austerity has absolutely nothing to do with the state of Brighton
The 80's and 90's were very poor times yet it was a far cleaner place.Its blatantly clear that Brighton is attracting the wrong people to it and very few business's that generate wealth and prosperity....strangely it's way to expensive to stay in but always has hotels booked out regularly.
The whole seafront needs an uplift and all business's should be falsed into painting and repairing their buildings as clearly many haven't had any TLC for decades.The image needs to be protected at all costs and the council need to get moving !!!

Well your memories differ from mine. I recall the place being very run down and grubby late 80s/early 90s and it wasn't until later in the 90s that it started to smarten up a bit. In fact, although I'm not a fan of it, I'd say things started picking up around the time Churchill Square got redeveloped. Then there was all the work around the Prince Regent in the early 00s which brought us our wonderful library, again giving the area a much needed lift.

All this work coincided with the UK's economic prosperity and housing boom so it seemed as if the city was on the up but since the financial downturn post 2008 and successive Tory governments cutting funding to the council and forcing austerity measures on everyone, unsurprisingly it has gone downhill.

There will inevitably be other contributing factors beyond the political but it's very difficult to argue with the cold hard fact that the city was at its peak during the Blair/Brown years and has declined ever since.

Under the Conservative lead governments of the past seven years homelessness has sky rocketed and so we see far more beggars on the streets. Funding to councils has been drastically slashed and so budgets for city cleaning and beautification have suffered - hence the place is dirtier. And the private investment needed for new redevelopment projects - such as the long mooted replacement of the Brighton Centre - has dried up due to continued economic uncertainty. This latter point is hindered yet further by the fact that the council planning departments simply don't have the capacity to allocate resources to large scale redevelopment projects - such as the long overdue upgrades to Victoria Gardens and Grand Parade - so it takes forever to get anything off the ground.

And before you accuse me of being some kind of New Labour fanboy, I have little time for Blair and his war mongering and I didn't vote for him or his party. But go back through this thread and correlate the periods people have claimed saw Brighton at its best. It's a pretty clear consensus that the decline has coincided with post-Labour Britain

 

[Colossal Squid]

Brighton is attracting the wrong people to it and very few business's that generate wealth and prosperity.

Just to pull you up on this point specifically. Brighton has actually done very well in attracting new business in spite of the dearth of office space. Outside of London it's THE digital hub of Britain and we have more creative media and digital agencies per head than anywhere else.

We're also somewhat of a pioneer of the booming digital gig economy, as evidenced by the high proportion of co-working spaces and the number of people registered as self employed in our city.

Businesses that generate wealth and prosperity in our city include big players such as American Express (you might have heard of them), Legal and General, Bupa, Kimberly-Clark, EDF, our two leading universities, countless language schools and branches of pretty much every high street chain you could care to mention.

Given we're stymied by a lack of space and the difficulties in getting anything new built (you may recall the challenges in getting our very fine stadium completed) I think you'd find there are many towns and cities of an equivalent size that'd be very envious of the blue chip players we have contributing to the local economy

 

[alfredmizen]

Yes that must be it. Having moved here from Wimbledon clearly all I could afford is a caravan. I'm glad people are happy in Brighton or Lewes. Just not my thing. Each to their own though. Not sure why people turn their noses up at Hailsham. I lived in Mitcham for years so its classy to me!

So did I, just off Rowan road!! hence my username

 

[timbha]

some years ago the seafront railings and arches were painted by criminals on community service.

Surely this is a win/win activity and could be extended to include those (fit enough) on Job Seekers Allowance (with an enhancement to their benefits). Again a win/win with the job seekers proving they are willing to get out of bed, learning a new skill and filling their days. Cleaning graffiti, beach cleaning, litter picking on the major arterial roads, maintaining grass verges could also be done.

 

[goldstone]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets. Probably 60% were overweight. Lardy parents with no-hope kids for whom lardiness is on the agenda. Ugly people covered in tattoos and piercings. People with absolutely no dress sense. And of course the stinking homeless. Brighton looked like a town full of no-hopers. A very sad state of affairs.

 

[Bakero]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets. Probably 60% were overweight. Lardy parents with no-hope kids for whom lardiness is on the agenda. Ugly people covered in tattoos and piercings. People with absolutely no dress sense. And of course the stinking homeless. Brighton looked like a town full of no-hopers. A very sad state of affairs.

If you think people in Brighton are badly dressed and overweight you might want to avoid the rest of the country.

By the way, statistically 62% of the UK adult population is overweight.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

How about this? If you don't like Brighton, don't visit. As a glance at the gridlocked streets and the packed pavements will tell you, more than enough people want to be here. Radical, I know ...

 

[Whitechapel]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets. Probably 60% were overweight. Lardy parents with no-hope kids for whom lardiness is on the agenda. Ugly people covered in tattoos and piercings. People with absolutely no dress sense. And of course the stinking homeless. Brighton looked like a town full of no-hopers. A very sad state of affairs.

Fair play, for somebody who has clearly been a troll for a very long time you've done very well to not get banned, and you still get a fair few bites.

 

[easynow]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets. Probably 60% were overweight. Lardy parents with no-hope kids for whom lardiness is on the agenda. Ugly people covered in tattoos and piercings. People with absolutely no dress sense. And of course the stinking homeless. Brighton looked like a town full of no-hopers. A very sad state of affairs.

You want to ban ugly people from visiting Brighton?

 

[Chicken Run]

some years ago the seafront railings and arches were painted by criminals on community service.

Surely this is a win/win activity and could be extended to include those (fit enough) on Job Seekers Allowance (with an enhancement to their benefits). Again a win/win with the job seekers proving they are willing to get out of bed, learning a new skill and filling their days. Cleaning graffiti, beach cleaning, litter picking on the major arterial roads, maintaining grass verges could also be done.

What an awful thing to suggest, that sort of work is way beneath them, only those from Eastern Europe should be offered such roles, or should I say would be happy to do such work....

 

[pearl]

some years ago the seafront railings and arches were painted by criminals on community service.

Surely this is a win/win activity and could be extended to include those (fit enough) on Job Seekers Allowance (with an enhancement to their benefits). Again a win/win with the job seekers proving they are willing to get out of bed, learning a new skill and filling their days. Cleaning graffiti, beach cleaning, litter picking on the major arterial roads, maintaining grass verges could also be done.

What an awful thing to suggest, that sort of work is way beneath them, only those from Eastern Europe should be offered such roles, or should I say would be happy to do such work....

There are all sorts of health and safety considerations here, particularly with graffiti removal. You also underestimate how fvcking disgusting the general public are in the mess they leave behind.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets.

Wait until this weekend when I'm out on the town with my Man Squad.

 

[sir albion]

Well your memories differ from mine. I recall the place being very run down and grubby late 80s/early 90s and it wasn't until later in the 90s that it started to smarten up a bit. In fact, although I'm not a fan of it, I'd say things started picking up around the time Churchill Square got redeveloped. Then there was all the work around the Prince Regent in the early 00s which brought us our wonderful library, again giving the area a much needed lift.

All this work coincided with the UK's economic prosperity and housing boom so it seemed as if the city was on the up but since the financial downturn post 2008 and successive Tory governments cutting funding to the council and forcing austerity measures on everyone, unsurprisingly it has gone downhill.

There will inevitably be other contributing factors beyond the political but it's very difficult to argue with the cold hard fact that the city was at its peak during the Blair/Brown years and has declined ever since.

Under the Conservative lead governments of the past seven years homelessness has sky rocketed and so we see far more beggars on the streets. Funding to councils has been drastically slashed and so budgets for city cleaning and beautification have suffered - hence the place is dirtier. And the private investment needed for new redevelopment projects - such as the long mooted replacement of the Brighton Centre - has dried up due to continued economic uncertainty. This latter point is hindered yet further by the fact that the council planning departments simply don't have the capacity to allocate resources to large scale redevelopment projects - such as the long overdue upgrades to Victoria Gardens and Grand Parade - so it takes forever to get anything off the ground.

And before you accuse me of being some kind of New Labour fanboy, I have little time for Blair and his war mongering and I didn't vote for him or his party. But go back through this thread and correlate the periods people have claimed saw Brighton at its best. It's a pretty clear consensus that the decline has coincided with post-Labour Britain

Houses were painted and the place was far tidier back then....yes clearly we saw things differently but as the decades have rolled its clear that people spent little money on their properties and the council can't afford paint to pain the railings etc.
Yes I know that most properties are rented nowadays but the council should be putting pressure on the landlords and owners to paint their properties as it's tarnishing the image of the city.

The people Brighton attracts are so scruffy and clearly anarchists types....Never seen so many scruffy weird people before and way to many students.

Brighton probably receives by a country mile the most money from tourists out of all seaside resorts and the good old council can't afford to tidy the place up.

The city needs a regeneration like no other and the new American Express building hopefully is just the beginning but I do fear that Brighton is full of far left idiots that are more interested in bike lanes than attracting big business and smartening up the place!!!

 

[sir albion]

Spent a few hours in town today. I have rarely seen a bunch of less attractive people parading the streets. Probably 60% were overweight. Lardy parents with no-hope kids for whom lardiness is on the agenda. Ugly people covered in tattoos and piercings. People with absolutely no dress sense. And of course the stinking homeless. Brighton looked like a town full of no-hopers. A very sad state of affairs.

Agree
It's like all the countries weirdos have descended to the city in one go

Got such a poverty stricken look about you'd think it was the Great Recession of the 80's.

 

[MattBackHome]

Houses were painted and the place was far tidier back then....yes clearly we saw things differently but as the decades have rolled its clear that people spent little money on their properties and the council can't afford paint to pain the railings etc.
Yes I know that most properties are rented nowadays but the council should be putting pressure on the landlords and owners to paint their properties as it's tarnishing the image of the city.

The people Brighton attracts are so scruffy and clearly anarchists types....Never seen so many scruffy weird people before and way to many students.

Brighton probably receives by a country mile the most money from tourists out of all seaside resorts and the good old council can't afford to tidy the place up.

The city needs a regeneration like no other and the new American Express building hopefully is just the beginning but I do fear that Brighton is full of far left idiots that are more interested in bike lanes than attracting big business and smartening up the place!!!

Yeah Brighton was clean as a whistle right up until 2010. And it was just rammed full of big business. The bigger the better. And famously of course there were never any students or lefties or anarchists or anyone with long hair in town before Lucas and her mob arrived. Mars bars taste different now don't they? I think it's the chocolate. And they're smaller.

 

[Questions]

You want to ban ugly people from visiting Brighton?

Give parking vouchers to Brighton visitors based on their looks......... what an idea. I might get an hour in the Churchill square car park if I’m lucky.

 

[pearl]

Agree
It's like all the countries weirdos have descended to the city in one go

Got such a poverty stricken look about you'd think it was the Great Recession of the 80's.

when Thatcher took over?

 

[Uncle C]

What is it that you don't like?

20mph limits everywhere
Few places to park
Parking charges exorbitant
Graffiti everywhere
Restricted East to West routes for driving
Litter everywhere
Bloody great waste bins stuck on the roads
Bloody great planters stuck on the road
Unattractive buildings (what is that monster on the Vogue gyratory system?)
Roads clogged up with parked cars many of which have had their mirrors smashed off by passing traffic.
Buildings purposely decorated with official graffiti
Public trampling all over the lawns in town
Madeira Drive falling apart
Syringes laying by the roadside
Bus lanes
Bike lanes
No pride of ownership on the outside of buildings
Overall sense of decay