Madness to move Watermans! Along with the canals, riverside location and Syon Park, it is part of Brentford's USP, giving our dreary run-down surrounds a desperately-needed touch of class, aside from offering a real and valued community amenity. And those who gripe about its Stalinist architecture, at least the (thankfully low-rise) building has a certain quirky eccentrity, including the miasmic aroma of vindaloos. And consider the inevitable alternative: yet another high rise block of flats, spoiling the view along what is a charming stretch of the Thames: vandalism of the highest order threatens! Our decision makers ought to be told: Hands Off! I sympathise with those who argue for it to be moved to the centre of Brentford, in the middle of Ballymore's ill-conceived, dreary Lego development, that if it were designed as a proper arts centre, it would lure people to the new town centre. In practice though, it would probably be an ill-designed concrete box, like the ugly Paul Robeson development in Hounslow, or just quietly left to die by Hounslow Council who don't seem to care about the Western end of their manor. Power to the ratepayers, punish these scoundrels at the polls! As for the fatuous idea of moving the Watermans to central Hounslow, it has perhaps escaped the councillors' notice that so few people in Hounslow High Street these days speak English as their first language, that it will become a splendid white elephant, wonderfully droll for those with an ironic turn of mind (how Evelyn Waugh would have enjoyed the absurdity), but a small and irritating tragedy for the many local people (many like myself and my wife pensioners) who use and value the Watermans, as it is and where it is. Anticipating sanctimonious PC squawks, my reference to the wonderful variety of tongues to be heard in Hounslow High Street is n-o-t racist, emphatically not, merely a statement of fact... On that subject, I was amused to see multi-lingual signs in Sutton Coldfield recently, in French, Spanish, Polish, Turkish, Urdu, Gujerati, Arabic, Mandarin. . . Don't Feed The Pigeons! Is it possible that we've all gone bonkers in this country?
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