I do not know what has prompted David Biesterfield's sudden attack on the West Pier but I find it extremely intemperate. With an estimated 3,750,000 visitors to the Palace Pier in 1999 I'd have thought he had little to fear. He has not made himself popular by resurrecting the name change to "Brighton Pier". The National Piers Society continues to regard this as a predatory and ill-timed move which, incidentally, undoes a century of history.

This from an organisation which conveniently "lost" its pier-end theatre back in the 1990s, which greeted with total indifference its award by our members as Pier Of The Year in 1998 and whose 2000 subscription to this Society remains unpaid. Strange behaviour indeed.

-Anthony Wills, Vice-chairman, National Piers Society