The Golden Goblet of Mouse Poo Award...

Goes to Southend Borough Council for various ill judged attempts at civic improvement.

Never doubting for a second that they may just be the last people on earth qualified to make such long lasting decisions, they have blundered on in their doctrinaire conviction that they know best, and that none shall stop them.

I give you the Lego building aka the student quarters. In ten years time people will be looking to pull it down as an eyesore.
The pylons on the golden mile. So grossly out of scale that only an architect could see any worth in them.
The tiny statuette plonked awkwardly in the middle of the mass of concrete that occupies Victoria Circus. Again pathetically out of scale, only this time underscale.

It’s ironic that they’ve managed to put massive things where small scale would suit the skyline (the seafront) and a tiny thing where a massive vertical shape would work well (Victoria Circus). Ho hum, design by suits, never a good idea.

The proposal to plonk a fourteen storey block on the end of the golden mile overpowering the line of existing buildings and more importantly the Kursaal opposite it. A real icon obscured by a block of shite.

Good design is good design, anything else is crap…

Whilst none of us wants to preserve the past in aspic, Southend Borough Councils conviction that ‘modern’ equals excellent is fatally flawed. Witness the mess that is Victoria Avenue, ‘modern a few years ago, hideous now. That is what will happen in a few years time to the lightweight trendy stuff that the Council are foisting on us now. It has no integrity or form, it is the equivalent of architectural doodling, in the hope that somehow it will all come together as some sort of well considered grand design. Well lads it’s already looking pretty dated, give it a couple of years and Southend is going to be a site that architecture students will visit to see what happens when the bland are allowed to make big decisions.

Stick to what you know lads…vis…

Endless committee meetings purposely designed to lead nowhere…

Proceedural processes designed to hamper rather than help to move matters forward…

Jargon masquerading as knowledge…big problem this one in the Council…I know ‘cos I worked there and never had a clue what management were talking about so heavily did they try to hide their stupidity under gobbledygook.

And finally…the minutiae of Government recommendations used as a means of avoiding real decision making and responsibility.

You cannot polish a turd, you can only roll it in glitter…