Telegraph does demolition job on Paignton

'Gruesome hotels, vile B&Bs and depressing deadzone'

A national newspaper has done a hatch job on the English Riveria in general and Paignton in particular, saying it looks like it's still in 1978, except when the sun comes out when it can pass for 1980.

A writer called Chris Moss calls for the wrecking ball to do its worst and the replacement of current food outlets with good quality delis. 

Mr Moss, who's from Totnes, says he has ideas for 'blighted seaside towns' that could make them worth visiting. He takes aim at Paignton which he says he can imagine being quite beautiful but being dazzled by the sun on the sand leaves him squinting. Poor visibility is, he suggests: "a boon" to such a resort.

Mr Moss suggests a nuclear bomb might do the world of good to this famous patch of coastline's "excrescences." As well as the Vue Cinema and the pier, he's thinking particularly of the improvements a bomb could do for the: "gruesome looking hotels and housing developments...and the vile B&Bs that no amount of irony will ever save."

Paignton is, he feels, a piece of "rottenness" between Brixham and Torquay, both of which he doesn't much like either.

Mr Moss points out that most British people are now relatively well travelled, or at least have seen foreign temptations on TV, and they deserve better than Torbay offers. "Who decided that seaside resorts should be stuck in the past, and not the rather naff but at least slightly quaint past when they were first imagined, but the grimy past of beans with everything, kiss-me-quick plastic hats, three day weeks and mass unemployment?" he writes.

Among his ideas for improving Paignton, he suggests turning the pier into a library and cultural centre; greening the prom to get rd of " greasy spoons, rotting fish and chip shops, run-down beach huts" and turning "Torbay Road, one of the most depressing retail dead zones on the planet – into a low-rates open-air mall for local shops, fresh food outlets, good quality delis and takeaways, and a few gift shops that deal in fair trade, creative ideas and locally crafted items." He will allow a pasty shop, as long as it doesn't provide "dirt-cheap fodder for the masses."

Mr Moss says: "Bring on the wrecking ball for the beachfront cinema complex, the hideous hotels, the noisy football pubs and commission designers to imagine how people might want to holiday in 2030, 2040, 2050."