IAN HART Worthing almost as popular as Barcelona?

On the back of losing the National Bowls Championships I had a very interesting chat with the owner of one of Worthing premier hotels.

One of the things we discussed was the tourist income figure of £100million being bandied around by certain members of the council.
A big factor in this huge figure is the alleged amount of tourists we have come to Worthing each year.
According to my hotelier someone on the council apparently estimates this figure at 3 million, because someone else in the corridors of power has embarked on a system where visitors, i.e., people who don’t live here, and come for even just a one-off visit, are classed as tourists, as are the non Worthingites who come here on a regular basis.
Confused? So am I?
Clearly figures can be massaged to look good, just ask David Cameron, but you seriously would have to question the validity of these figures when you see that Barcelona has 7.3 million tourists, Berlin has 9 million, so Worthing’s 3 million is quite encouraging!
And a footnote to the sorry tale of the Bowls Championship loss is the statement by councillor Turner that it represented a one per cent loss of the estimated £100million tourist income. My source says knock a nought off that figure and we have the sad fact that Worthing has lost 10 per cent of its tourist income at the stroke of a pen.
l The clocks go back this weekend, and as we seem to say every year, I really do wonder where the time has gone?
Twenty years ago last week my dear old grand-dad celebrated his 90th birthday. He told me at his party that a week is like a day and despite still being 42 years away from that landmark, I’m beginning to see where he was coming from.This week, I met an uncle for the first time in my life. Whatever the reasons why we haven’t met before are immaterial – it was nice to meet him, and his wife, and I look forward to meeting him again, hopefully not in another 48 years as that will make him the oldest man in the world by a country mile!