Merthyr Tydfil

Well it's taken a while but I've got to 50 posts on here, including a rather lengthy break in postings. Hooray! You can't see this but I'm sat here with a party hat and about to pull a party popper... on way own. It's a sad sight...

Anyway...

I thought I'd dedicate this 50th entry to my home town of Merthyr Tydfil. For a small town in South Wales, the town has a large reputation, and it's not a good one. Through some media outlets (stand up sky news) the town has been vilified as one of the worst places in the country.

The town has problems don't get me wrong, stats don't lie and it somehow has managed to earn the titles of such things as teenage pregnancy capital of the UK (lost that one now), benefits capital of the UK. But it's not quite the hellhole of disrpute some people would have you think. First up, news companies love stereotypes, so typically if Merthyr is to be shown on TV, or people used for any purpose, they are portrayed in the image that already exists.

If you believe the many news articles you'd think nobody here works, nobody knows how to get to Cardiff, everyone lives in a council house and commits petty crime to fund various habits and support their 6 kids. While areas could conform roughly to some of that, there are many more that don't, nice areas. One thing you'd notice that even in the 'less desirable' places, which lets face it every town or city has, there's usually strong senses of community even here. Meaning they may not be so bad anyway.

I'm not denying there are gulfs between areas locally, I like to think I live in one of the nicer ones, but within a mile or two you'd find potentially the least desirable area of all.

Don't me wrong there are plenty of workshy gobshites round happy to pick up whatever they can get and not work. But equally there are people who go out and work hard. There are people, such as myself, who spend time on the disaster area of a train system or bus system commuting to Cardiff to work. Please don't tar the whole town with the sky-news-desperate-need-for-a-story brush.

I have no doubt the town will continue to have it's flaws blazed over the TV at every convinient opportunity for years to come. Yes unemployment is high, we lost factories by the bucketload. Those workers can't magic up new jobs. Many of them lost industries which has been all they've ever known.

Nobody speaks about the reneavations to the town centre, the decent leisure centre and facilities, the extensions and improvements to the hospital, but a borded up house on the gurnos has 6 cameras camped outside while some smug Londoner stands outside reporting every time new unemployment stats are released.

Maybe that's a part of the problem. Organisations such as sky news need somewhere to make an example of, but the people in many parts of England wouldn't stand for it being them. So they need somewhere out of the way... somewhere in Wales, somewhere with some bad stats going on. Bingo!

Merthyr may be many things, and a shithole may be one, by it's also home.