Article fails to see town's positives

IT WAS enough to prompt me to splutter over my morning Weetabix.

- @Robert Lloyd

After initially feeling a very scarlet shade of red-eyed anger, I made a quick reality check and switched to hysterical laughter.

What prompted such a reaction?

Well, it was a lengthy article on the website of a national newspaper.

It was titled ‘I'm embarrassed to be from here’ - fed up locals in once-bustling town blast endless boarded-up shops and drug addicts.

The subject town in question was Llanelli, the place where I live.

The newspaper had parachuted a young trainee reporter into town for a 2,500-word hit piece which (when you put it under the microscope) looked suspiciously like an advert for a certain political party.

The online article started as it meant to go on as it declared: “Steeped in history, it (Llanelli) was built in part by the money made from the Stepney clan, a distinguished local family who invented the tyres fitted on all London taxis just a century ago.”

The above sentence will come as news to Llanelli historians who know that the town’s growth from small settlement to major industrial centre was based on the tinplate and coal industries in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The writer might have missed a bit of a clue in the fact that Llanelli earned the nickname Tinopolis.