MADAM,

Our Assembly Minister (AM), Nick Ramsay, has taken up the cause of making the A40 ’Welcome to Wales’ sign look better, but before any money is spent on cleaning it, shouldn’t we look at what appears on that sign? Why display an irrelevant, quirky ’sprite’ dragon at the gateway to Wales? Why mess around with the symbol of Wales, the dragon depicted on our flag?

Money and effort should not be wasted on cleaning the existing sign. I also want to avoid a situation where the cleaning goes ahead and then this is used as a reason to turn down proposals to change the sign. I have contacted our AM to suggest changing the sign, and asking for reassurance that there are no plans to continue this practice of replacing our national symbol with a cartoon.

Money is tight and sprucing-up a sign that shouldn’t live on would be a waste. If it’s to make the town look better, it is akin to repainting the door of a crumbling house. Yes it looks bad, but so do the empty shops in Monmouth. The high street and the independent traders of Monmouth should be our representatives’ priority over this vanity project.

Madeleine Boase

(Llanfaenor)