MADAM,

Our Assembly Minister (AM), Nick Ramsay, has taken up the cause of making our ’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? The current sign displays an irrelevant and unnecessary quirky ’sprite’ dragon. The sign should carry the accepted and loved symbol of Wales, the dragon depicted on our flag. 

We should not waste money or effort on taking the stickers off 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.

I am aware that there is little money available for such projects, but it would be idiocy to chuck away what little is available on sprucing up a sign that shouldn’t live on. 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)