Welsh county borough named among nine to receive £20m UK government funding

I'm all for more flower pots and repainting benches but fast-forward 5 years and the flower pots look tatty and the benches need replacing. What must it take for central government to use its control of the economy to permanently uplift these areas instead of handing out consolation prizes.

Lucky Blaenau Gwent. Given the hard reality that under current Westminster governments, whether Tory or Labour, local authorities are pretty much at the bottom of the 'food chain', any extra money surely has to be welcomed, even if it's merely a 'once-off' hand-out. The dosh will at least to some degree benefit the community.

Again Wales patronised with fiscal scrag-ends and devolution bypassed by one of the most hostile centrist anti-Wales proponents of the "Welsh Not" UK Labour. We must send them a stark message in May Senedd election that enough is enough. You will not insult us anymore. We must cut out the Conservative Blue Labour cancer aggressively eating our hard-fought Senedd Cymru democracy, whose tendrils like Japanese knotweed is silently creeping silently under the very foundations. You are not architects of Welsh devolution Labour. Let's end this myth once and for all. In 1979 UK Labour ushered in 18 years of Thatcherism when they groomed the Welsh electorate into rejecting devolution promising a land of milk and honey only to be voted out of office leaving us at the mercy of one of the most aggressive politically toxic parties ever to exist. And in 1997 they tried to do the same again but thankfully failed, although cynically attempted to strangle Welsh devolution at birth with a talking shop toothless Welsh Assembly led by Blairite Alun Michael. But thank heaven's for Plaid Cymru and it's positive input that led to the "One Wales" agreement in 2007 leading to the 2011 legislative Senedd devolution vote or we'd still be a vassal state proxy controlled by Westminster. Only Rhun ap Iorwerth as First Minister and a Plaid Cymru Welsh Government will stand up to Welsh office English overseer Jo Stevens and war criminal Keir Starmer by putting our interests first for once not the Labour establishment and England.

So the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (an England only role) gets to decide which council in Wales gets cash. Steven Reed is the MP for Croydon North. The choice of Blaenau Gwent for this is Labour Party unrest. Bribery and corruption. The Labour MS for the constituency Alun Davies, has been critical of the patsy performance of the Welsh Government, the ones really responsible for social depravation. This is a gift designed to keep him 'on-message'. A donation of gold, incense and myrrh from a distant king to purchase patronage.