Bridgend: city of danger
Last year, I got used to seeing my hometown of Bridgend maligned in the press. It’s a weird feeling, because however well aware you are that newspapers get things wrong, it still comes as a surprise when it’s on a subject you know about. Anything in black-and-white seems to possess an authority that the spoken word doesn’t have. Hey, it’s in the paper so it must be true.

I thought Bridgend had dropped off the news agenda, so I was surprised to read an interview with the historian Niall Ferguson  in yesterday’s Observer in which he says:

“Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it. Bridgend on a Saturday night has its temporary inflatable hospitals for the stabbings and glassings.”

Bridgend? It’s a long time since I went out on a Saturday night in Bridgend, but if there were stabbings and glassings, I’m sure I’d know about it. And this is the first I’ve heard of any inflatable hospital. Ferguson makes Bridgend sound like the Bronx or something – but here’s the thing: Bridgend is really ordinary. It’s quite small, quite unremarkable, and is inhabited by people doing ordinary things like going to work and attending school and doing their shopping on a Saturday. It really isn’t full of people stabbing and glassing each other. But with this kind of publicity, I don’t suppose anyone is going to risk going there to find out.