FT visits Valleys

On the back of Tower Colliery's closure, today's Financial Times carries a feature article on our Heads of the Valleys programme, which manages to get across the broad approach we are taking.

Inevitably, I suppose, there are the usual mistakes you find with a taped interview, particularly when two people are interviewed together. So some things I say are attributed to Pat Lewis, the Director of the Assembly Government's Heads of the Valleys programme, and some of Pat's words end up in my mouth. Then there are the usual geographic errors that crop up when a reporter visits an area he is not familiar with. (On the FT's front page Tower Colliery is moved from the Cynon Valley to Merthyr, for example). Finally, you get the occasional factual mistake (e.g. Welsh Parliament rather than Welsh Assembly) and a bit of jumbling up as possible developments become certain-to-happen developments in at least one place.

But I was very pleased with the piece overall - it spells out some of the positives of the Valleys which often get overlooked, such as the stunning scenery, the interest currently being shown by house-builders and the overall investment we are making. There have been a series of positive stories about Wales in the weekend papers recently, and today's FT piece completes a week when our determination to lay stress on the opportunities for the Valleys - in terms of tourism for example - has been noticed.