Trago Mills In Merthyr Tydfill : Don't Loudly Boycott It. Loudly Support It's Rivals Instead

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Many years ago the wife and I went to the South West for our summer break and out of curiosity went to one of the Trago Mills there. Now I've no problem with bargain outlets. But even for me tacky seemed the word of the visit and we came out having bought nothing.

Now many years later Trago Mills has an outlet in Merthyr Tydfill (though you wouldn't know it from it's twitter account that doesn't mention it in it's bio) and it's chairman, former UKIP supporting chairman has criticised the Welsh language signage as visual clutter", condemned Welsh medium education and basically told the Welsh to surrender to the English language and have done with it.

I have spoken before of the dangers the Welsh Language faces post Brexit from this type of attitude. After all he mentions an employee who couldn't spell (in English) furniture (he spelt it fernicher instead).Yet how does he know that the employee wasn't dyslexic? And if the employee is so bad how is it that they employed him? The Chairman thought fernicher was the Welsh word for it....didn't bother to check...mind you that might be because of his eyesight.....speaking of which....

He moaned about the roadsigns being bilingual mentioning his poor eyesight. Which of course brings the question What is he doing driving in the first place?

So all of this shows the chairman's ignorance and that his Mr Magoo like shortsightedness is not just physical it's also mental. Bilingualism is a blessing not a curse and the idea that a nation should use it's language in the twenty first century should not be stopped by the likes of him.

But what to do. I've heard people on Twitter suggest that there should be a public boycott of Trago Mills. I think that would be a mistake. You don't have to be an expert in public relations to know that the Chairman and his cronies will play it as an attack by Welsh language extremists, and risking the jobs of the people who work there.

Now I should stress that I don't know the Merthyr area that well. But on that understanding what I would suggest is to ignore Trago Mills and instead on Twitter, Facebook , Instagram etc people should just loudly and constantly support it's rivals instead. Reputation is everything and gradually Trago will find it's custom dwindling as people move to a store that serves them and doesn't judge them.

And if these other stores do greater business then they could employ people who worked in Trago Mills thus the job losses there would be considerably less.

Just a thought.

Until the next time.