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12 March 2017
Duffryn or Dyffryn?

I have just spotted a new Twitter profile for Mrs Debbie Harvey, who is the Labour Party candidate for the Dyffryn ward in the May election. Readers may recall my article in November 2016 dealing with Mrs Harvey's bid to join her husband Mike on the Council.

http://www.spanglefish.com/stan/news.asp?intent=viewstory&newsid=85780

Mrs Harvey has been spectacularly quiet both on social media and around the ward itself - so quiet in fact that STaN thought she might have had second thoughts about the scale of the task ahead of her. How wrong was I?

The profile was changed recently and confirms Mrs Harvey's status as the candidate for the Labour Party - or "Welsh labour" as she puts it.

Eagle-eyed readers will be able to spot some familiar faces in the Twitter site's photos, including Councillor Alan Lockyer and Town Councillor Jan Lockyer, christened by STaN as Neath's First Couple because of the amount of wining and dining out the socialite socialist couple write about on social media. The soubriquet seems to have tickled the pair, and indeed their family and friends, who now are wont to make a cheeky reference to it in the silly Twitter games that some adults people play. The nickname has clearly stuck and they never disappoint me in living up to it.

In fact, that very photo you spot there was posted after a night out together for both couples, Debbie tweeting:

"Fab night out with @MikeFromNeath1 & Neath's first couple @jan_lockyer & @alan_lockyer"

Another photo is appropriately an image of a huge meal, something that Neath's First Couple-in-Waiting (that's the Harveys) have to get used to getting down their neck if they are going to snatch the title from the Lockyers in 2017.

Enough frivolity, time to get to the point, and it's this. There is no "Duffryn" ward in Neath Port Talbot. It's spelled "Dyffryn" - at least as far as STaN understands it. I have seen certain placenames in the locality spelled with a "u" on occasion. Some people write "the Duffryn ponds", rightly or wrongly.

Wikipedia says:

Dyffryn Clydach is a community of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. It is coterminous with the Dyffryn electoral ward.

Some will say, stop bloody nit-picking, STaN, but to me it's important you get these things right. More especially if you are seeking to be the Councillor in that area.

So can anyone more familiar with this ward and the historical placenames associated with it pass on their advice? Is Debbie correct and the Dyffryn Clydach Community Council needs to change its title? Or doesn't it matter?

I'll be looking out for any corrections that may be made, though I have to say that Labour Party councillors and politicos are closing or locking their social media faster than most of them can get to a free bar. "They don't like it up 'em!" as Clive Dunn used to say in Dad's Army. I'm loving it!

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