BRIDGWATER is dying. It's a dump. It's really dangerous here. There's nothing to do and it should be twinned with Gaza - or hell, writes Cllr Brian Smedley, leader of Bridgwater Town Council.

Now, would you like to come to my café? Where is it? Bridgwater, of course.

It does baffle me how people can run the town down and still expect people to want to come here.

What we do need - and that's everybody - is a sense of positivity, an optimistic outlook and maybe instead of constantly knocking, rather to big up the town.

Bridgwater is a great place - a history to be proud of, a location other locations would die for, and opportunities a knocking with industry choosing to visit the place time and time again.

Hinkley, now Gravity, the supply chains around both. 

Bridgwater is a nice place.

Read social media and it's full of hate, despair and quite a lot of untruths.

Someone just has to write 'my uncle's head fell off last night' then cue dozens of others going 'oh no, how is he?', 'take care, was it the immigrants?', 'both my uncle's heads fell off! Well, they got better..'.

Things are not always as bad as you think.

Sometimes they're not even bad but you think they are.

Because someone started a rumour about something, someone's reposted, believed it, or worse, gone to the press.

And you can guarantee the Press will turn an innocent  'My uncle's head's fallen off' rumour into 'machete wielding asylum seekers on night of drug fuelled rampage while police spotted on holiday in Skegness'.

Really there's always something happening in Bridgwater,  and usually it's quite good.

Let's face it, we wouldn't live here if we didn't think so.

Now. It's time to stop the self destruction and start the self promotion. Let's have a go.