All the heavy industry is on Hartlepools side of the river Tees in Durham - Not Middlesbrough's Yorkshire side.

Gavin Ross, Saltburn-by-the-sea, Redcar & Cleveland

I went to school at Hartlepool in the 1950s and I cannot remember a single steel plant or chemical works . Perhaps Mr Scott was thinking of Middlesborough, at that time in a different county even.

Mary Bevan, bages, france

Why unflattering?

Hartlepool is a great town with a magnificent industrial heritage and past, where coalmining just 10 miles up the road met steel making and shipbuilding and provided the power, the ships and the industry to forge our country forward through two world wars.
Hartlepool was the first town bombarded by the Germans in the First world War and some of the first peope killed in England in the 2nd World War were also in Hartlepool.
Such was its importance to the country, the Germans targeted it specifically.
In the 60's when Ridley Scott came from South Shileds to be at Hartlepool College of Art, EVERYWHERE in the country was grim with industrial pollution and industry.
Many in Hartlepool will be PROUD that he was inspired by to create one of the greatest ever visions of the future put on celluloid.
Hartlepool in now a dynamic town pefectly placed in the resurgent north east, with a magnificent marina, a great reputation for restaurants, fantastic beaches and coastline.

Dirk van der Werff, Hartlepool, UK