Government drawing up plans to help relocate the unemployed

Population is still growing in many of the areas.

We're not talking about a few isolated areas - we're talking about vast swathes of some parts of the country.

We can just abandon those places and move everyone lock stock and barrel to the high tech parts of the country.

There are places in the North have undergone massive regeneration in recent years and are starting to thrive again.

Some of these places we're not talking about small mining villages - we're talking large towns

Riven - No you can't, but equally people can't just stay where there is no work and no prospect of work indefinitely.

And is the population growing or shrinking in those areas?

30 years is not very long. Have they been nice places to live for much of that 30 years? Are they getting better or worse?

Whether is is acceptable or not is beside the point. It is inevitable. In some cases you might be able to regenerate them - and that would certainly be a good thing. But most of them are just simply in the wrong place, and there is nothing you can do about that.

but they don't just die do they - look at all the ex mining communities, and ship building areas - many of those have been "dead" for nearly 30yrs and they're still there.

You can only regenerate if businesses want to go there or if there is already places which can hire on mass there.

If no business wants to go there and no one is hiring then what else can you do whether you wipe or not the town will die

• so you think it's acceptable to wipe off ex mining/manufacturing areas off the wipe rather than attempting to regenerate them?

I don't think there are any palatable options. It IS going to die a slow and painful death. If it were possible that you wouldn't wait for it to happen you would wipe it off the map now. That is probably the best way to minimise suffering.

But it's not a solution that is going to be politically viable or acceptable to those who live there and have built there lives there.

So instead we have no choice but to prolong the agony.

so what do you reckon - should we just let the town of redcar die a slow and paindful death and then just wipe it off the map now the last big employer has gone?

We are the sixth biggest manufacturing country in the world. Manufacturing no longer offers the kind of mass employment it once did. We need to find additional solutions. Keeping communities alive with state support, that could not survive without it is not sustainable in the long term, and doesn't help the people in those communities have fulfilling lives.

"Their communities won't die, because there will still be people living in them."

exactly.

toccatanfudge - yes, exactly those kinds of places.

This proposal might seem like a good idea in theory, but I just don't see how it could work in practice, if the objective is to mend so-called Broken Britain.

There are some people with skills still in demand who can find work in different parts of the country. Employers are willing to pay expenses, which is why there are gangs of engineers from the North East working in parts of Essex and East Anglia, who stay in lodgings during the week and return to their families at weekends.

The problem is that we have ghettos, where few people have skills which anybody wants. We have people with no skills at all, who have never had any experience of work. Who wants to employ them? They will be left in the ghettos when the people with employable skills have moved out. Their communities won't die, because there will still be people living in them. But nobody will care. They will be an underclass, demonised by the Daily Mail, and become the latter day unwashed poor.

The sad fact is that there just aren't enough jobs to go round. What we need is the return of manufacturing, where the unskilled and semi-skilled can earn an honest crust and begin to have respect for their own communities.

It's a stupid proposal, which somehow reminds me of Nulabour social engineering. It seems OK in theory and will cost money, but in the end won't achieve anything.

TheCoalition - you mean like the Welsh mining villages, or parts of the NE of England.........which are still dying a slow painful death years after the work was taken out of the area..........

Back to the thread....

There are communities around the country with no work and no realistic prospect of work, as there is no longer a geographic reason for an employer to go there. We can PAY companies to move there. But that is a short term measure - they will just move again if they get a better offer.

Ultimatly, these communities will die. But it is going to be a slow and painful death. Measures like the one proposed MIGHT get it over with quicker. Or it could be a total clusterfuck. But we need to take a realistic view of the future of these communities.

Prolesworth - Illegal tax avoidance is tax evasion which is illegal already. Someone avoiding tax is just taking up incentives the government has created for certain types of beahaviour. Getting married could be seen as tax avoidance due to the silly £150 quid allowance or whatever it is.

Riven - re 20:46. I feel I should point out that large areas WITHIN the M25 are also NotLondon.

Prolesworth,

Thanks for the link. It confirms what I thought. You do get tax relief for pensions and, as far as I'm aware, that hasn't changed. That's why pensions are taxable when they're paid out...because tax wasn't paid in the first place. The system has been advantageous to higher tax payers, because they receive relief at the higher rate (40%), but if they are only eligible for basic tax when they retire, they only pay 20%. I seem to remember that one of the parties (Libdems?) was talking about stopping this loophole for higher tax payers in its manifesto, but I'm not sure that it was part of the budget.

Are you sure it's gone? I still get tax relief at basic rate on my pension contributions and I thought they were to stay. I thought (or was it just in the manifesto?) that higher rate earners would no longer get relief at 40%, effectively meaning that they used to pay less into their pension funds than the less wealthy.

Prolesworth, tax relief on pensions has gone now. Whereas at one time you could pay your bonus into your pension fund without paying tax on it, you do now.