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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think Ian Duncan Smith is talking through his arse

72 replies

hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 15:33

and should spend a little bit of time getting to know what he is criticising?

If you live in Merthyr town centre, it's a fifty minute journey by public transport to Cardiff City Centre - ie: two hours per day commute.

If you live on the outskirts you can add a further hour per day.

The unemployment rate in Cardiff is 8%

Levels of skills in Merthyr are well below the national average.

Train / bus fare is about £6.00 per day.

Childcare costs are around £60 per day (for one child)

There are very few jobs in the valleys - and those that are available are short term and minimum wage.

The transport infrastructure is truly crap - buses and trains are not by any stretch of the imagination adequate or timely.

25 years ago, the tories took a whole load of redundant steel/coal workers and put them on incapacity benefit, with no support or onus to get off it, to make the unemployment figures look lower. This has led to third generation unemployment and ill health due to both poverty and poverty of aspiration.

There is no industry left in the valleys.

OP posts:
msrisotto · 22/10/2010 16:18

It just makes sense to travel for work. My commute is an hour and 15 mins each way without traffic but you hope to move up ladders, gain skills etc that get you paid more making it less expensive and hope that one day a job will materialise closer to home or if it is permanent, move closer.

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:19

oh grow up bubble. I take it you have not ever had much to do with some of the very disaffected young people in the valleys who have grown up in terrible poverty,with non-motivated parents, who the education system does not fit, and who have been told they are crap their entire lives and often who's educational needs have been far from met.

OP posts:
pompadourprincess · 22/10/2010 16:19

This whole week has been so depressing what with all the cuts , stupid cow bag Jill whats are face spouting crap and now a return to the 70's nonsense. I'm off to raid the fridge for a toffee apple

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:20

beenbeta in that case, when the tories closed down the industries, they should have evacuated the towns too. Oh wait, that would have meant giving a shit.

OP posts:
UnquietDad · 22/10/2010 16:20

There is some financial help for travel to interviews

Doesn't cover everyone, but those criteria are pretty broad.

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:22

Yup - travel to interviews. So you get min wage job, you have to commute four hours have to pay £6 plus a day, you have to find childcare etc....

OP posts:
bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:23

"oh grow up bubble. I take it you have not ever had much to do with some of the very disaffected young people in the valleys who have grown up in terrible poverty,with non-motivated parents, who the education system does not fit, and who have been told they are crap their entire lives and often who's educational needs have been far from met"

that's exactly the sort of family I come from and I've bettered myself through hard work and I didn't go to university either.

And I am a grown up thanks. I support myself fully financially which makes me an adult.

UnquietDad · 22/10/2010 16:24

What's the alternative though? The alternative is not sitting at home and a job falling into your lap. The alternative is not working. And a job is not just about the (initial) pay - it;s about being in a regular routine, about being in the system, earning enough to pay taxes and acquiring skills to move on.

Every successful/ well-paid person I know - qualified or not - has, at some point, done a shit, poorly-paid job for a while.

lucky1979 · 22/10/2010 16:25

I don't think an hour each way is a bad commute, is that really considered undoable? I used to commute an hour and a half each way across London every day (and that was when the tubes were behaving themselves har-de-har) and once you got used to it it really didn't seem that onerous.

bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:26

"Every successful/ well-paid person I know - qualified or not - has, at some point, done a shit, poorly-paid job for a while"

that's the truest remark I've ever seen on mumsnet.

Rhinestone · 22/10/2010 16:26

Yes HT, working does indeed involve getting there, paying for your mode of transport and arranging childcare. Hmm

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:27

bubble I'm glad you have been fortunate, others aren't so fortunate. Doesn't make them lazy as you seem to think.

I didn't have a good educational background either, nor did I go to University, and I have also 'bettered' myself and got a very good job, well paid, fairly stable and secure (I hope) but that is because I am lucky and had it in me, many people don't have the advantages, role models or luck we had.

OP posts:
pompadourprincess · 22/10/2010 16:27

I don't think its the time as Riven said I think its the cost of travel compared to wages and whether is actually covers going to work.
Where I live its £6 return to go into town I live in a village . The Town is only a 25 min car journey at most.
I can imagaine it getting very expensive if you have an hr plus commute

bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:28

I had no advantages or role models. Seriously.

And as for luck, well, you make your own luck.

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:31

Yes, Rhinestone but travel and childcare are not affordable for the very poorest paid, on top of the rest of the costs of living - minimum wage is less than £12k!

bubble I agree with your agreement on that quote - that describes me too - but it's about being able to afford that.

I started my working life in Cardiff, on a short commute for £6k per year. I barely survived, but I did. had I had further to travel and childcare costs, it would have been impossible.

I agree with a lot of what people are saying - work is not just about the money (I work in the field - with unemployed people, supporting them).

I just know for a fact that it is no way as simple as IDS seems to think.

~An hour is not a long commute - two hours is!

OP posts:
bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:32

People on low pay get topped up with tax credits though don't they? And childcare discounts?

MmeBlueberry · 22/10/2010 16:34

On yer bike!

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:35

Well I know several people for whom even with the child tax credit top ups it doesn't actually work when all costs are considered.

Perhaps we need some real intervention, and real help for people that really makes a difference.

Where exactly are all these jobs that people are supposed to be able to get (with low levels of qualifications and skills?)

OP posts:
bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:38

"Where exactly are all these jobs that people are supposed to be able to get (with low levels of qualifications and skills"

oh your talking about these sorts of jobs. Well, they don't exist anymore do they, they have all been outsourced abroad.

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:40

That's what I'm talking about Bubble - bring industry back here is the answer! (wow, did we just agree? ;) )

OP posts:
bubbleOseven · 22/10/2010 16:42

LOL finally we did agree on something Grin - however, i don't think industrys are gonna come back to the valleys because those days are gone forever.

And people can harp back to what Thatcher did 25 years ago as much as they like but we don't live in the past we live now and we have to work with what we have now.

Original poster
hairytriangle · 22/10/2010 16:47

I see what you are saying, but the cause of this is what happened 25 years ago.

Funny how there is open cast coal mining going on in Merthyr right now when the coal was supposed to have run out.

There is plenty of other industry that could be brought in to the valleys (other than the traditional industries)

We blame the poor for their poverty - you have clearly escaped that trap - but what you have done is not possible for everyone in extremely difficult circumstances.

OP posts:
msrisotto · 22/10/2010 17:29

I come from the midlands and never had trouble finding minimum wage work e.g. call centres, envelope stuffing, admin etc Maybe it is about where you live....

BeenBeta · 22/10/2010 18:09

There is coal everywhere. Its just not economic to send men underground to get it anymore. It costs £2 /tonne to move coal to the UK on a ship all the way from very low cost open cast mines in Australia. The underground coal mining days are long gone for Wales.

Industry cannot be brought into the valleys because Wales is physically on the periphery with poor road and rail interconectivity and no doubt broadband is poor too.

Industry goes were it is advantageous to go. People have to move to the jobs.

Fiddledee · 22/10/2010 18:10

Industry doesn't get brought anywhere - it sets up where it wants with resources including labour that allows it to make the most profits for its shareholders. Industries are not charities or vehicles to employ unemployable unskilled labour for political or social purposes.

I think moving to where the food/money/work is not exactly new for human kind...