to think Ian Duncan Smith is talking through his arse

[hairytriangle]

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.

Well I'm from a Yorkshire ex-mining area and yes, I'm afraid that there is a certain amount of people who have no interest in finding work.

Leeds, a thriving hub, is a forty five minute bus ride away, but for large numbers they would no more do it than walk to the moon.

Also, when the pits closed, many local doctors were very helpful in siging the men off sick.

I know they meant well, but for many of those men, they ended in an awful trap of poverty and dependence that has passed down to their children.

My Dad took a succession of crap jobs, before getting a job on the post. His mates thought he was the twat for working when he could get signed, but he said working kept him going.

'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 other points you raise may be pertinent but this doesn't seem a too bad. Most people who work in London probably have a longer journey.

BeenBeta - we do have broadband in Wales which is perfectly fine.

bubble - I know exactly what you mean. The men here can't be bothered to work and the women work so many hours in different jobs which all pay rubbish.

Re the OP - I find it amusing that IDR comes out with this crap a couple of days after his colleagues decided to make public transport more expensive and lessen coverage from already poor levels in many areas (like mine): www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=92727
Not very joined up thinking is it?

I think this is an example of how something was said, not what was said.

The sentiment is perfectly reasonable as many people who have an hour+ commute to work have agreed, but it's the preaching tone and lack of understanding of the lives of people who live in situations where there is a culture of unemployment.

I think Merthyr is maybe a place where childcare would be less of an issue for many as it strikes me as a place where families live close together and have the types of support networks many places (cities) don't.

I think commuting for an hour a day is fine when you're going across London to a job that pays a decent salary.

I think it would be a bit crap to travel an hour to a minimum wage job.

Lots and lots of people travel an hour or more for all sorts of jobs.

What's the alternative? To spend the rest of your life on the dole, just so you don't 'waste' and bit of time travelling?

I mean, come on. A lifetime without work must be soul destroying.

I agree with hairytriangle

When you're on the breadline, the cost of traveling to another town to get a minimum wage job is completely prohibitive. Especially once you've factored in how hard the low income families, particularly lone parent families, have been hit by the CSR announcements.

The message is that it's all about lazy layabouts sponging off the state.

Did you know that JSA makes up just 2% of what the government spends on benefits?

Anyway, where are all these jobs that people are meant to be getting buses to? Unemployment is sky high and it's set to rise even higher as job losses in public and private sector cut in.

IDS can tell me that the problem is all these lazy folk who can't be bothered to get a bus to a job until he's blue in the face and I'll still think he's talking shit.

has someone been on to tell you how sensible white, rich, male entitlement is yet?

i'm sure they have!

Oh for heaven's sake.

When I was younger I spent about 4 years with a 90 minute commute each way. It wasn't ideal but perfectly feasible.

This obscene sense of entitlement, thinking that the world owes them everything, is one of the biggest obstacles to those on long-term out of work benefits getting jobs.

Iain Duncan Smith wasn't in any way condescending, if you actually look at the interview. I reckon that he will do more for the poor than Labour ever managed.

Ramblingrosa - I think encouraging people into work is about much more than saving money, as I accept the cost vis a vis payment of benefit is smallfry.

However, I think it's much more than that.

Being dependant upon the state is horrendous. They call the shots. They can pull the rug out from under you at any time.
What sort of life is that?

And it's insidious. It passes down generations. Children need to see their parents working, so that it becomes a normal part of life.

I've seen areas in Yorkshire transformed from proud mining communities to pockets of desperation, where folk can't be arsed to do anything much. Unepmployement and dependence upon the state is a hard task master.

"Did you know that JSA makes up just 2% of what the government spends on benefits?"

Its still almost 2.9 billion a year, its not chicken feed. Its more than the whole NHS budget for A&E, or maternity, its more than the whole prison system, Its over £1billion more than the surestart budget, its half of the mental health budget, Its half of the entire police force. You can't run the country by saying , fuck it, its only a few billion. People claiming JSA are likely to also be claiming HB (12.6% of the benefits budget) and council tax benefit (3% of the budget) and income support (6.4% of the budget).

Crucially, people who don't work don't pay tax which reduces the total budget for everyone.

I am glad that I live in a country with a safety net, but its not a hammock and an hour commute is not a reason in itself to not work.

To be honest, I'm not mithered about the cost.
It's the sheer waste of lives I can't abide. And the transfer from one generation to the next is heartbreaking.

Where are these jobs, folks? Where are they that pay enough for an ordinary, British person to live on, or do you just not care enough for your own countrymen, you think that little of them?

They are in Cardiff, yeah?

I thought I came from a place with very little compassion, it's a lot of why I left.

But here, I see, the apple didn't fall from the tree.

How sickening. How very disgusting.

I hope my kids leave skidmarks on this place before becoming slaves to white, rich, male entitlement, they've really cornered the market on that sense.

What are you talking about, expat? Not wishing to sound rude.

Because it sounds as though you're saying that it's OK for non British people to do low paid jobs, but I don't think that is what you mean....

I am sorry I cant see why people cant commute, when I lived and worked in London
I commuted between Clapham and Hayes in Middlesex, I dont drive so it was public transport.

It was 1 bus then two tubes, an overground train then another bus took me 1 3/4 to 2 hours I hated it but did it for 3 years, I used to leave home at 6.30 am and get home around 7.30pm.

Now I live on IW, but cant get a job so I have just applied for 3 jobs on the mainland, 2 in Portsmouth and 1 in Havant.

If thats what I have to do to get a job then thats what I will do.

'Crucially, people who don't work don't pay tax which reduces the total budget for everyone.'

Well, people of working age not in paid employment don't pay income or council tax. Still eligible to pay every other tax though.

'With the exception of Council Tax and Northern Ireland rates, all direct taxes are progressive; that is they take a larger proportion of income from those households with higher gross incomes. In 2008/09, the top fifth of households paid 24 per cent of their gross income in direct tax while the bottom fifth paid 11 per cent.

Indirect taxes are regressive, taking a higher proportion of income from households with smaller incomes. Since direct and indirect taxes have opposite effects on the level of inequality, the tax system as a whole has a much smaller effect on inequality than cash benefits.'

There's a lot of whining on here about the damage the Tories did 25 years ago.

Well - Labour were in power for 13 years and had plenty of opportunity to fix any damage but clearly chose not to.

In fact, Labour's own report showed the gap between rich and poor widened during the 13 years of their government (The Hills Report, published Jan 2010).

Labour also created the FSA which abjectly failed to do its job and regulate the banking industry properly, contributing by its own negligence to the financial crisis. Rather than fining companies for selling payment protection, they should have been paying far more attention to balance sheets.

Gordon Brown as Chancellor borrowed far too much money and as PM spent even more. Prudence, my arse - the interest alone on the UK debt is increasing by £120 million pounds a day.

This is clearly not sustainable - I don't agree with all the cuts; the banks should be contributing more, and the way to stimulate the economy is not to print money but cut taxes so that people have more money in their pocket, so that they spend more, so that businesses have to employ more people to cope with demand etc etc.

'Well - Labour were in power for 13 years and had plenty of opportunity to fix any damage but clearly chose not to.'

So true! Yes there was a lot for them to fix but not regulating banking and doing nothing to alleviate the cost of housing is despicable. All the same really - neoliberal economics. Now we have neoliberal shock doctrine.

I have not read OP.

However, its a safe assumption yanbu.

I saw a documentary about Merthyr tydfil, now nicknamed by locals Merthyr fiddlesville because of the many people fiddling benefits.

I was shocked by the state of the place, and the complete lack of hope in the people living there.

It was twenty five years ago since the Tories broke the unions and shut down their industries. In all that time they have been left to rot, I think it is disgusting.

People say that towns spring up around industry, which is true, but we could take industry to Wales.

The Burberry factory was taken to Wales and people relied on it for their livelihood, it was a massive money making business.

Burberrry shut the factory and moved to China to take advantage of slave labour.

Money should be invested in these places they are so run down and no wonder the people in them don't have the get up and go to get on their bike.