To think wales is a huge problem that no one ever talks about?

[Cocklodger]

Right now Theresa May is cracking down on no win no fee solicitors
Mainly south Wales, in particular the valleys.
Back years ago when the mines were shut down rightfully there was nothing left to replace it. Nothing at all, it killed thousands of jobs, which was to be expected, but in exchange there was no new businesses, no back ups, nothing. And it's only gotten worse since, poverty is high, benefit claimants are quite common
Public transport is awful to say the least and if you can't commute to Cardiff by some means, you're screwed, most can't afford cars and if you're in a public transport black spot then you're severely limited to warehouse operative positions which have over 100 applicants in one to three days. Meanwhile house prices in Cardiff are rising, I think in 40 years we will have a new London.
In the valleys most looks grey, worn out and pretty dead to be honest. Where I live there are a few car dealerships and a train station, which is more like a bus stop with tracks next to it than an actual station and the nearest station with people actually manning the booths is pontypridd (45mins away by train) I spent years working as a volunteer for an agency that helps people with problems (poverty related) such as MH issues, finding work, food bank referrals and the like. I saw it every single day, people wanting to work but seldom getting anywhere.
There are articles and documentaries about it, but I never see them talked bout on here or elsewhere really, aibu to think that Wales is a big problem that no one really talks about?

"Cardiff and a large area surrounding it is amazing. "

Do you know anything about Cardiff apart from the tourist areas? Are you familiar with Splott, Ely, Tremorfa, etc.? Those areas are not horrific, by the way, but they are deprived.

"The solution is , if you want work which is not on the doorstep, to train in something professional so that it open doors and can work almost anywhere. "

Not everybody will be accepted into a profession so that's not a solution really.

"I wanted to attend a course in Aber a few weeks back. Course was 2 hours long. It would have taken me 3 hours each way to attend despite being less than 10 minutes from the M4 on the west side of Cardiff."

3 hours each way is good. Would have taken nearly twice as long by train via Shrewsbury.

"1st class luxury dining trains mainly used by Welsh assembly members"

I call bullshit on that. Do you have any evidence of these 'dining trains'?

"I am a low earner and I would earn only marginally less if I gave up and signed on - plus I'd benefit from free prescriptions and free swimming etc etc."

Heron, we have free prescriptions for all in Wales and free swimming for children.

"And yes there's that poverty of aspiration; my young relative with the grades for university has a clerical job on little more than minimum wage and thinks she's earning great money. It drives me mad; she's a bright kid, she should be a bloody lawyer or something."

She might earn less per hour as a lawyer than in admin and I suppose there's more to quality of life than just money. What matters is whether she finds the job interesting.

"Most people in NE Wales who commute to merseyside do so for professional type jobs. A low paid job would be eaten by travel costs."

Yes, plus you have to change trains in Chester (well at least from the coastal line, not sure about from Wrexham).

"Going to Crewe is easier because there is a through train, but what is there in Crewe these days?"

There's a direct train to Manchester.
(Sorry cross-posted with the mention of having to change in Chester to go to Liverpool)

Dreaming maybe it is both lack of transport and enforced lack of aspiration...and maybe a few other things as well. Areas in severe deprivation often have multiple contributing factors, that's what makes it so difficult to sort out. Out of, for example, 10 or 12 factors, two severely deprived areas might have 8 or 9 factors each, just not necessarily the same ones. So just because transport is ok in one deprived area, doesn't mean lack of transport isn't a real contributing factor somewhere else.

I know what would be done in terms of development to help try to decrease poverty if this was a developing country. And in poor areas of Wales, Scotland, the North of England and also seaside towns the life expectancy etc is often at a developing world levels.

The thing that would basically make a difference would be enabling women, particularly women with children, to set up small businesses. Because when women increase there income, they spend it on their kids- from better food, to decent clothes, to increased educational,opportunities, they spend it on things that build a positive cycle in the community.

There would also be a focus on targeting educational opportunities at girls ( for a similar type of reason).

And there would be efforts to have community development programmes. You know all those child sponsorship charities? The money/benefits don't go to individual children. The money is spent on community development (from well-digging to education) that benefit the whole community. I.e. Improvement in infrastructure. Because if help is targeted at individuals 1) those individuals are resented 2) they often move away to cities etc in search of a better life/escaping the resentment and so the area remains deprived (in effect you just end up stripping communities of their best and brightest that way) 3) the cycle of deprivation just doesn't get broken if all you do is empower some individuals to escape the area 4) if a Community is poor, it does affect the spirations of all those in the community, so providing things that benefit the whole community has a massive effect on what people think is possible for themselves, their neighbours and their children. I think the old fashioned way to describe it is, it gives them hope, and hope breeds both possibilities and actions.

So I would say, a combination of infrastructure improvements that are conducted at a pace that they provide both educational and employment opportunities for local people, plus support for people to set up small business and increased educational/training provision.

Infrastructure improvements could be round transport, or enhancing digital connectivity as a first thought. Improvements in educational opportunities are another obvious way to make infrastructural changes. It could be round things like wind and wave farms if the wind and waves are strong enough to support that. But they need to be done in such a way that's it's not just shipping In skilled people from elsewhere to do the work then shipping them out again.

The educational provision needs to be for knowledge/jobs/skills that will actually benefit the local area, not mean that someone, having had an education, needs to leave to go and work elsewhere I.e. No brain drain. So some emphasis on moving things out of London so there are more and better job prospects in other areas.

There is no point in people leaving to get work, even if they send money back. There are massive problems in some areas of Eastern Europe now, where they are literally no young, fit, economically active people left in some areas. They are loads of ghost towns. Another problem in that type of situation is that the gap between local average pay and the cost of living (specifically round property) grows. People working abroad buy property, or send money home to their families, and the people without those links are priced out of local markets. And that puts terrible pressure on those people who are still in the areas that have few opportunities, but now face higher costs. In some Eastern European countries at the moment, the gap between local minimum wage and real cost of living is bigger than in some Asian countries that are traditionally associated with sweatshop conditions in the (little) employment that is available.

A very thoughtful analysis Moomin. I wish the politicians would appear to give matters the same thought.

Vote for Moomin!

How do you achieve it, Moomin? Successive governments and the EU have poured billions into the sort of improvements you suggest. What will your programme do better?
There is nothing stopping women setting up businesses - the UK is the easiest country in the EU in which to do so. How can government do more than provide universal education and health care?
So far as appropriate education is concerned, what is it? Jobs in renewable energy, as you suggest, are very few as renewable require very little maintenance. We did have a factory making wind turbines in a deprived area - Vesta on the Isle of Wight - but it closed because it was so much cheaper to produce in the developing World. But even if there is a particular niche that Wales could fill, is it government's job to provide industry - specific training and education, or the responsibility of the individual to get a good basic education and apply it (as many Welsh people on this thread have clearly done)?
In reality you are asking for permanent and massive subsidy to allow people to live in a place which hasn't got the means to support them. That might be preferable to towns and villages emptying like they did in Norfolk from the 1790s, in California and Vancouver after the gold ran out, in rural Sicily from the 1960s, in Texas as oil has run out, Detroit in the 1990s, in central Spain since the late 1970s, in Buffalo NY, New Orleans and East Poland now. But what that handful of examples shows is that the norm is for populations to move on. If we want to do it differently, richer parts of the country will have to accept that they are going to have to pay for it.
The ONLY alternative to that - and this is why East Poland survived - is to close the economy. Well this government, assisted by Welsh Brexit votes, is committed to an even more.open economy. Wales will suffer twice: first the withdrawal of EU funding; second even greater competition.

I don't think some of those measures aimed at less developed countries in Africa are appropriate for Wales. As Huppopapa mentions it's already comparatively easy to set up a business here (there are also Welsh Government grants) and we already have universal education though 'universal' healthcare doesn't run to full coverage of eye and dental care. Where I live it's impossible to get an NHS dentist.

I think the best thing to do for someone who wants to change things is either to join a political party - look on their websites what their plan is to improve the Welsh economy and join the one you most agree with - or a community scheme. People can also invest in Credit Unions that benefit the local area.

Your tone is a bit belligerent Huppopapa, you seem to want a fight rather than a genuine discussion that comes up with positive steps...

but in the spirit of creative discussion how about:

To encourage small business development in under represented sectors

• Grameen style bank, where lending is secured by non-traditional means e.g. circles of borrowers acting as co-guarantors at reasonable rates and on more flexible terms. Might require subsidy certainly, although I don't think Grameen did, Yunus started it with the money he had in his pocket. I do understand that Grameen's interest rates there have been criticised, so there could be some room for minor subsidy (certainly cheaper than the massive bailouts we poured in to the banks) or given that the main reason Graeme's interest rates are high are the staffing/outreach levels, there could be some scope for technological advance e.g. Repayment using mobile phone credits rather than a traditional branch/staff network. Whether such cost cutting produces a better result than having trusted people on the ground to provide trust, support and help would have to be evaluated though.

In general, I would also say that grasping that all modern economies need state subsidisation to continue to function in a fashion that is beneficial to even some of the society that both business and government function in would be a mature mental move. You get to chose what and who you subsidise, not whether you subsidise. Western societies have poured huge subsidies into banks in recent years, farmers and landowners often receive massive state subsidy. It's even conceivable, for example, that subsidising small business development as described above would be cheaper than a benefits bill, depending on what term you measure it over. Also consider, for example, that the US spends more on prisons than schools I think, I mention to illustrate how cuts in one area can lead to increased spending in others (and vice versa) and actually, in that context, what the most desirable human outcome is can be the deciding factor. Also, at the moment, given how government spending is organised, it can be difficult to see how impacts of spending in one area benefit others. There are ways to measure outcomes that get out of such "silo" thinking. International development agencies are good at this- they regularly produce impact statistics for founders. So some revision of how government measures spending and outcomes would be needed.

Infrastructure support/improvement

• I think the key to this is integrating educational opportunity with the process of infrastructure improvement, and also suiting the improvements to the locale, rather than imposing top-down 'solutions'. Everyone knows of Lottery or EU funded projects that have gone very largely unused by the local population, because they were something that a far flung committee thought that "should" have for their "betterment" rather than something they actually needed or wanted. So smaller, longer term projects with more grass roots involvement, with longer term engagement. There are good exemplars of this in the charitable trust sector (and some bad it has to be said). I would also,say that a model where projects are not awarded by competitive tender to large multi-national corporations would be a start. All projects awarded to companies from outwits the area would have to include elements, at the very least of on the job training for local people, perhaps in the form of apprenticeships or retraining schemes, so that skills are left in the area. But it would be better if contracts where awarded to partnerships between local organisations and companies with the relevant skills/expertise- sort of Knowledge Transfer and Community Education partnerships, that could also involve local educational institutions or even lead to the creation of educational bodies that integrate into the local organisation/commercial sector even if that meant delivering the project takes longer, or is from some ways of looking at it"more expensive". Although they don't necessarily have to be more expensive. Pooling of budgets across sectors/departments could lead to overall savings, savings that are currently disincentivised by a silo mentality. Also, grassroots organisations can often deliver outcomes on remarkably shoestring budgets, compared to,consultants parachuted in from far flung metropolises.

Improvement of sustainable and appropriate educational opportunities

• I've touched on that in my last point, but as well as tying infrastructure projects into both education and later life training opportunities, how about first auditing what skills are missing from a local area, and then providing educational opportunities that match up? This could mean anything from an increased level of apprenticeships in skilled trades, to training more nurses. It could means courses offered for a short period of time, at a local and temporary site, with preference given to people from the area/and/or from a family in receipt of benefits. Such courses could even be set up e.g. In the 12-18 months prior to a relevant infrastructure project being started.

There could be initiatives such as e.g. funding the set-up of a specialist manufacturer which faces the public sector. Often the tender/purchasing process a lot of public sector/quasi public sector organisations have to go through does lead to informal price fixing in some sectors. A lot of public sector/quasi public sector organisations are tied into purchasing rules that make securing a competitive price tricky. There are many areas of public purchasing that are not efficient- whether it be some NHS supplies or furniture for council offices. So set up firms that can meet those needs, provide a fair deal for the public sector purchaser and the supplier employees. I don't mean massive state owned manufacturing, there are business structures from charities to community interest companies that have structures that allow them to trade, be independent, non-profit making/tied to ploughing profits into a particular community benefit. Then assess whether that provides a good deal for the public sector purchaser in a more holistic way e.g. An analysis of purchase cost, decrease in benefit bill in the area, increase in income tax/NI receipts in the area (also even increased VAT receipts) and use that as evaluation across a range of departments, rather than unit cost per rubber glove or whatever.

So, I am quite happy to engage with you further if you would like a positive and constructive discussion Huppopapa, but it you just want any variant of character assassination, point scoring or bunfight then I'm out I'm afraid.

Subsidising support for small business could also be cheaper than a benefits bill, depending what term you chose to measure over.

Oh and nearly forgot- to encourage female uptake of loans/education opportunities, offer childcare. Cheaper than a sexual discrimination lawsuit.

I do think there would be big changes in lots of regions if childcare help was automatically offered as part of the setting up a business assistance offered in deprived areas.

Aren't plaid pledging to get all children into school within half an hour of birth? (Or something like that.)

Plaid can promise the world - they will never be in power in Wales

True! Although I never thought UKIP would get seats either.

I'm sorry if you thought my tone belligerent: that was certainly not my intention. My passion is rooted as yours is: in wanting workable solutions. I don't look for reasons to criticise an idea, but if it is not viable it does nothing more than waste time whole need goes unmet. The last of your proposals for instance, has been regarded as unlawful by HMG for some years. The French government takes a different view and it remains to be seen whether Brexit makes a difference, but if I were a manufacturer of office furniture in Lincolnshire who had built a business on efficiency, recruiting the best staff and so on and HMG were proposing to grant a subsidised monopoly to a factory in Gwynedd I'd not be best pleased. That said, I agree wholeheartedly about bailing out banks. I honestly don't understand how that is legal and bailing Port Talbot is not.
Turning to Grameen Bank, you will acknowledge, I imagine, that it is a wholly private endeavour with no government subsidy at all (hence the interest rates to cover the substantial administration costs and occasional bad debt). But I fear you may be missing out on the most important element of the Grameen story: that it allows people (principally women) to pursue their own entrepreneurial endeavours. It does not rely on education or infrastructure but on motivation and ambition. (Indeed, a common Grameen project is to buy a mobile phone and let people use it for a fee, thereby creating infrastructure!)
This brings us back to Gwenhwyfar's point which is unpleasant to read but difficult to deny. Poverty does not trap people. Poverty of ambition does. My grandparents saw there was no opportunity for them in the Valleys in 1921 so they moved away and (save for a substabtial setback thanks to Mr. Hitler) the only way was up. My cousins who returned are no less bright than their siblings and cousins who went elsewhere but their return marked an end to ambition that will resound down the generations.
Finally, you will notice the tension between your unanswerable observation that schemes from without aimed at the betterment of societies rarely work well, and the idea that someone would audit skills needs and tailor local adulation for it. Who will audit them if not an agency for that purpose? If the responsibility is to be local, what is stopping local education authorities in consultation with the Welsh Assembly right now?
Then you have the problem that not everyone will want an education just aimed at a tiny part of the World. Moreover, what if the needs change (as they will)? In 1961 my father joined an obscure US business machine company while a friend got a stunningly lucrative and high-prestige job designing blast-furnaces. Twenty years later IBM had proved to have been a better bet than British Steel. Training for now can lead to redundant skills. Better a broad education.
Just a point of information: nursing nowadays is a very skilled profession that requires a degree for entry. Entrants too need to have the drive to get themselves through. Which brings us again to Gwenhwyfar...

"
Plaid can promise the world - they will never be in power in Wales"

Strange thing to say when they have already been in government.

To be fair, I think the educational opportunities are actually better in Wales than England

They get more free preschool early years hours
They still get EMA in the sixth form
And they get free University education

The problem is getting kids to engage with it. There is such poverty of aspiration and sadly sometimes (in my observation) a culture of the ambitious "getting a bit above themselves".

It's not free university education. It's a lot less than England but not free (that's Scotland).

I have to agree that I think it's more poverty of aspirations than a lack of education. I'm only speaking from my own experience of course, and it's different everywhere, but the problem in my school wasn't lack of faith from the teachers. The buildings were old and out of date and we had to walk between two buildings (only 5 mins though) in all weathers to go to classes, and the toilets still had the long lavotory chains, but that's being done out now. But my teachers at least, encouraged us. There were some who were bastards but on the whole we got a good education. The problem wasn't them.

The problem was more that it was seen to be acceptable to leave at 16 and do nothing with your life. That it was funny and acceptable to throw a chair at a teacher because you only got excluded for a few days. That being in set 4 for maths didn't mean you'd get extra help - just that you'd be stuck in a class with the troublemakers who took up all the teachers time.

Attitudes of parents and the wider community towards education wasn't that helpful either. I for example, was encouraged to be good in school and told to just try my best. Not that I agree with putting pressure on children, but I knew my parents wouldn't have minded that badly if I'd have left at 16 with all D's, just as long as I didn't cause the teachers any aggro. They were disappointed in me when I decided to stay on in sixth form, and that's something that was common in my area. When I decided to stay in and revise for my GCSE's, family told my mother that I was 'stuck up' and 'thought I was better than them'. I don't think the quality of the education is to blame, or at least not in my experience. More the attitudes towards education, and the poverty of aspiration. I do know it can be harder for kids round here to achieve - parental pressure, what their friends are doing, how hard it is to stay in school when they see their friends living the 'easy' life on jobseekers etc. They can build superschools, give those super schools new computers and a posh auditorium and proper toilets, but that will be for nothing unless attitudes towards education and learning change. It just isn't valued (on the whole) in this part of the country

madein that's a spot on post. I saw it when I was growing up and I'm seeing it now at my son's school. They've built a shiny new buliding with all the facilities but attitudes are still the same.

I'm in an ex mining English town btw.