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?

I grew up in poverty in Scotland - proper poverty in the 60/early 70s when benefits weren't really a thing. I can remember my parents chopping down trees in the garden (council house so probably illegal) and chopping up furniture in order to get something to put on the fire. We often went cold and hungry but we never realised we were poor. Poverty now is measured as compared with averages. I'm not saying there aren't still people living in abject poverty because there are and something need to be done about it, but, the figures can at times be misleading and not all people technically in poverty are necessarily living hand to mouth. I think lack of opportunity and hope are something that we should be concentrating on.

Has Brixton not been gentrified now? Thought you couldn't buy there without mega bucks?

I don't think anyone's writing every d tree in Wales off. Just pointing out that where poverty etc exist those problems are deep rooted ,longstanding and no one seems ever specifically to mention Wales.

As previous posters have said the same is true of many post industrial areas around the UK.

Trees? streets

My parents moved here (separately) as young adults from the midlands and the south east of England. They're still here 40+ years later. They consider themselves Welsh now.

There are opportunities. But there are also lots and lots of young people that have been raised by 2 generations of adults on incapacity benefit.

I see local adverts every day for apprentices. The universities are thriving. We still have manufacturing (Aston Martin are coming here (or they were before Brexit) but need high quality, above minimum wage jobs in the service and financial sectors to drag GDP upwards and make us feel more prosperous.

(This used to be my bread and butter work, some years ago.)

Polly, you are talking shite - you could have free prescriptions in England, you just choose to spend the money on something else.

I personally don't agree with them anyway, I'd be happy to pay for the very few our family ever gets.

Wales got free prescriptions and free hospital parking at the expense of longer waiting lists and longer wait times for an ambulance.

I know which I'd rather have

It's not always that easy though Mycrane many people can't afford to leave and they can't all afford cars.

I totally disagree about prioritising cars! I live in an ex mining community. We have 1 train per hour into Cardiff, and 2 buses per hour into Newport. People here would love to be able to afford to drive everywhere, but many simply can't afford it.

At my children's school almost 50% of pupils qualify for free school meals, which means they have a household income of less than £16k. I've seen kids going to school with cardboard in their shoes because parents can't afford new ones. At harvest festival our school collects for the local food bank, which gets used regularly.

When your living hand to mouth driving just isn't a priority. Then you get families stuck in the poverty trap reliant on benefits.

I don't dare take my kids to the park nearest my house because of the used needles and broken alcohol bottles.

It is grim and something needs to be done, I'm just not sure what.

We need education and jobs, both of which are in short supply. My sons school has enough problems just getting the kids into school each day, attendance levels are awful. It's no wonder most of the kids achieve below national average results. Which means they end up in dead end factory jobs which rapidly seem to be disappearing. Several of the factories near us have closed in the last few years, and there are very few unskilled jobs available within travelling distance anymore.

Mycrane

Yes, Cardiff is amazing although it has its problem areas like everywhere else (I was born and grew up in Cardiff). However, don't underestimate the importance of the "old mining valleys" to South Wales culture. Coal, iron and steel and heavy industry has shaped South Wales from Newport through to Swansea (Copperopolis) and up to Merthyr. You used to see the aerial ropeway to the slag spoil heap from my grandparents house. I used to know I was getting closer to home on the train back from Uni because of the smell of the coking ovens at Llanwern Steel Works.
To lose all of that has hit these communities hard. They no longer have the jobs and purpose / place in the world that they did. The certainties about the what you would do and where you would work went. They were not replaced with anything, the mines were closed and a vacuum left. The Valleys need to find a new sense of purpose.
The old mining valleys are not a "very small part" of Wales, they are a big chunk of its history.

Apart from OP have any of you people slagging off Wales ever actually been here?

Comprehension is not a strong point of yours then? Loads of people commenting either live in Wales or have lived there in the past. The majority of the other posters appear to have been there on holiday. With the exception of the zombie/gormless comment I don't think anyone has been "slagging Wales off"

I'm glad that the area where you live isn't seriously affected by poverty and unemployment. That doesn't alter the fact that there are plenty of other areas that are impacted by these issues.

To encourage business to set up Polly you need a healthy, well educated workforce, with infrastructure to match and allow business to grow.

Yes, we do need tax payers monies to do these initial things.

WTF has prescriptions got to do with it ?

South Wales has improved, but its hard to spread sucess. I think that initatives like building second Severn bridge has helped. The patent and and national statistics office were moved to Newport.

A lot of the decision making and power has been devolved to the welsh assembly. Its up to the welsh to sort out their schools, nhs. transport etc.
Why not have faith in the Welsh themselves to create their own destiny?
I have never lived in Wales, but I visited south wales as teen quite a bit as my father lived there. My impression of the welsh that I met were that they are very bit as intelligent/ daft as English people. The welsh are perfectly capable of making their own political decisions including Brexit.

BTW the cheapest 1 bed flat I can find in Brixton is £235K so hardly comparable.

I lived in Wales for just under a year (Neath) I was one of 2 people on my road that had a job (out of over 100 houses!!) There were jobs around to be had however the mentality of where I was was very work shy. And everyone I knew was on some type of drug/had 'mh issues' or was signed off on the sick. Something really does need to be done to change this, I just don't know how it can be achieved.

Central Government did move jobs to S Wales e.g. Companies House and HMRC to Cardiff and DVLA to Swansea. There used to be coach loads of people coming down from the Valleys everyday to work in the HMRC offices (family member worked there).

I think benefits has trapped unemployed people into staying where they are and being unable to make the jump to finding employment elsewhere.

Yes there are extremely poor people but they are getting enough to get by, and this is stopping (a proportion of) them from improving their situation. Then their children don't see the point because there are no jobs, waste their free educational opportunities, and end up in the same position.

Most people (including myself) who have trained in a particular field and come from a rural area need to move to find work. I wouldn't get far by insisting I had to stay near mummy and daddy and the state owed me a job there. People move around all the time for work - people even come all the way from Poland as unskilled workers and manage to make it work.

The question is why is it so difficult for these people? It's got to be down to the risk of moving to find work being higher than the risk of staying in the ex-mining town doing nothing and being miserable. And that has to be down to being trapped by benefits. If there were no benefits people would move or starve. I am definitely not advocating that - but there has to be some kind of way of making it more attractive for people to get themselves out of these situations. I'm sure plenty of them do manage it.

After all it's not as if mining was a great career - dangerous and major health problems resulting for many miners.

So we should shut up about the mass unemployment, structural issues, businesses shutting down left right and centre, high levels of alcoholism and MH issues and general poverty because we get free prescriptions? Rightyo then

But there isn't a cats hope in hell's chance of having serious investment under the current government

Neither is there under a Labour government. I live in a Northern English town that has suffered similarly to what the OP has described. Yes, the mines were shut under Thatcher but that was decades ago. Since then, we've had 13 years of a Labour Government and the council has never been out of Labour's control.

And in all that time, they've managed to decimate the town centre and spend millions of pounds on 'consultations' about regeneration without actually doing anything of worth about it. Meanwhile the council leader is earning more than the Prime Minister, whilst blaming all of its ills on the 'evil Tories'.

And I agree with the poster above me. There are jobs to be had, even where I am, in a deprived area, but a lot of people don't want them. Why that is, is a subject for another thread though.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I agree with the OP.

The problems in Wales just don't seem to have a solution.

Many of the Assembly Members are as thick as mince; there's a lot of political corruption at every level, and the Tory government won't suddenly have a conversion on the road to Damascus and do Wales any favours post-Brexit.

Mental health problems, alcoholism, drugs, obesity are massive issues.

There are some pockets of good practice - the new Wellbeing of Future Generations legislation is an attempt to put things right for example- but the problems seem too deep to sort out.

I agree it's not being talked about - the London-based media isn't interested, and the media in Wales is a shadow of what it used to be (plus most people I see reading newspapers have the Daily Mail, the Mirror or the Sun. Radio 2 is much more popular than a failing BBC Radio Wales, a station which covers what's going on here, but is piecemeal and doesn't really reflect the problems as a whole.

As an example, how many of you outside Wales heard about the horrific stabbing of two young shop workers on Cardiff's main shopping street this week? If it had happened in London, there would have been massive rolling coverage.

Dh and I talk about the problems all the time - and if we hadn't tutored our daughters privately, they would have drowned in a sea of educational under-ambition in the state sector (they went to a state school, but we paid a fortune for tutors to make sure they were pushed to get good grades.)

At least our national football squad did OK in the Euros.

I fail to see what the no win, no fee solicitors has to do with anything?

There are some excellent Universities in Wales and the Tuition fee structure is much better but otherwise I agree that rural Wales, like other parts of the UK is depressing.

There is more to Wales than the Valleys.

Come over to the North West and you will understand the concept of Lack Of Investment in Infrastructure. Basically without a car you are fucked - your access to education, health care, leisure and work is dangerously reduced or gone. The cost of caring for the aging population (many of them incomers) is crushing local councils and health boards.

Also some areas of Cardiff and the Gower can compete with almost anywhere in the UK in terms of naiceness and affluence. The big accountancy firms in Cardiff poach young talent from Bristol and the South West of England.

Yes I know the South East has a large population. Yes I know the Valleys region still qualifies for EU objective 1 funding even after countries like Bulgaria and Romania were considered in the figures. Yes I know the poverty and deprivation in places like the Gurnos in Merthyr. But it's only one part of Wales. Its problems are not unique on the UK. And Welsh identity is very different in the South West or North West.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out after Brexit.

I wish I knew what the solution was, or who would give us that solution, I'm afraid its looking unlikely tbh. we've had left, right and partially/possibly totally central politics. None of them have helped

I agree with may of the point made by O! I would feel happier with achange of title. Wales is not a problem, Wales is experiencing problems.

Pedantic I know but there you go.

I live in Wales, west wales a distance from the valleys but agree underinvestment in roads, and rail links and the loss of industry has done no favours. Where I live things are tough but the scenery and sense of community more than make up for it.

Savanna - if prospects for your children are so poor why don't you consider moving away?

I did hear about the two retail workers, yes. It got quite a bit of coverage on the BBC which is why I always rely on the BBC for my main news.

To be fair, a similar incident in London would immediately set everyone's terrorism antennae off so it's not just the idea that London matters more that causes this over-reporting - but that such incidents in London may have another angle to them. The stabbing in Bloomsbury Square recently went that way I recall.

Gah. Russell Square in Bloomsbury, I meant.