Lazy Welsh too dense to realise that they could take a bus to work. Hurrah for Iain Duncan Smith, who has shown them the light.

[JenaiMwahHaHaHaaaaah]

Those Welshies - they "didn't know that if they got on a bus an hour's journey they'd be in Cardiff and they could look for the jobs there"

Newsnight

Guardian

Thank goodness the good people of Merthyr have now received such excellent guidance [hhmm]

What a twat.

Gosh, forgot I'd started this thread [hblush]

I completely agree that it is a good idea to cast a wide net when jobhunting.

But it is utterly unreasonable to expect someone to bankrupt themselves in order to travel every day to a low-paid job with few prospects.

If IDS is serious about this, perhaps he might like to look at how outrageously expensive bus travel is in the UK.

Jenai - I often do that - I'll start a thread, or post on a thread, and then it gets lost on my "threads I'm on" and I forget about it

We are relocating now. My children are not adaptable at all, and we have had to think very carefully about moving somewhere with a suitable school. We have made several trips to the area we want to move to, with and without children.

This move will mean moving away from my parents who are not as young as they were. If they need more support in the future, we will have to think again about how we live.

We are very lucky that we can make this move, but we certainly wouldn't be doing it for a hypothetical job at Asda.

meh. I commuted from south wales to cardiff for years, from about the same distance as merthyr, but after having kids the thought of being 90 minute bus ride from their school/nursery didn't appeal, nor did the 12-13 hour day with bus times, so I quit.

Practical for single people, not so much for parents imo.

I commuted 6 miles each way by bus for a few years. It regularly took me 90 minutes each way (taking into account time taken getting to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, sitting in traffic). I would have cycled or walked but the route took in two seriously dramatic hills.

If I'd had to commute to the next city, it would have taken even longer - a bus to the station (allow at least an hour) and a bus to the city (another hour).

In many areas buses are, quite frankly, crap.

On the one hand it seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that there is anyone who hasn't thought of just getting the bus, and of course everyone would be doing it if they hadn't got a very good reason, BUT I knew a social geographer who was doing research into teenagers visiting museums on school trips; she worked with a group who lived in a deprived area in a suburb of Birmingham and was shocked to discover that for many of them, their museum visit it was not just the first time they had been to the city museum, it was the first time they had been into the city centre. (She had imagined - as you would - that they were hopping on the bus to go shopping all the time.)
I think it is difficult for us to imagine how geographically limited the lives of some people who live in poverty are.
The point I'm making here is not only that you can see how difficult it would be for someone who had grown up hardly leaving their own suburb to relocate their whole family to search for a job, but actually it is quite plausible that there are people who need help to get them to do something as simple as looking for work an hour away and there might actually be situations where the work is there an hour away and is financially viable but the people haven't thought to look. I don't believe IDS is completely talking out of his arse here.

I wouldn't imagine teenagers would be on a bus into the city centre all the time. It's an expensive day out.

Bus fares for us are very cheap and the dds could get by with a couple of quid for lunch to hang out in a mcdonalds but it's not much fun if you've no money to spend.

I am Welsh.

My nearest city is probably Cardiff (or maybe Swansea, there's not much in it)

I could then catch the 6.20am bus from the nearest town (I would have to get a taxi for the 7 mile journey into town at that time of the morning though as there are no buses to my village before 8)to Cardiff, arriving in Cardiff at 10.10am.

I could catch a bus home at 6.15pm, getting back to my nearest town at 10.06pm. I would need to get a taxi home.

I dread to think how much it would cost!

Pah, lazy Welsh eh?

Bloody hell DS, where do you live, Brecon? Llandrindod Wells? That's one hell of a bus journey.

Bit different from the short hop from Merthyr to Cardiff though which I think was the example referenced, and to which there are similar examples all over the UK.

Thing is though "an hour" from Merthyr to Cardiff is almost certainly calculated from the bus stop in Merthyt to the centre of Cardiff.

Most people don't have the bus stop outside their door, and most people probably won't end up with work in Cardiff City Centre.

1hr can quickly turn into 1 1/2hrs, 2hrs, or more depending on travel time from your home to the bus stop, and then from where the bus/train arrives in the next town/city to work.

exH's job offer was just 13 miles from home - yet just the travelling part (excluding the waiting around times before and after work) was going to take 3 hours!!

He could have walked it in the same time

LF "left work at 5.30pm home for 7am the next morning!!!! yikes and I thought our local public transport was bad

You're right MaMoTT it is, although there is also a half hourly train that stops at smaller stops along the way too.

Public transport is difficult in too many parts of the UK, and anything more than about 10-15 miles isn't really bike-able unless you're a real cycling enthusiast.

Even in London I have a 10 min walk to bus stop, 20 min bus journey, 15 min tube then 15 min walk to get to where my current place of work is. Most days there are delays so it's over an hour door to door. There are plenty of parts of London I can get to much more quickly, but I have to go where the work is and my current client is somewhere that's a real PITA (in central London terms) to get to.

I lived in Newport and travelled to Cardiff on the train for a couple of years before I learned to drive. It took me ages to get home just because I could never quite make it to the train station on my bike in time to catch the train. I was lucky to get home by 7pm. It was also expensive. However I did it because I liked my job and I was paid fairly well.

not everyone in the Valleys is going to be able to get a job like mine so I totally understand why leaving at 7.30 am and getting home after 7 plus spending shedloads for the journey isn't worthwhile.

I did the exact opposite journey for a year Fanjo. It was a complete pain. On £12k a year it was expensive too. I did eventually get some qualifications that bumped my salary up to £16k, and bought a car - transformed my 1hr train commute to a 15 minute hop up the M4.

Then I moved back to London and the joys of driving to work became a thing of the past .

Did you ever get caught on the M4 in an accident/jam? Sometimes the journey in a car from Cardiff to Newport can take 40 minutes or more! I lived in London for a while too, really don't know how I managed it as I was in retail and spending huge amounts on the tube for a while traveling from Cricklewood to Hampstead. In the end I started to walk to work, still 35 minutes on a good day but much quicker than the tube sometimes.

Oh god yes, once... I had managed to block it out of my memory! Not sure what's worse, being stuck on the M4 needing a wee or being stuck underground.

I couldn't agree with this more, so I'm going to repost it.

''However, this POV that travelling an hour each way for a minimum wage job is 'not worth it' doesn't sit well with me. Surely anything to get off benefits? See the job as a stepping stone to something better eventually? Benefits are there for people who can't help themselves, not those who choose not to because 'it's not worth it'.

If minimum wage job versus staying on benefits is financially disadvantageous then there's a problem with the system that needs to be fixed,but if it's like for like then surely the job wins hands down?''

Thankyou Crazycatlady

Interesting how the conservatives combine this with;

1. getting all the poor out of london (where there is work) through housing allowance cuts

1. all the 'big society' guff, because what they are talking about here would disrupt and destabilise communities.