Welfare Reform

ifstar

dktreesea wrote: »

Yes, within Cardiff. Try finding a job within 5 miles of Merthyr. There's a factory about to close down up there. Over 200 will be out of work. Some of them will never work again. Getting from Merthyr to Cardiff isn't like travelling across, say, the central belt of Scotland, with two train lines to choose from, firing off trains every ten minutes at rush hour in both directions, stopping at any number of points in between, many of them stations within 10 to 20 minutes walk of major industrial parks.

I couldn't believe the state of the public transport network in Scotland compared to the poor excuse for the same in Wales when we first came up here. You can't even get from Merthyr to Cardiff in time for an 8.30 am start during the week. As for relocating to Cardiff, pigs might fly as well. Who has the money for that?!

Only reason I picked Cardiff was Growurown mentioned it, never been and don't even know where Merthyr is. That same search is coming up with just over 100 jobs within 5 miles though - again of varying degrees of experience.

exarmydreamer

Iain Duncan Smith tells Merthyr jobless to 'get on bus'

Iain Duncan Smith tells Newsnight the unemployed should 'get on the bus' to find workContinue reading the main story
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Conservative minister Iain Duncan Smith has told people in the south Wales town of Merthyr Tydfil they have become static and should seek work in Cardiff.

The work and pensions secretary suggested unemployed people "get on a bus" to find work.

The former Tory leader claimed people were unaware they could take a one-hour bus journey to Cardiff for work.

Labour politicians and unions said it echoed 1980s Tory minister Lord Tebbit's "get on your bike" comments.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said his remarks amounted to a "disgusting insult" to the unemployed.

Huw Lewis, Labour AM for Merthyr, said: "The parallels with the equally disgraceful 'on yer bike' comments from Norman Tebbit in the 1980s are there for all to see.

"That generation of Conservatives thought unemployment was the fault of the unemployed and with every action and utterance from this Government, it is clear that they are the true inheritors of that tradition."

Continue reading the main story
View of commuters travelling from Cardiff to Merthyr


• AMY JONES, 27, a podiatrist's assistant from Merthyr, said: "There's cost implications with travelling for work because of the cost of running a car and paying for trains and buses. If there's lower paid jobs in Cardiff that you have to spend a third of your wages going back and forth then I can see how you might decide it's not worth it.

"I live in Merthyr but I work at different clinics across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan so I travel to work by car. I tried to find administrative work locally but the jobs I found were lower paid. I went for a job in Cardiff because it was working for the NHS so I thought it would be more secure and it offered a decent wage. Plus, I was looking for a job with the opportunity to progress and my current job does that."

• ERNIE WOOLLARD, 70, from Merthyr, said: "I agree with the minister. If you're sat on your backside in Merthyr and there's no jobs on offer, then you should travel to find work.

"I've travelled to Cardiff, Ebbw Vale and even Andover in Hampshire for work. My job was very specific so I had to travel for work.

"That was in the 60s, 70s and 80s and I travelled by car. Public transport is better now so people should travel for work.

• ANNE EDWARDS, 60, a social services worker from Merthyr, said: "There are better jobs in Cardiff but there aren't a lot of jobs anywhere at the moment so I don't think it's as simple as saying just get on a bus to work if the jobs simply aren't there."

• CAROL PAYNE, 63, a retail assistant from Merthyr, said: "My son and daughter have both moved away to find work. My son is in Lincoln and my daughter is in Cardiff for their jobs.

"The thing is you don't want it to be a situation where young people have to move away to find work because of the effects that has on the town."

Commuters getting the bus from Cardiff back to Merthyr on Friday gave the minister's comments a mixed response.

Mr Duncan Smith made reference to a recent Sky documentary, A Town Like Merthyr, which examined a "dependency culture" in the town, concluding it had "lost the will to work".

He said that even as Britain recovered from the recession there were nearly half a million jobs advertised in job centres each week.

In recent research commissioned by BBC Wales, Merthyr was shown to be one of Wales' most vulnerable areas to cuts in public spending.

Out of 22 local authorities, it came 21st, with only Blaenau Gwent featured as less resilient.

He told BBC Two's Newsnight that people who were out of work should make "reasonable efforts" to find employment, including being willing to travel: "The truth is there are jobs. They may not be absolutely in the town you are living in. They may be in a neighbouring town."

He said Merthyr was an example of a place where people had become "static" and "didn't know if they got on the bus an hour's journey they'd be in Cardiff and they could look for the job there".

He went on: "We need to recognise the jobs often don't come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs."

Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said Mr Duncan Smith had been making the case for flexible labour markets, of which the PM "is in favour".

"He was making a very fair point, which most people recognise, about how it's important to have flexible labour markets and that people are encouraged to be active in looking for work," the spokesman said.

The PCS union accused the minister of being a Tebbit clone.

"Undeserving poor"
He said: "Duncan Smith has been trying to tread the road to redemption in the nation's eyes, reinventing himself as a caring Conservative.

"Well, it didn't take long for the mask to slip and for him to reveal himself as a Tebbit clone with this disgusting insult that is part of the coalition's attempt to cast vulnerable members of our society as the new deserving and undeserving poor.


Road links have improved between Merthyr and the capital of Wales in recent years
"Instead of abusing the unemployed his government should be creating jobs and opportunities to help people find work and to help our economy to grow.

"It's particularly shameful that he picked on south Wales - a region laid to waste by previous Tory governments and where his administration is now proposing to throw 250 more people out of work with the closure of Newport passport office."

Nick Smith, Labour MP for neighbouring Blaenau Gwent said the comments were "high-handed and arrogant".

He said: "They fail to recognise the good work that has been done here in Blaenau Gwent where we have pulled ourselves up by our boot-straps since the Tories last cut the economy and industry of Wales.

"The last Labour government invested in a railway between Ebbw Vale and Cardiff but in future we need to invest jobs locally to boost the economy of Blaenau Gwent and surrounding areas."

Some of those catching the bus from Cardiff to Merthyr agreed people should travel to work if necessary, but others said it was not always as simple as that.

More on This Story
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Duncan Smith: 'Get on the bus to find work' 22 OCTOBER 2010, NEWSNIGHT
Minister denies £4bn welfare cut 15 SEPTEMBER 2010, POLITICS
Spending review Wales: How resilient is your area? 12 OCTOBER 2010, WALES
Related Internet links

DWP PCS
Unite

From: BBC NEWS Nov 10

exarmydreamer

Iain Duncan Smith
By Andrew James on Nov 20, 10 04:56 PM

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Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith came to South Wales last Thursday. About a month ago, he suggested that unemployed people in Merthyr Tydfil should get on a bus and find jobs in Cardiff... What the HELL is he on about ??



I reckon, there are loads of people piling onto buses going down the A470 to work, there are people working in and around Merthyr, but the majority of unemployed are unemployed for a reason... there are no jobs and no industry, the tories, his party, took it all away.



Iain Duncan Smith has never been to Merthyr Tydfil, he saw it on Sky. His party and their Lib Dem poodles want to cut benefits to force people to take non-existent jobs. Here in Cardiff, there are eight times more people claiming benifits than there are jobs, so the situation is not great for Cardiffians.
In fact, the situation is not great anywhere. Next thing they'll be telling us we've never had it so good. Oops, they just did, Lord Young has resigned.


From: WalesOnline.co uk datd 20 Nov 10.

exarmydreamer

Why Merthyr jobseekers can't just get on the bus
Mon, 10/25/2010 - 19:32 — kate
What’s causing the current unemployment problems? According to Iain Duncan Smith, it’s a failure to look beyond your home town for work. He gives the example of Merthyr Tydfil, whose inhabitants “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 job there”.

Sunny Hundal sums up IDS’s argument with the unions and subsequent backtracking, while the PCS union gives figures: in brief, there are 15,000 people in Cardiff chasing just 1,700 job vacancies, so the issue isn’t jobseekers’ refusal to travel.

But I’m more interested in IDS’s other assumption: the idea that getting a bus from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff is unproblematic.

The PCS points out that the last bus from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil leaves at 11:06pm, which rules out bar work. But I have other issues with that breezy assurance that it’s a simple hour’s bus journey from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a jobseeker, living in Merthyr, who watched the Newsnight programme. You’re excited to hear this very important man tell tales of a magical town called Cardiff, just one hour away, where the streets are paved with gold and you’ll get a job easily.

You decide that you must reach this magical place right away. Let’s assume you’re a jobseeker with good computer skills, a computer and a working internet connection. So your first step is to look up directions from Merthyr to Cardiff on Google Maps, then select the “By public transit” option.

Google Maps tells you that it’s 1hr 11mins from central Merthyr Tydfil to central Cardiff and gives you a link to Traveline for route information. Traveline gives you helpful timetable information but won’t let you buy a ticket and won’t give you ticket prices. (I tried ringing them and got as far as “Could you tell me the price of a return ticket from -” before the nice lady cut me off.)

So you go back to Google Maps and spot that although they’re linking to Traveline for the info, the service is actually run by National Express. It’s the 509 coach from Swansea to London. So it’s not actually a bus at all; it’s a coach. Which means you can’t just get on one. You have to book in advance.

But, unlike many other jobseekers, you have computer + internet + skills. So you work out that you have to do a websearch for the National Express website, then use the site to book a ticket on the coach. You’re smart enough to work out that the site doesn’t understand “cardiff” as a destination and you choose CARDIFF (Coach Station) from the dropdown.

There’s a coach leaving Merthyr at 7:20am, which will get you into central Cardiff for 8:20am. That’s great for a 9am start somewhere near the centre. And it’s nice and cheap, too; around £2.60 for an economy day return. Of course, if you miss it, there will be a two-hour wait for the next coach. And because coaches aren’t buses, missing your chosen coach means losing the money you’ve already paid and risking the chance that you won’t be able to get on the next one at all.

But that’s OK. You’ll be awake all night thinking about the magical city, so there’s no way you’ll sleep through the alarm.

So you book. (This is possible for you because you have either a credit card or a debit card.) You then have to choose how you would prefer to receive your ticket.

You can have it sent to your email address as an e-ticket, but you must be able to print it off yourself. Sadly, although you are very privileged compared to many other jobseekers, you don’t have a printer.
Or there’s the “m-ticket” option. This lets you receive your ticket as a text message sent to your mobile for 50p extra.
Finally, there’s the “pick up from collection point” option. But Merthyr Tydfil isn’t listed as one of the possible collection points.
So you go for the “m-ticket” option and hope it actually works. It bumps the fare up to £3.10. (The National Express website tries to add an extra £1 for travel insurance, which would take your total up to £4.10, but you’re observant enough to untick the box.)

Then you realise that if you get a job and choose to commute by coach, you will have to go through this booking rigmarole every time you have a day’s work, because the National Express site doesn’t give you the option to purchase multiple tickets in the same transaction.

Anybody who’s done shift work like waitressing will know that you don’t always get much notice about your shifts. Typically, the rota for one week will be posted up in your workplace the previous week. Fine, unless you’re getting to work on a coach that has to be pre-booked. There’s always the risk that other people will book up the seats on the Swansea-London route before you get the chance. (If Bonnie Tyler plays Wembley, you know you’re in trouble.)

There is another option, of course: you could commute by train. As Slugger O’Toole points out,


Merthyr to Cardiff is an hour on the train, with 13 intermediate stops. The Tories are on the verge of cancelling the electrification of the Great Western Railway. That would be the precursor to the electrification of the Valleys network – where the benefits of rapid acceleration and decelerating would really effect [sic] journey times. I reckon electrification could knock a quarter of an hour off the Merthyr Cardiff journey.

An Anytime Day Return is £6.30. Minimum wage has just gone up to £5.93/hour for workers aged over 21, so you’ll spend at least an hour’s wages on the train fare. But the trains are more frequent than the coaches and you can buy your ticket with cash on the day, so it’s the more convenient option.

I realise I’ve gone into a lot of detail here. But I wanted to go step-by-step through the process that a Merthyr-based jobseeker would have to go through if they found work in Cardiff. And I’ve made some assumptions along the way. For things to work out as easily as I’ve described, this hypothetical jobseeker would have to have:

A computer
A working internet connection
Money to pay return fares for the four weeks before their first pay packet: £3.10 or £6.30 x 20 is £62 or £126.
Good computer/web skills
A credit or debit card
No mobility problems
Without those advantages – advantages not available to all jobseekers – arranging daily travel into Cardiff would be much, much harder.

But even with all those advantages, my hypothetical jobseeker would still be limited to central Cardiff, to workplaces within walking distance of the coach or train station. A job in another part of Cardiff would add another leg to the journey, pushing the total journey time towards the two-hour mark and adding to the cost. So the number of vacancies available at the end of an hour’s journey is even less than the 1,700 quoted by the PCS.

Iain Duncan Smith isn’t pretending to have actually been to Merthyr Tydfil. He admits to basing his statement on “a very good [television] programme” he watched “the other day”. But he is using an imaginary bus service to support his argument about the causes of unemployment - and then has the nerve to describe the unions as "out of touch with reality".

Other people have called him out on the availability of jobs. My task here has been to call him out on the availability of public transport to get to those jobs, and – I hope – demonstrate the massive weight of unexamined privilege behind his words.

I can well relate to living in Wales and the problems with transport through the valleys, however I now live near Cardiff. Had to cut and paste these as the links you need to pay for.

dktreesea

Aside from the difficulties of getting from Merthyr to Cardiff, even if you were able to book a coach seat there and back every day, at a preferential rate (I certainly wouldn't fancy the cost of the train everyday if for a minimum wage job), Cardiff employers, understandably, are going to hire Cardiff workers over those who live elsewhere. Can you afford the cost of going into Cardiff for interviews, knowing there will also be Cardiff unemployed chasing evbery vacancy, not to mention those already in work and looking to move to a better/different job? How many interviews a week will £56 a week, for a young person, stretch to?

Places like Poundland, Argos, Superdrug and the supermarkets could be relied on to take young people at the minimum wage before, but now they have cut back and take workfare people instead. What employer is going to go to the expense of paying minimum wage when they have as many people as they need supplied via the government for free?

dktreesea

Witrh the bedroom tax, what we will hopefully see is a lot more people advertising/willing to exchange. So people with one bedroom places and a baby might be able to swap with a couple whose family have flown the nest.

Growurown

dktreesea wrote: »

Witrh the bedroom tax, what we will hopefully see is a lot more people advertising/willing to exchange. So people with one bedroom places and a baby might be able to swap with a couple whose family have flown the nest.

This would be the ideal solution, but the shortage of one bedroomed properties means that not everyone will be able to downsize.

It means the family get appropriate sized accommodation but this won't save the government any money. The cost of renting a one bed flat as opposed to a three bed house is very small less than £10 per week. The local housing allowance for a single person in Monmouthshire is £91.15 a week and all the three bedroomed houses (apart from the brand new ones) advertised on the local housing association's website were less than this amount.

http://www.monmouthshirehomesearch.co.uk/choice/PDFFiles/PublicFreesheet.pdf

This means a single person could be renting a 3 bed house from the housing association for less than it would cost them to rent a one bedroomed property privately. If they all moved out of social housing into private accommodation it would actually cost the council and the tax payer more in housing benefit.

Let's say our fictional single tenant rents their 3 bed house for £86 pw. The decrease in HB will be approx £22 pw. Total HB paid £64 pw nearly £30 a week less than they would pay if the claimant rented privately.

Surveys run by the housing associations suggest that most tenants do not want to move and do not want to take in lodgers. When asked how they would finance the extra payments most said they would have to cut back on essentials such as food and heating. Call me cynical if you want but I think the government knew this when they made these changes and this isn't about fairness to the taxpayer and people who don't live in social housing, this is just another money saving exercise which punishes everyone on benefits and not just the lazy and work shy ones.

[Deleted User]

dktreesea wrote: »

Witrh the bedroom tax, what we will hopefully see is a lot more people advertising/willing to exchange. So people with one bedroom places and a baby might be able to swap with a couple whose family have flown the nest.

It is not that 'simple' unfortunately and it is peoples lives and individual varying circumstances etc which are not taken into account...

These welfare reforms seem like a simple magic wand to save the country money but there are going to be SO many complications and these were not fully thought out

There will be many people and families suffering because of the reforms and especially from STRESS as 'money worries' do indeed get you down

Approx 50% of those living in council accommodation in some of the poorer areas are in rent arrears already , the average amount owed being £900 so you are not allowed to actually move if you are in rent arrears so these people will be trapped , not being able to pay the extra in bedroom tax plus the arrears owed so they will just get further into debt with no way out & a possible eviction looming! :(

Talk about making an already bad situation worse and these reforms are definitely not for the betterment of the poor whilst those in power are getting huge bonuses and not giving up anything whilst those on the bottom rung of the ladder are struggling to survive! x

Thing is another government won't reinstate things like crisis loans & community care grants or 'put things back like they were' they will just continue with the damage which is already done so I don't feel they will provide a way out of the mess this country is in either

I think people will feel forced to do illegal things to survive!!

dktreesea

From what I can see, the government wants the social housing to go to low paid essential services workers, people like hospital porters/cleaners, firemen, policemen, nurses, nursery school teachers.

Bedroom tax is just a way to force people who have already brought up their children into more appropriately sized accommodation so they can free up the housing stock for essential services workers.

The next step will be raising social rents across the board. Say a person isn't working or is retired. They are in a three bedroom council house and choose to pay the bedroom tax rent. How does the government force this person out of that house? By raising the rent of the house closer to market/private sector rents. Not all the way because they want essential services personnel to have access to affordable housing. But enough of the way to be able to force the person currently living there out.

This is idealogical. Cameron has publicly said over the years that working people should have access to better housing than non working people, and in particular to social housing so they can get preferential rates for rent. Maybe he doesn't put it quite so crudely, but phrases like

" Local authorities granted to the freedom to allocate stock in the way they see fit, including granting priority to working households"

and

"Service personnel receive high priority for social housing, and will not lose their right to qualify for local housing despite moving from base to base during their careers"

There's plenty of social housing being built in Edinburgh because developers usually have to reserve 25% or so of the flats being built for social tenants as a condition of getting planning permission. They are rented out by housing associations. Mostly to low income working people, with preference given to people working in essential services. They don't go to non working people.

When a housing association becomes the managing agent of social housing, of a non working person dies or moves out, the house/flat is re-let to a working family.

Cameron has also said he wants to stop "automatic housing benefit for under 25s". Since "housing benefit" is for social housing; private lets being funded via the LHA (all housing benefit to me, but we do have different terms for the two subsidies), this sounds like an attack on the non working poor, who engineer situations where their child becomes homeless just so that child can get their own council flat/house.

You could be in an £86 a week house, which takes up half your income because your housing benefit is only £70 a week. If private rents for an equivalent house are £150 a week, what happens when the social housing rent goes up to £120 a week, and there is bedroom tax on top of that?

Rent arrears is going to be another tool in their arsenal to force people to move. Once arrears get to a certain point, they could use that to force the person out, into hostel accommodation if necessary, i.e. no suitable sized properties available.

Likewise the benefits cap, which only applies to families who are not working. Working families in receipt of the working tax credit are exempt from this cap. So if you work you can keep renting your £1000 a week mansion at the taxpayer's expense, but if you are not working, get lost.

I know a lot of people will support the idea of workers getting access to affordable housing ahead of non workers, but surely social housing, and benefits in general, is meant to fund those who can't provide for themselves, not those who can.

seven-day-weekend

dktreesea wrote: »

From what I can see, the government wants the social housing to go to low paid essential services workers, people like hospital porters/cleaners, firemen, policemen, nurses, nursery school teachers.

Bedroom tax is just a way to force people who have already brought up their children into more appropriately sized accommodation so they can free up the housing stock for essential services workers.

The next step will be raising social rents across the board. Say a person isn't working or is retired. They are in a three bedroom council house and choose to pay the bedroom tax rent. How does the government force this person out of that house? By raising the rent of the house closer to market/private sector rents. Not all the way because they want essential services personnel to have access to affordable housing. But enough of the way to be able to force the person currently living there out.

This is idealogical. Cameron has publicly said over the years that working people should have access to better housing than non working people, and in particular to social housing so they can get preferential rates for rent. Maybe he doesn't put it quite so crudely, but phrases like

" Local authorities granted to the freedom to allocate stock in the way they see fit, including granting priority to working households"

and

"Service personnel receive high priority for social housing, and will not lose their right to qualify for local housing despite moving from base to base during their careers"

There's plenty of social housing being built in Edinburgh because developers usually have to reserve 25% or so of the flats being built for social tenants as a condition of getting planning permission. They are rented out by housing associations. Mostly to low income working people, with preference given to people working in essential services. They don't go to non working people.

When a housing association becomes the managing agent of social housing, of a non working person dies or moves out, the house/flat is re-let to a working family.

Cameron has also said he wants to stop "automatic housing benefit for under 25s". Since "housing benefit" is for social housing; private lets being funded via the LHA (all housing benefit to me, but we do have different terms for the two subsidies), this sounds like an attack on the non working poor, who engineer situations where their child becomes homeless just so that child can get their own council flat/house.

You could be in an £86 a week house, which takes up half your income because your housing benefit is only £70 a week. If private rents for an equivalent house are £150 a week, what happens when the social housing rent goes up to £120 a week, and there is bedroom tax on top of that?

Rent arrears is going to be another tool in their arsenal to force people to move. Once arrears get to a certain point, they could use that to force the person out, into hostel accommodation if necessary, i.e. no suitable sized properties available.

Likewise the benefits cap, which only applies to families who are not working. Working families in receipt of the working tax credit are exempt from this cap. So if you work you can keep renting your £1000 a week mansion at the taxpayer's expense, but if you are not working, get lost.

I know a lot of people will support the idea of workers getting access to affordable housing ahead of non workers, but surely social housing, and benefits in general, is meant to fund those who can't provide for themselves, not those who can

.

When Social Housing was first introduced, it was so that working people could have access to affordable and secure rented housing. (Obviously those unable to work through sickness or disability would be eligible for it too).