How long can successive govts continue to brush this malaise under the carpet?? The employment rate in these areas doesn't bear thinking about...

The figures from the Office for National Statistics breaks down communities into streets or estates with around 1,500 inhabitants. It suggests that in one area of western Rhyl 68% of people were out of work.

Three communities in Swansea – in the Castle, Penderry, Townhill areas of the city – have more than half the population receiving some form of out-of-work benefit. There are other “hotspots” in Caerphilly and Wrexham.

The figures come as a Government adviser suggested high levels of incapacity benefit were costing the UK economy £100bn – the same as the annual running costs for the entire NHS.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Chris Grayling said, “Most people will find these figures completely shocking.

“At a time when large numbers of migrant workers are moving into the area and finding jobs, it’s simply absurd to have places with such a high proportion of people on out-of-work benefit, something really has to change.”

In a 125-page report to Ministers published yesterday, Dame Carol Black, the national director for Health and Work, recommended scrapping doctors’ sick notes and replacing them with an electronic “fit note” explaining what people can do even if they are ill.

The £100bn figure will raise eyebrows in Whitehall, dwarfing as it does the £12bn paid out each year in incapacity benefit.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-...91466-20637441/

Don't forget Glasgow, I am sure I read once that it was the 'sick note' capital of somewhere (could have been UK or Scotland)

Migrant workers can afford to work. The locals are priced out of work.

We need lower living costs. Yes, that means lower house prices.

i think this is partly because the people have simply got used, and can cope with dole life. all their friends are on the dole, so no stigma. all on the same income level, again - no pressure. you can get a girl, get a home and eat without working. no one cares, so not having a job wont put girls off you. tracky bottoms are ok too.

add to that, the lack of enough career jobs, not sandwich making jobs.
add to that the rewards of such a job as regards housing improvement. (ie none)

whats the motivation to stop chilling out, smoking rocky and drinking stella and get up in the morning and go to work.?
there isnt one. theres no reason.

so the beat goes on. and who wouldnt do the same ?

The most recent report I could find (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgo...est/6965954.stm) says that 16% of Glasgow's working-age adults were claiming incapacity benefit in 2005, but that the number was falling.

The Welsh figures are really shocking though, especially when you consider that these are supposed to be the good times. What'll things be like if our long-expected recession finally materialises?

I went home to Mid Wales over the weekend. All the money is being sucked into Cardiff. There is a serious brain drain of the young too (No jokes about the welsh please!). My Uncle noted how many shops and restaurents were now up for sale...is this the canary in the credit coalmine...maybe...

What surprised me, and what seemed to have changed, is the rise in Racsim. I went out on the town with a friend of mine who happens to be black, and the level of abuse he got was shocking...a number of people also spouted off to me about how they hated pakistanis and polish too...When I explained that I could understand them getting jobs ahead of him, on the basis of personality and mental acuity, it became aparent that I had best move on to the next pub. A sign of the times?

Yep, I think Wales will go back to the 1980s in the coming downturn. There is a benefit culture which is epidemic in Wales. Also, you have to realise that 6 in 10 workers in Wales work in the Public Sector which means that 8 in 10 Welsh people are dependent upon the State for their income in some way.

...ahhm gonna smoke soap bar till i die.

The Swindon corridor has had almost zero unemployment for years and historically has had to rely on migrant labour, legal and otherwise, to meet demand. Whilst the migrants can travel from as far as Portugal and Brazil it seems the 140 miles from the Welsh hills is a trek too arduous for those shiftless sheep molesters.

Bugger all to do with costs and more to do with bone idle welfare ridden socialist dross too shiftless to scratch their own arses.

I wonder if you took their benefits away if they'd work or rob?

And, now for something slightly contentious. The little girl who, thank heavens, has just been found oop North. Is it just me or is everyone who lives around her either fat, very unhealthy looking or both.

I looked at it and thought 'wow, I hope they don't broadcast this around the rest of the world, they'll think we've just come out of the caves.'

I grew up on a council estate in West London. Rough at times and in places but we didn't look like that. Pale, pinched, fat and when she was found - the party! A bunch of gormless looking eegits hanging around in their trackies with cans in their hands. Oh boy, how much of our country looks like that? I am very glad I don't live in an area like that. It seems like a half-life to me.

Think her mother has 7 children by 5 fathers. Must be coining it in with the income support.

They are the untermensch. I suppose Golden Clown has them in mind while he is wittering on about eradicating child poverty when in reality he should be focusing upon the wretched dross that fornicates irresponsibly and begets the problem in the first place.

People talk about castration for sex offenders but they should consider it an option for those addicted to benefits and the consequential misery they create for themselves and others like us who have to pay for their indolent self imposed squalor.

This is were the govt needs to focus and imo needs to provide motivation for people to receive benefits. In short if they don't participate in some sort of work orientated activity they don't get their benefits.
If someone is genuinely unable to work then thisshould be assessed and verified not by their own GP but by a dedicated team.
Quite often a negative action produces a positive outcome.

For goodness sake, the solution doesn't require a degree in rocket science.

Cut all benefits for the able bodied. You don't work, you don't eat. You don't eat, you die. Your choice.

As proposed by Alan B'Stard, MP.

These people are called customers by the Benefits Agency - the public sector agents will also be unemployed if they have no customers!

It's the logical outcome when you close down primary and secondary industries and expect the newly redundant to become service based wrokers. It was always doomed to failure. Maggie always despised the so-called dirty industries.

But how many people are there like this? I get the impression it is a lot. Millions? Millions of people leading what looks to me to be awful lives where the highlight is have a can of lager or two.

There has always been an underclass. But in days gone by people tried to get themselves out of it. My mother came here as an immigrant and went into service. My father was the son of a fairly intinerant working class man. But they knew the only way up was through education and they pushed me and my brothers to go to grammar school. We've all moved from working to middle class I guess.

But the education system in this country is now so screwed, kids born into that environment don't have a chance. What about equality of opportunity? Maybe we need a Labour government.

But then again, it's been successive Labour governments and councils that have ruined our education system.

What's to be done?

Ironically, whilst reading this thread a ‘Visit Wales’ popped up in my inbox. The future for Wales apparently revolves around mountain biking.....

I know what you mean. I felt sorry for the girl having to return to that. No wonder she ran away.

Yeah - no one would ever think or robbing anyone to survive - or shooting them, there's no examples of that happening in slums anywhere is there?

Your use of Nazi terminology and penchant for eugenics might make you a target. I'd buy a shotgun and sleep with it under your pillow if I were you. The untermensch are coming!

a mate of mine termed it "Shameless live!"

yeah, but they are not really in poverty. they are FAT.
if poverty mens not having Nike tracksuits, but adsa ones, im all for increasing poverty.

the level of poverty is akin to a working persons rewards circa 1986
its hardly poverty. and i would recommend having to work 1 days community service (painting fences, litter picking) for 1 weeks benefits.

no sign on. you put in one days work and earn your benefit.
dont turn up - get half your dole and paid in vouchers at aldi.

Erm it did seem pretty rough there. Looked like something out of the 70s.

Golden Clown (Gordon Brown) would rather have these on sick benefit as it would make "Sound Economy and Fundamentals and not forgetting Full Employment" look a bit stupid. It does seem strange that we have 1 in 5 of the workforce on Full-Time Sick Leave doesn't it.

Though not to worry we do have Sound Economy and Fundamentals with the ever so slight SOFT LANDING with plenty of cushions to fall back on

I agree with that. NO cash should be given. only vouchers.

If it happened to me, I would survive like that until the shittiest job came available, then move on.

It's ridiculous how these people are living. Up here in Newcastle is absolutely normal to live on the dole for life. Shocking

The same thought crossed my mind too. My mum said the same as well.

Seven children by five different fathers! What kind of society are we encouraging?

LOL Just thought the UK has no subprime!!!

Most of the "locals" here will be council tenants.

Take away the generous handouts (the country may soon be unable to afford them) and then they will have to work, or starve. Or eat each other, which may be no bad thing.

Just been to a viewing where some immgrants used to live. A quick look at the post (huge pile) reveals some self assessment tax returns in the lithuanians names. So they probably didn't pay tax eh?


In deprieved areas (I've lived in an area that was the 26th most deprieved area in England and Wales) there is a massive amount of sick note culture where the junkies know how to play the system, where the drunks live it up on their excessive benefits.

I really believe that you should only get sick benefits if you stick to a program to improve your health and reduce your dependence on benefits.

So yes, smokers would have to try and give up. Boozers would not get the extra money to get pissed on and antabuse would be compulsory and druggies would have to come off drugs or get locked up or put down. They need to make something like antabuse for heroin.
(Did you see the methodone death of a baby recently?)
If you're physically damaged then you should undergo an exercise and physio plan to increase motility.
And if you're mentally ill you need to stick on your agreed course of treatment.

I am Welsh and I have to agree with this to some extent, offensive remarks aside.

I have to speak as I find: In Wales there does, in too many quarters, seem to be a sense despondency, a sense of "there's nothing we can do, boo-hoo-hoo". There does seem to be a lack of leadership, confidence, vigour and enterprise. Most of all there is insularity, a sub-concious phobia of going beyond the Welsh borders. Like many poorer parts of the UK there is a complete ignorance of how other parts of the world like the Asian Tiger economies succeed and enjoy the highest standards of living. Such ignorance is almost a badge of honour; you can face ridicule if you bring the subject up with the most ingrained among them.

Having lived and worked in England and abroad throughout my adult life, I find that in Wales there is an unjustifiable sense of pride especially in past glories and with the exception of a few, a lack of grand vision and ambition for the future.

Perhaps you've noticed adverts for adult education running recently saying "The future is in our hands" or words to that effect. Ironically that was a message being pushed by the government of Singapore a few years ago and look at how successful they've been. I'm sure spectacular things could be achieved by the Welsh if that attitude was fully embraced by all.

Give her 5 years or so and she'll have her first kid, and a council flat of her own.......

It's mostly gristle though.

I'm in my late twenties and still live with my Mum and Dad on a massive council estate. I've lived here all my life and I've only noticed a difference in the past 7 years or so. When I was at school most people were decent and went out to work. Now its the other way round.

I refuse to pay a ridiculous price for a house and it's cheaper to live here than rent privately which is why I never moved away.

I look round me at 7.30am when I leave for work (I'm a teacher) and all the curtains are closed and most people are still in bed. They seem to get up at about 10.30 and send their kids out to school at about the same time.

I get so irritated that I have to get up early, go to work and be stressed trying to teach the offspring of people like these.
I'm not sure why I don't just join them and stay in bed until 10.30 every day. Perhaps I want more from life than a can of stella, a joint and a collection of shellsuits.

They have it great. No stress, no having to be somewhere at a certain time. What a fantastic life!

I could count on the fingers of one hand how many people I know round here who actually work. Me and my Dad being two of them. The main source of income for most round here seems to be the dole and making dodgy copies of DVDs and CDs and doing a bit of cash in hand work (odd jobs, DJing etc).

I just get so wound up that a large chunk of my income is effectively stolen from me and given to these asses.
Perhaps we should cancel all benefits and get the workers to go to a cash machine with a doleite and hand over the cash there and then.

I agree we should only pay these workshy asses with vouchers. The problem is they wouldn't work, they'd just go out and rob people.

Major changes are needed but I'm not sure if we'll ever get them.

EDIT: TYPO.

I had the joy of living in wrexham for 4 years growing up. Mate, what a cr@phole. I have absolutely no surprise to find out that it's an unemployment hotspot. First off, THERE IS NO WORK THERE. I know, I looked for work for 6 months after 6th form. I went to the jobcenter in wrexham every day, and looked at the same 5 or so jobs each day. Occasionally there would be a new job.

Some proper tax payers would argue they are sick of having their wages stolen to pay you to do a non-job teaching the pointless.

Thanks for your constructive comment.

How many paid weeks holiday are teachers getting. I am renting by a comprehensive and, having no kids myself, I was shocked to learn that their school day starts at 9.30 and finishes at 3.00 with 90 minutes lunch! When I was in school it was 9 till 3.45.

Nil. Teachers are paid for 195 days a year. The fact this pay is split into 12 monthly chunks tends to make people think we get paid for the holidays.

Tell me what difference it would make if you didn't teach them ? Maybe a few children will get a better life from your efforts, but looking at their backgrounds I doubt it will be many.

This is the result of easy credit that has pushed up house prices far beyond the boundaries of sanity. The rich at the top are laughing - the ones at the bottom, sink lower and lower.

The streets would be full of feral kids and the crime rate would shoot up. It's probably cheaper to keep them in school than it would be to pay for the mess and police etc.

Most kids I teach are co-operative and do well but there is a hard core of kids once you get lower than average intelligence where you may as well just not bother educating them.

Tell you what, we'll close the schools and see if there is any difference. I'll go and get a different job working in industry or the city. My physics degree will help me with that. I do actually teach something that just might be slightly useful as opposed to media studies and drama.

Not really surprising. When they shut down the industries in these areas very little was done to find alternative employment for the people living there. Either their should have been a policy of stimulating economic activity in those areas to create jobs, or people should been strongly encouraged to move away to areas where there were jobs. Instead what was done was to put everyone on the sick so that they didn't show up on the unemployment figures and then forget about them. Lo and behold we end up with an entrenched culture of welfare dependency in those areas.

The problem is that as long as the private sector economy is stagnant in these areas than there is no easy solution. Taking away benefits would save the taxpayer a lot of money, but without decently-paid private sector employment these areas would just descened into third world levels of crime and deprivation.

.

It was broadcast and unfortunately it looked a bit normal for the kind of things that seem to make the news about the UK which for some unknown reason makes the news. We ll know that the UK is excatly like the Bill anyway.

I was curiuos how much that house that she was found in would be worth ? anyone know.

Good mate of mine out here in OZ is a Taff his father was a very succesful Welsh writer and he had a relatively priveledged upbringing but I got to say he knows how to work the dole. He is a photograher but manged to get a brand new inner city council flat and has been there for 10 years dont know how he manged that. No one else I know has ever lived in a council house here ever never mind in the inner city..

Taffy was a liar taffy was a cheat...

anyway opening bell in 20 mins



not many other places it could be the capital of

I think the powers-that-be would be very determined to keep the non-workers exactly where they are as a matter of long-term policy. Whatever it costs.

If the benefits tap was turned off would they just carry on sitting there in the p1ssing rain, squabbling and drinking themselves banjoed? (Carry-out drink is very, very cheap for a reason ... ).
Or would they shamble off in the direction of some scran and a bit of cash? To the place where all the "wealth" is (because they're always banging on about it). London and the South-East.

I can see it now. Jo'burg-on-Thames, with shanty towns trailing back along the motorways, occupied by squatters forming fiercely rival groups depending on whichever depressed former industrial region they hailed from, since the work available, and the soup kitchens would be hopelessly oversubscribed. Rio-on-the-Wold.
London would have to be rigidly controlled, curfews, "papieren bitte" &c. maybe even walled and gated, as the last thing the govt. needs is masses of unemployed ne'er-do-wells surging through Trafalgar Square and the City, howling for bread and work.
All those attractive commuter villages in the Home Counties? Uninhabitable. Even if the former dole-bludgers refrained from going all Genghis Khan and steaming them one by one, as the mood took them, you'd need armed escorts for the Waitrose lorries. Commuters would have to return home at a sensible time (daylight?) in convoys, and even then roadblocks are impossible to forestall.
And all those farmers and gentry? It's Tony Martin time, chaps. Get an architect to knock up a pele-house for you. And research land-mines.

And another thing ... all these losers have votes. Or are you proposing that the franchise be withdrawn from the feckless? Let's do it for real and go back to the property qualification, eh?
So instead of voting for the govt.-approved reps. in their thankfully remote rainy slums, they'd all be stuffed into a few constituencies dangerously near the capital, and not best pleased with their lot. Who do you reckon they'll be voting for, remembering that their far-away former constituencies are now vacant rotten boroughs?
And the pressure on the formerly docile lower orders of the home counties, wages cut to the lowest level of subsistence whereas formerly they'd been able to charge their wealthy masters a nice premium due to the 'shortage' of labour? Will they carry on voting for the new realist order? Or forced to chuck their lot in with the starving mob?

Yeah! Let's do it!

Jesus Minos, are you just winding absolutezero up?

If you think all teachers have a cushy life, what's stopping you joining them?

I know of a guy who worked in a Welsh steelworks. The day after Maggie became PM in 1979 he was made redundant. He has been 'on the sick' ever since and hero worships Thatcher.

Every so often they call him in for a medical to try and get him back to work and he throws a mental wobbly in the Doctor's room and gets signed off sick for several more years. He rides a bike everywhere, has a tan 365 days a year and wears shorts everywhere also whether it is sunny or freezing cold. Fittest bloke I know.

His next payrise is his pension.

Kind of. It just niggled me a little having a tax gobbler moaning about other tax gobblers. Maybe he was just upset that he has to get up early each day for his share.

I could never be a teacher. I can't stand children.

No, they are lazy sponging chavs. Ironically supported by the tax generated by immigrant workers they complain about so much.

For example; my lazy spongin chav brother in law who hasn't worked in years because he doesn't want to pay any child support for the brood of streetrats he whelped in his teens. This man thinks immigrants are soaking up all the benifits that rightfully belong to him- I kid you not. You are making excuses for him and his lamentably common kind.

If it wasn't for teachers like Absolutezero, I and thousands of others would still be living in the sink estates/towns that you so despise.
If a teacher can help even one of these poor b*astards get out of there and make a life for themselves , then they are worth every penny, imo.

There are 1000's of worthless tax gobblers in the state sector. Please don't lump 99% of the good teachers with them.

My friend, I looked at teaching after my degree- spent some time as a classroom assistant- and I can tell you that teaching in a sink estate school, even with the holidays and the short hours, is about the hardest days work you can do. I've worked in a slaughterhouse, grafted in a kitchen; done all sorts and I'm telling you these people earn their money.

What exactly are you doing on an Internet forum when you should be working? Not a tax gobbler are you?