{"id":3665,"date":"2011-03-08T11:59:57","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T11:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=3665"},"modified":"2011-03-08T13:15:32","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T13:15:32","slug":"message-from-merthyr-how-the-condem-cuts-will-kill-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/message-from-merthyr-how-the-condem-cuts-will-kill-the-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Message from Merthyr &#8211; how the ConDem cuts will kill the community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/message-from-merthyr.jpg\" alt=\"Message from Merthyr - how the ConDem cuts will kill the community\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever been to Merthyr, you&#8217;ll know what a thoroughly depressing place this once proud working town has become, and the government&#8217;s proposed benefit cuts are going to hurt the people even more.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Two sisters, Gemma and Donna Griffiths, have made a short and moving documentary showing how the 2011 benefit cuts will impact on the town and its people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Get on the bus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><object width=\"580\" height=\"356\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/w0Q9o1fUftQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_GB\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>It also highlights the ridiculousness of Iain Duncan Smith&#8217;s idiotic comments suggesting that the people of Merthyr should get on a bus to Cardiff to look for work.<\/p>\n<p>The two sisters leave the Gurnos estate at 5:50am to get in to Cardiff for 8:15 to see what jobs are available.<\/p>\n<p>They discover that most employers aren&#8217;t interested in hiring people who have to commute such large distances and there&#8217;s barely any jobs available anyway, with one agency explaining that 1,900 applicants applied for just three retail store jobs in Cardiff.<\/p>\n<p>Parts of\u00a0Merthyr\u00a0are so deprived that one estate has a lower life expectancy than earthquake-hit Haiti and war-torn Iraq, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/health-news\/2011\/02\/12\/merthyr-tydfil-has-life-expectancy-lower-than-haiti-115875-22916749\/\" target=\"_blank\">with men expected to live just 58.8 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This film is essential, angry viewing. <a href=\"http:\/\/marchforthealternative.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Make sure you come on the anti-cuts TUC march<\/a> on the 26th March and let your rage be heard.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/message-from-merthyr-1.jpg\" alt=\"Message from Merthyr - how the ConDem cuts will kill the community\" \/><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.net\/vbulletin\/threads\/344879-People-of-Merthyr-give-Ian-Duncan-Smith-a-reality-check\" target=\"_blank\">Discuss the film on our boards<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Merthyr: Some background<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve never been to\u00a0Merthyr, you may\u00a0\u00a0not\u00a0appreciate how Thatcher &#8211; and successive government\u00a0policies\u00a0&#8211; condemned what was once a proud, thriving\u00a0working\u00a0class town with a\u00a0long and varied\u00a0industrial heritage into an\u00a0economically disadvantaged backwater with huge levels of long-term\u00a0unemployment.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In Britain today, Merthyr:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ranks 13th worst for economic activity<\/li>\n<li>Ranks 13th worst for\u00a0life expectancy: women live on average 79.1 years, and men 75.5. This is lower than the average for England but better than the Scottish and north of England averages<\/li>\n<li>Has 30% of the population suffering from a limiting long-term illness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A\u00a0Channel 4 programme rated Merthyr Tydfil as the third worst place to live in Britain in 2006 following areas of London.<br \/>\nHowever, in the 2007 edition of the same programme, Merthyr had &#8216;improved&#8217; to fifth worst place to live.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Merthyr_Tydfil\" target=\"_blank\">Source<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever been to Merthyr, you&#8217;ll know what a thoroughly depressing place this once proud working town has become, and the government&#8217;s proposed benefit cuts are going to hurt &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,193,198],"tags":[365,19,1194],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiff","category-places","category-wales-places","tag-anti-cuts","tag-protest","tag-wales"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/message-from-merthyr.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-X7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}