Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/644/10520
From The Socialist newspaper, 27 October 2010
On your bus, IDS!
WORK AND Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) wants to blame the "feckless" unemployed for mass unemployment in the south Wales valleys. He claims Merthyr is an example of a place where people had become "static" and didn't know that if they got on the bus they'd be in Cardiff an hour later and could look for work there.
Dave Reid, Cardiff
Maybe IDS should look a bit closer to home when calling on Merthyr's unemployed to "get on the bus" to look for work. Why not ask Tory MP Alun Cairns why he never caught the Cardiff bus when, as a member of the Welsh Assembly, he claimed thousands of pounds for a second home in Cardiff while living 30 miles away near Bridgend, about the same distance as Merthyr from Cardiff?
Or how about members of his cabinet who are London MPs but claimed they needed expenses for a second home in Westminster for parliament's late night sittings? Couldn't they have caught a night bus home?
Leaving aside the £25 a week in bus fares to be taken off the minimum wage available in Cardiff, it just isn't possible for people to find jobs in Cardiff.
According to the PCS union there are nine Cardiff unemployed chasing every job in Cardiff. In Merthyr there are 1,670 unemployed people and 39 job vacancies, all temporary and part-time. In Merthyr and neighbouring Blaenau Gwent there are more unemployed than there are job vacancies in all of Wales! And this is before 35,000 public sector jobs are cut in Wales by Duncan Smith's government.
This "on your bus" remark is reminiscent of Norman Tebbit's "on your bike" in the 1980s, but also of the authorities' attitude in the 1930s Depression when the unemployed were blamed for not travelling to look for work.
Stand by for more lectures to the unemployed and public sector workers while MPs pretend the banking crisis and their own expenses scandal never happened.
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In The Socialist 27 October 2010:
Anti-cuts campaign
20,000 march in Edinburgh against cuts
Wales says: don't break the poor
Northern Ireland: build a new party
Police attack Bristol demonstration
Wave of protests against Con-Dem cuts
Socialist Students
Organise to stop education cuts!
Youth Fight for Jobs and Socialist Students day of action
Youth Fight for Jobs conference - 4 December
Step forward for TUC youth unemployment demo
Socialism 2010
Socialism 2010: Weekend of discussion and debate 6-7 November
Socialist Party feature
Mass action urgent against programme for poverty
Socialist Party news and analysis
Housing cuts will mean more evictions and social cleansing
Axeman Osborne slashes disabled people's benefits
Government bludgeons workers' pensions
Bolton: Police brutality exposed
Socialist Party workplace news
Victory to London firefighters!
BA bosses try to control union
Unite general secretary election: Right wing candidate on another planet
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