Small businesses

That's great to hear Annie - the country needs small businesses for employment and regeneration. I live in a mining community and when the pits closed our town and the surrounding areas suffered badly. We have too many large out of town shopping centres springing up but thankfully our own council seem to be fighting back and derelict land is being used to build new housing and the town centre is finally going to be restored to bring new jobs and people into the heart of the town.

Annie
I'll never forget that day in 1992 when we marched through London to Hyde Park in support of the miners.
Short of actually being in the water I've never been so wet.
But the spirit was unbelievable.
My OH was carrying our printing union banner.

That’s brilliant news Annie I am so pleased to hear that there are new jobs being created in a previously deprived area. I do hope that the LA are behind the SME’s which will enable them to survive and grow long term, sadly so many are not .

Just remembered, a great niece works for E . E. They employ about 1,000, it isn’t possible to give a list, there is a successful sports thingy, a holiday complex because it is at the foot of the Brecon Beacons, the news didn’t list them, I only know what is successful there because it’s my birth home and I have family living there.

I remember my anger when IDS did a documentary on the high unemployment in Merthyr, the idiot explain is was just a short train ride from Cardiff and there was work in Cardiff, no mention how of many valleys lead to Cardiff, he needed to look at a map the fool.

Yes it is good news.

Can’t list them all , a mixture , what matters is the rise in employment after decades of very low employment.

Do you know what kind of small businesses they are?
Manufacturing? IT? Services?

It would be interesting to know which kind are doing well.

I was so happy to hear it Petra, the town and surrounding villages have suffered for too long , I remember it as an affluent area then came the closure of the pits and factories .

Just a few years ago one of my cousins who lived just 4 miles from Merthyr asked us to give his grandson a job, he would drive him 24 miles over the mountain and collect him every day, he feared his grandson would go the same way as many youngsters were going. My brother found a company in that valley who took the boy on , thank heaven.

Merthyr has suffered much

That's good news, Annie, coming after all the awful times that area has endured.