Interesting comment Taylor, I had to move 200 miles from home to get work 40 years ago as did my wife.
My son moved to Wales to get work almost 3 years ago and returned home 2 weeks ago to a new job in Cork .
I went to Wales to help him move all his stuff home and met a few of his very good Welsh friends. Over the course of the evening one of them said that my son was an inspiration to some of his friends because he moved to a different country where he knew nobody to seek work and had integrated well with those he met. He then said that this was the problem with many of the unemployed in the Valleys, they were not willing to move away from home to seek employment even though there was no employment in the Valleys.
Maybe it's a throw back to the mining community as everything was on the doorstep and they needed little else outside the mining area.
I like Wales and really like the areas around the valleys plus I feel a connection to the Valleys due to the Aberfan disaster.
When will the people there wake up to the fact that the work is not coming to them in the short term, they will have to move to get it and maybe it will change in the future with their help.
Riding through the towns and villages around Aberfan and Merthyr Tydfil, it felt like I was back in time to Cork 40 odd years ago when it lost a few major employers in the city.
There are many EU funded projects structural and otherwise in the valleys, which will dry up when Article 50 is triggered and I for one cannot see the powers that will be in London restoring the funded from within to continue the projects despite the comments by the chancellor on the 4th of October.