Back to Perthcelyn
From reading , so far, on it seems pretty clear that you think you know the Warners and their type only too well.
Maybe you do. I'm not sure I did get them when I first met them nearly a decade ago and I'm still not sure I get them now. But these are good people: I get that.
Yes, they should smoke less, drink less Red Bull or the cheaper substitutes, drink far less cherry brandy on a Friday night, watch less tv, eat fewer chips and crisps. They don't want to and they're not going to. Neither are they going to insist their grandchildren, Logan, Seren and their long list of cousins work hard in school and dismiss complaints that the teachers have it in for them. Perhaps they should but they don't want to and they're not going to. Dad Glen shouldn't have a fag in his mouth when he's taking his own blood pressure but he has. The children should mean it when they say they'd take on any job cleaning toilets if it meant a better life for newly born and unborn Warner babies. They probably don't.
But they are kind to each other, welcoming, funny, defiant and absolutely untouched by the millions the Assembly Government has spent on trying to lift their family and families like them all over Wales out of poverty and deprivation. The Communities First initiative has worked elsewhere. Communities took to it and made it work for them. In Perthcelyn they just didn't. The Warners' lives tell you as much.
Experts tend not to be easily moved by what they see, so when they are it must be worth wondering why.
Standing on the bitterly cold mountainside above the estate where they live, I asked the health economist what's the one thing she would do to make the lives of the next Warner generation better. She hesitated. Pulled a face as if so to say, can I really say it, do I have to say it? Then put it very simply: that she would take them away from here, bring them up in an area where life expectancy is higher, health scores generally better, half the number of people on incapacity benefit, twice as many likely to get to university.
"Let's all move to Mountain Ash" declared Glen "we'll live longer!" But the Warners are going nowhere.
You may know people like them only too well but that doesn't make the uphill struggle facing Logan and the wide-eyed Seren any easier to accept.
Some more thoughts on the Warner family - with thanks to Glen, Ann and the children for opening doors and lives so willingly all over again - .
I'm Betsan Powys, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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