I've lived in South Wales for quite a long time and the impact of Thatcher closing the mines is something that's very hard to understand until you spend time in

I've lived in South Wales for quite a long time and the impact of Thatcher closing the mines is something that's very hard to understand until you spend time in these areas. They're still affected by those changes today, over 30 years later. South Wales does have one thing that may save the valleys towns, however; its railway. Unlike most of the UK, the lines up the valleys weren't destroyed in the Beeching changes in the 50s, and today there's a lot of people earning a living down in Cardiff who commute in from up the valleys. There are plans to update the trains to newer and faster tram-like machines, to make it easier for people to move about, and that will hopefully further encourage a renewal of these areas. The expansion of Cardiff should have an interesting effect on the valleys towns, as people who commute in earn more money and take it back up. And equally, as people get priced out of living in Cardiff, they may start looking at the towns on the outskirts, and over time we may start to see more small businesses cropping up and more work appearing as the towns get new people and money in. Of course they did just royally fuck themselves over by voting for Brexit (the area is regarded as one of the most deprived in Western Europe and receives a lot of EU funding), but that's to be expected when every newspaper and politician has been blaming Europe for their woes for decades. South Wales actually has a very interesting future in higher level manufacturing, if they continue working towards it. Some of the current Raspberry Pi models are made here and there are quite a few more factories cropping up along those lines.