A ROW over a Government minister’s remarks that the unemployed should “get on a bus” to find work flared up when a study found there were almost nine times more jobseekers than jobs in the location at the centre of the controversy.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said last week that Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales was an example of a place where people had become “static” and did not know that if they got on the bus they would be in Cardiff an hour later and could look for work there.

“We need to recognise the jobs often don’t come to you. Sometimes you need to go to the jobs,” said the minister, who was criticised by union leaders for being “insulting” to the unemployed.

The vast majority of vacancies in Cardiff were temporary and part-time, mainly unskilled labouring, for just one or three weeks’ duration, said the union.

The most popular vacancy on the day the union carried out its research was a Christmas job in a well-known store working four- hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays for the national minimum wage.

Among the permanent jobs was work in a casino or bars. Neither offered help with journeys home afterwards and the last bus out of Cardiff leaves at 11.06pm, the union pointed out.