[matilda] Re: SWAN posters

[Mr Jase Malgod]

worldwarfree at riseup.net writes:
> The increase in IB has come about since the implemetation of The JSA often
> DWP satff are telling people to claime IB becuase they realise there is no
> work for people and desire for people to have at least a semi decant
> income:

The number of people on IB is actually falling. This is probably due to the 
bulk of people on it previously (industrial workers suffering from physical 
disability for example) moving onto pensions or dying. A greater proportion 
of people on IB now are suffering from mental illness. 

> The attack on IB agreed is part of a wider agenda and while i undesrtand
> the implacations of such attacks we need not to narrow our anger into this
> issue alone but the wider one of attacks on claiments through JSA and the
> attacks on workers at The DWP..

Well there is plenty of anger to go around. Every issue can be seen as part 
of a larger struggle, until we get to the struggle for the whole of humanity 
and our own selves, between greed and reason. But then every action has it's 
place in the wider struggle, like one droplet in a storm, so focus is not 
neccessarily a bad thing (see Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, a right good 
book). 

> All too often we focus upon the single issue forgeting the fact that
> poverty is an issue of class where claiments and workers alike are forced
> into the crapp idea work is good unemployment is bad..

I don't see where class comes into it tho', the glorifying of employment 
(lets get away from work cos the unemployed can work as you say) is 
something that affects both so-called middle and working class (I get the 
impression it is not working which is glorifyed by the upper class). One 
woman who came along to an early SWAN meeting was vitually an outcast from 
her friends and family because she was unemployed, and she was about as 
middle class as they come. 

I find such labels as class prejudicial as any other. Granted people may 
have backgrounds in wealth but if they are on IB they are swiftly heading 
towards poverty, their standing in society changing in terms of money and 
status. What a label such as class does not acknowledge is how people may 
change their wealth and status, they may change class. People have certain 
attitudes and responses to that change, but that will be unique to them 
anyway, no label can cover what is in people's heads cos it's all different. 

The glorifying of work may come from the idea that to do right by the people 
around you, you should not sit on your backside. I think that is right. But 
work has been confused with employment, and the value of work itself has 
changed so work which is for the benefit of everyone can be valued far less 
than work which is for the benefit of the individual. 

It's all a bit f***ed up really:) 

Jason