Dear Sir: The best of the letters pages.

This week I have three letters, two from the Guardian letters page (22.07.08) and one from An Phoblacht, an Irish republican weekly.* (17 July 2008) The letters from the Guardian center on the Green Paper on the cuts to Welfare Benefits that the Labour Government announced on Monday of this week.  The first is somewhat unusual for the Guardian for two reasons, it is unsigned, and it is rare for a national newspaper to publish letters without the writers name and address. More importantly it is from a reader who is actually on one of the benefits the Labour Government intends to abolish; and is thus a victim of the Brown/Blair governments attempt to stigmatizes as work shy scroungers, all those who claim sickness benefit, job seekers allowance and incapacity, benefit.

Normally when writing about people who exist on benefits the media will get middle class experts, who often have their own snouts in the Welfare Industries trough, to tell its readers what life is like for claimants, rather that asking benefit claimants themselves. For example the aforementioned green paper proposes withdrawing all benefits from drug addicts if they refuse to agree to go into a ‘treatment program.’ (it will be interesting to see what hoop the medical profession jump through over this to justify passing on their patients with drug problems medical records to the local Job centre) Instead of asking the addicts how this might impact on their lives, the Guardian’s society section did a round robin of the public health drugs mafia, including a member of the House of Lords, a campaign director of a disability charity, the director of a think tank, a solicitor who works for a drugs charity and the Disability Minister in the very government that plans to cut the addicts benefits. Not one of these individuals who felt they had a right to talk about those who exist on a very low income, are earning less than seventy thousand pounds. Still I digress.

The second letter was published in the Guardian on the same day and hits the nail on the head in a single paragraph, majestically.

The third letter was published in An Phoblacht and is critical of a recent visit Martin McGuinness made to Iraq, indeed one of the more disreputable outcomes of the Irish peace process is the willingness of  leading members of SF, to tour the world lecturing those who resist the status quo about signing up to government sponsored peace processes of the type that has failed to bring a satisfactory conclusion to the conflict in Palestine and the north of Ireland. Why they do this is any ones guess, but the letter writer makes his points forcefully and correctly points out the core of the Iraqi conflict is the continued occupation of the country by US and UK forces.

http://www.anphoblacht.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/22/welfare.tax

M.H

I fear the winter and hope for nothing.

Dear Sir

Up until three years ago I was a member of the working class (Benefits clampdown, July 21). I have no qualifications and I raised my family by working hard and earning little. As such I was never able to have either a pension, a mortgage or insurance. Three years ago, within six days of each other, I had a heart attack and my wife had heart failure (totally unconnected). We as a small family were destroyed.

My wife was in intensive care for a month and my daughter took an overdose believing us both dead. What happened to us as a family can happen to any family. We rallied and my son put himself through university by working in a pub and looking after himself - without a single penny from us because we had nothing.

My point is real poverty grows on you and as the things you have become obsolete or break, the poverty deepens. We are now three adults living on £23 a day. Admittedly we have our rent and rates paid. As heart patients we have been instructed to stay warm in the winter as the cold thickens the blood. To this end I contacted my gas and electric supplier in a bid to have the prepayment meters taken out of my home as the tariff was too high and my income was so low. I was told it would cost £200.

I told the supplier that the meters were in place from a former tenant and I had no credit issues with them. They told me it was not their problem. I went to the ombudsman and now I can have the meters taken out if I pay for the energy by direct debit, the rub being that I have to pay in advance, costing me 79% of my income in one month for this to happen. So it can't and they know it.

Every day I shop for the house. I am conscious of the need to eat healthily but I cannot afford to. Every day I walk past the grapes and look at the price of strawberries. We eat greens and pulses, and we eat pork, but cannot afford chicken. We do not drink, smoke, go out nor entertain and life is hard and getting harder, not just for us but for many.

The television is our only window on a life we once led. We sit destroyed by poverty and watch the world go by as if we were dead but have yet to fall over. While watching the TV we see MPs and MEPs who spend more on taxis than we get to live on and they are telling the country they are going to get tough on us and people like us because we live on benefits.

In relative terms we are poor and getting poorer, but those who represent us are completely oblivious to our needs.

I can speak, but have no voice, and those claiming to represent me have failed me. As the gas and electric prices rise for all, they may also become out of reach for many. Now I fear the winter and hope for nothing.

The BBC news now tells me my benefits will be scrapped and I will be tested (I have been tested twice already). I will have to bare all my privacy in the hope of retaining the right to survive the winter. So I ask myself, why can people demand the destruction of the poor? The answer is simple. There are 600-odd vacancies in Westminster every four years. The job, if you can get it, pays a king's ransom and all that is required is that you follow whatever is in vogue. At the moment, acting Dickensian is all the rage. 

Name and address supplied

Dear Sir,

Will "work for benefits" be subject to minimum-wage legislation, and will unemployed people be allowed to join (or set up) a union? 

Dougie Firth

London

McGuinness in Iraq

Dear Sir,

The article concerning Iraq in last week’s issue, How can we help Iraq?
As someone who I have a lot of respect for, I think Martin McGuinness’s trip to that country was ill-timed.

The Americans and British are trying to give the impression that the war in Iraq is sectarian and they perpetrate that view, as they did here in Ireland.  American and British troops have often been caught wearing local dress and carrying explosives, leading most people to believe that these undercover troops have been blowing up Shia and Sunni mosques and killing leading figures from both sides in order to get these groups at each others throats to take the pressure off the occupation troops (as they also did in the North).

While not meaning to tell Martin how to go about his business, he should have addressed the real Iraqi problem – British and American imperialism and their lying, illegal war. In other words, he should have told these foreign forces to withdraw. They shouldn’t be there – period!

PADRAIG Ó FEINNAIN,
Ligoniel,
Belfast.