Requesting the Editors in New Zealand media outlets - newspapers, magazines, etc, to reprint the slanders of yesteryear about the "workshy unemployed" in the light of the mass unemployment in Christchurch, NZ, following Feb 22nd

Dear Editors,

in the light of the recent earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the resulting massive loss of employment by a significant number of the Christchurch workforce, we the undersigned would appreciate your publishing the various articles by various individuals such as Bob Jones, etc, written and published during the eighties and the nineties, when the said individuals alleged that the only reason that someone could be unemployed, is because they were workshy, lazy, unwilling to do an honest day's work.

People have alleged that these articles by these individuals were instrumental in forcing people to become long-term unemployed, and then preventing the long-term unemployed from finding gainful employment, by creating a widespread animus against the unemployed.

We would like to test these assertions against the current reality of the earthquake-enforced unemployment, we would like to see how these individuals and their views face up when the rubber meets the road, or to be more apt, when the earth moves for the whole lot of us. In particular, we would appreciate examining the assertion that we only live in an earthquake-damaged city in order to draw the unemployment benefit, that we only lost our jobs from a series of earthquakes in order to draw the unemployment benefit, etc - which is what the assertion that the unemployed are only unemployed because they are workshy amounts to, once it is boiled down and analyzed.

Thank you.