Age, work and the arrest of Mr Weiwei

I was moved to comment on Mr Harper's radio program today, on the developing controversy with regards on the one hand to the requirement for more people with disability to seek employment, and on the other, the apparent unemployability of those attaining the age of fifty. The latter presaging a Panorama program this evening.

My expressed opinion on air being that one could find work and regain or maintain one's dignity, even at the age of fifty or above, if one broadened one's horizons. It did bring to mind the more restricted view of one's employment capabilities whilst in a long term position, one that I too had initially held.

Taking control of one's own destiny, to whatever degree, after losing a job, did broaden horizons for me. Yet it appears that many others are still straight-jacketed by past experience. Digby Marritt Jones, Baron Jones of Birmingham, Kt, expressed a similar sentiment in the Panorama program itself.

Late news on the television reported the arrest in China of the artist Mr Weiwei. The arrest is postulated as due to the Chinese government's apparent concern that more critical voices such as that of Mr Weiwei might form the nucleus for the revolutionary flame in the Middle East jumping to China.

It was a poignant news item as I recalled visiting the Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" exhibit at the Tate Modern gallery with Mr Eber last week. Consisting of one hundred million painted pottery seeds, it depicts his comment on mass consumption, Chinese industry, famine and collective work. At the time, the occasional depression caused by footsteps across the sea of seeds also reminded me of small pockets of individuals being crushed underfoot in a large population.