Big Issue readers speak up about Labour’s changes to winter fuel payments, go to bat for elite universities and praise Emilia Clarke’s charity work.
Winter fuel to the fire
So instead of reinstating the winter fuel payment for the disabled, the new Labour government has just taken it off some pensioners. Like, I get some pensioners who have super-high pensions shouldn’t be getting it, but I feel there are a lot who are going to be missed who need it because they are just out of the threshold.
Also, Labour needs to reintroduce it for we disabled folk because the Tories decided we didn’t need the winter fuel payment, yet many are just as vulnerable, if not more so in winter, and don’t get any help in heating their homes which they already struggle to do. It costs us more in utility bills already. I feel like that’s not going to happen though.
@avani.tasma, Instagram
Oxford united
John Bird’s article charges Oxford with a “shrivelling of intellect”. I went to Oxford in 1970 from a direct grant school, and friends of mine taught history there until they retired two years ago. My niece, who came from a single-parent family, has just graduated, having had the chance to learn Greek and Latin which she wasn’t taught at school, and to get the best degree awarded to students who started Classics with no languages.
Your attack is unfair to most students there – and to a side of Oxford which doesn’t get into the newspapers, but is as important as your own work. Oxford has tried very hard to attract students with very different backgrounds from Johnson and Cameron and Blair, and the absurdly intense tutorial system does expand intellect.