Letters: A lot of pensioners need the winter fuel payment – but they're missing out

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. 

You could legitimately attack government policy towards universities, or the anti-intellectualism which is a feature of English life (in contrast to Scotland). But just to target Oxford is far too easy; it smacks of the popularism which has done so much damage in the UK and the USA, and everywhere. Slogans do not change anything. I urge you not to descend to using them. 

David Ganz 

Em’s a gem

Emilia Clarke’s work with SameYou and Big Issue Recruit is absolutely incredible for all of us with acquired brain injuries! It’s amazing so much more is being done on the matter, compared to 15 years ago! Fingers crossed for employers’ ears hearing the right stories at the right time. 

@progress.by.reflection

Gull and void 

With regard to John Bird’s column, seagulls – actually herring gulls – first became noticeable inland after the Clean Air Act of 1956, passed in record time after what turned out to be the last very damaging UK-wide smog (there were other more localised ones until the early 1960s), killing thousands of people with less-than robust respiratory systems. 

One of the parts of the act was that local authorities were no longer allowed to burn rubbish, hence the great expansion of landfills and the availability of food waste attracted a whole host of birds including the formidable herring gull. While we still use landfill, the gulls will no doubt be our neighbours. 

Christopher, Bristol 

Anti-ageing 

I regularly buy your magazine every week and I salute all your hard work, so it was disappointing to read the article by James Rose on the concerns with how the older population in the UK will get their needs met and the stigmatising language that this article used. 

Those of us who are part of this demographic are not a crisis or a challenge, so please stop labelling us as such. Ageism is now the highest form of discrimination in the workplace. If there was a baby boom in the Sixties, you do not have to be a high-level mathematician to know that in 60 years’ time you will have a number of older people. 

My age begins with a 6 but I am still working in mental health in the NHS and still pay tax and national insurance. In fact, I received notification a while ago I have paid so much NI my state pension will not increase any further, but I am happy to do my bit so please stop driving a wedge between my generation and younger people. 

When I was a teenager, I found myself living homeless in London for two years. My parents died and living homeless felt like the safer option than the care home I was dumped in. I beat the odds. I have had what I think is a productive life and I do what I can to help others. So please support those of us in the later years of life when our age makes us vulnerable, especially now things like the Assisted Dying Bill are likely to be passed in England in the next couple of years.  

A regular subscriber 

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