T orsten Bell writes that the number of people claiming universal credit has risen over the last pandemic year to more than 6 million families (“Not everyone can afford to save more during lockdown”, Comment). In March, when we are told that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, intends to withdraw the extra £20 allotted to the claimant families, Bell’s Resolution Foundation states that 400,000 extra children would be thrown below the poverty line. The suffering of the families on universal credit has been known since the publication of Professor Philip Alston’s UN report on poverty in the UK.
We two who have signed these words insist that the £20 must remain awarded in the March budget, and indeed be raised forthwith; brutality should not be the signature of any government in our poor country.
Vanessa Redgrave and Miriam Margolyes
London W4
Retired people whose income is from occupational pensions they worked for decades ago are indeed better protected from the economic catastrophe that the bungled lockdown regimes have caused for those reliant on current wages. The Keynesian tool kit needed to repair the damage is the same one that was pursued with inadequate nerve by US, UK and EU politicians and central bankers in 2008. Those worst hit, now as then, need steely nerves from our chancellor in his forthcoming budget to continue to borrow against the future to get us through the present.
But this government has been invertebrate when facing down Brexit fetishists, the fiscally orthodox and those who put profit before protection. We urgently need politicians who will show some backbone on behalf of those in most need.
Mary Pimm & Nik Wood
London E9
As a worker in the theatre industry, I can add other examples of post-Brexit difficulties to those encountered by Bennett Silks (“As half its sales are wiped out, silk firm joins exodus to Europe”, News). Due to the new costs and bureaucracy, a major European opera house has instructed its staff to stop buying UK products. No more Yorkshire wools and Scottish tweeds on the main stages of Europe? A first-rate Italian supplier of fine tulles refuses to accept UK orders for the same reasons. Should we perhaps try to make our ballet tutus with linen from Northern Ireland?
Allan Watkins
London SE10
Both Toby Helm (“Starmer facing pressure to end silence on Tory Brexit failures”, News) and Nick Cohen (“In the fairytale land of Brexit, we’re trading with the world. It’s a fantasy”, Comment) raise the issue of Keir Starmer’s reluctance to hold Boris Johnson to account over his Brexit deal. While I share the frustration of many over the lack of serious challenge to the government, it is understandable that only a few weeks after the signing of the deal, despite all the already obvious problems, and with imminent local and mayoral elections, it is not yet prudent for Labour to essentially take a stance that could be understood by Leave voters as: you were wrong/gullible.
Clearly, the government is doing everything in its power to avoid scrutiny of the deal: shutting down the Brexit select committee; refusing to subject the deal to an Office for Budget Responsibility impact assessment; and denying the mounting self-evident serious problems. We need an overarching, politically neutral body to review Brexit. Such a body could be formed by a joint initiative of the CBI and the TUC, with an independent chair commanding wide ranging respect and credibility – someone akin to Mark Carney. Such a body should publish a regular quarterly report, which would facilitate meaningful political and media debate.
David Newens
Great Linford, Milton Keynes
John Naughton issues a call to universities that they have ignored for too long (“Universities need to wise up – or risk being consigned to history”, the New Review). Covid has changed all that. Blended learning has been a game changer for many universities, offering a creative and varied model of high education teaching.
Naughton challenges the sector to consider the role of universities in the digital age. He states he is not hearing many answers. Perhaps he is asking the wrong people. Many of us in the field have been using these approaches for years, winning awards for them, increasing students’ inclusion, reducing awarding gaps among minority ethnic groups, improving student outcomes and the quality of their learning experiences, and helping them into graduate level jobs.
These approaches need considerable investment and a different skills set and mindset. Any post-Covid return to business as usual will risk consigning some to history. But many will continue to thrive so long as they continue to build on the successes of hybrid forms of delivery.
Patrick Callaghan, dean of the School of Applied Sciences and professor of Mental Health Science
London South Bank University
London SE1
John Naughton is looking for other ways of teaching and learning in universities. This is about to happen at Black Mountains College in Wales. Hopefully starting in 2022, the degree will be taught in immersive, intensive, single topic blocks of three to five weeks each, with class sizes capped at 20. It is designed to foster confidence, creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence and the ability to communicate and collaborate in order to imagine – and deliver – far-reaching changes to current systems. The foundation of the BMC degree is learning how to learn in relation to the natural world and human society in order to become an agent of change.
Virginia Brown
Talgarth, Powys
I hate to challenge Brian Blessed’s memories (“This much I know”, Magazine) but, whatever he fired his bow and arrows at in order to defend Sheffield towards the end of the Second World War, they could not have been V2 rockets. V2s had a maximum range of 200 miles (320km) and thus the only UK cities within that range from their Belgian and Dutch launch sites were London, at which most of them were aimed, Ipswich and Norwich.
They had very primitive guidance systems which meant that, at least in the case of Norwich, most failed to hit their targets. I live in a village over 10 miles south of that city and we have the remains of two V2 craters to indicate just how far from their intended objective many of them fell.
Richard Carden
Denton, Harleston, Norfolk