I have lost more than my winter fuel payment, I have lost my party. I have voted Labour for 60 years, but these aren’t my people. Whatever Rachel Reeves may achieve, she will always be known for this, her “Thatcher the milk snatcher” moment (“This ‘iron chancellor’ faces an early challenge to her authority over winter fuel payments”, Comment).
My housing benefit has gone down, my rates have gone up, as have my fuel bills. I have become a taxpayer again on my tiny private pension, due to tax threshold changes. I have lost my free TV licence. Ours is the generation who send Christmas cards, give to charities, support high street shops. Don’t be surprised when this spending goes down.
If there had been any hint of this proposed action in the election manifesto, not a pensioner in this country would have voted for it. We will remember this at the next election, if we haven’t all died from hypothermia in the meantime.
Ann Barrington
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
Andrew Rawnsley discusses the impact on the authority of Keir Starmer and Reeves in the face of backbench MPs discontented by the cut to the winter fuel payment.
He might have drawn a parallel to an episode in the early years of Tony Blair’s government. In late 1997, it chose to go ahead with a cut to benefits proposed by John Major’s government and abolished an extra payment to single parents, resulting in an income reduction of £6 a week. According to Rawnsley’s account of New Labour’s decision-making process in his book, Servants of the People, “this had turned into a virility test”.
Incidentally, when this came before the Commons, 47 Labour MPs voted against the measure, and one junior minister and four parliamentary aides resigned. None lost the whip.
Gavin Brown
Linlithgow, West Lothian
Macpherson and cancer
The message has to get through that wellness quacks do serious damage, and now Elle Macpherson takes a more prominent place on an ignominious list of people likely doing real harm to cancer patients (“If only other cancer patients could wish it all away, just like heroic Elle Macpherson”, Comment).
Of course, Macpherson can’t be held responsible for the actions of others, but anyone associated with Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former doctor who did untold harm to great numbers of adults and children, can’t be trusted for medical advice, which she was never qualified to give in the first place.
Stan Shatenstein, editor and publisher
Smoking & Tobacco Abstracts & News
Montreal, Canada
NHS reforms not acted on
The Darzi report made severe criticisms of my reforms (“Tory health reforms left UK open to Covid calamity, says top doctor’s report”, News). Apart from the fact that NHS England, which I created, used its autonomy to work around the clinical leadership and outcomes focus of the reforms, one question is, if the reforms were so damaging to the NHS in England, why then has the NHS in Wales performed worse than its English comparator? The report avoids discussing the impact on the NHS of the collapse of social care. I set up the Dilnot report. My coalition colleagues and subsequent governments failed to implement it. Labour has failed to say it will do so, despite often supporting it in opposition. My reforms, resting on choice, competition and reward, stood a chance of incentivising change. NHS managers saw them off; my successors should not have let them. I fail to see how Labour will secure the productivity gains it needs, least of all by demotivating NHS staff by telling them to “reform or die”.
Lord Lansley
House of Lords
Animal suffering
Thank you, Martha Gill, for pointing out how non-human animals are more intelligent, more social and more complex than we believed (“When dogs recall toys, and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us?” Comment). She also points out how we discriminate against species with whom we empathise less because we do not normally keep them as pets.
Some of the horrors of animal farming result from this prejudice. The law, which makes it illegal to keep birds in enclosures where they cannot fully stretch their wings, does not apply to poultry. Similarly, we imprison pregnant sows in farrowing crates so small that they cannot turn around, and yet we would be horrified if dogs, who have a similar intelligence to pigs, were treated in the same way. This appalling cruelty needs to end.
Iain Green, director, Animal Aid
Tonbridge, Kent
Rise of the gender bullies
Jacky Davis highlighted how the actions of a few activists on the BMA council led to “a toxic atmosphere… and a climate of fear and intolerance of genuinely held beliefs” (“Undemocratic and secretive: the BMA no longer speaks for doctors trying to protect children”, Comment, last week).
Sadly, gender bullies are everywhere. In publishing, they intimidate authors like Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip. In the arts, they deny a livelihood to people like Graham Linehan and Rosie Kay. In academia, they hound professors like Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix. Usually, the bullies face no consequences, so let’s hope the BMA returns to proper democratic representation of GPs.
Richard Gilyead
Saffron Walden, Essex
Royalties where they’re due
I agree with Peter Doig (“ ‘My work sells for millions but only a fraction of that came to me,’ says Scottish painter”, News). It is unfair that artists get no remuneration from their work after the first sale. Musicians get royalties every time their music is aired, so why shouldn’t artists get a percentage of all subsequent sales above a certain threshold?
Valerie Collins
Caragh Lake, Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland
The weight of history
Further to your nostalgic articles on the birth of the Observer Magazine 60 years ago, I recall my own memories of that day (“‘It’ll have bite, be radical and funny’ ”). I was 12 years old and delivering Sunday morning newspapers in Leicester. I didn’t read them at the time, but I remember the new publication doubled the weight of my bag. The round seemed twice as long as usual.
Tom Murtha
Studley, Warwickshire
