Islington Tribune, March 2 2024 Hundreds of thousands of UK households are affected unfairly by the ‘Two Child’ benefits cap, which restricts universal credit and child tax credit to a family’s first two children and provides less or nothing for any others. It is one of our country’s biggest causes of child poverty, which has […]
Category: Letters
Letters sent by Islington Green Party members to the local papers
Letters to the Papers: Labour’s weakened super-majority means more accountability
Thanks to the Tribune for reporting how Islington’s opposition councillors have ‘called in’ the council’s decision to merge Montem and Duncombe schools, but it’s disappointing that Executive Member Cllr Ngongo has chosen to attack this call on party-political grounds in your letters page (‘For first-class education’). Admittedly the government’s decision to make Poole Park an […]
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Letters to the Papers: Tackling the Climate Emergency
I congratulate you on your 8 page climate feature. It is encouraging that a paper such as ‘The Islington Tribune’ can devote such a large part of its content to the Climate Emergency. Your editorial invites readers to debate the issues and encourages them not to feel helpless and overwhelmed, and you make helpful suggestions […]
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Letters to the Papers: Vote Green to see popular wealth tax become a reality
During the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, 250 of the world’s richest people wrote an open letter to political leaders, calling for greater taxes on their own wealth. The signatories, including members of both the Rockefeller and Disney dynasties, recognised that increasing global inequality is putting economic, societal and ecological stability at risk for […]
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Letters to the Papers: The low-paid need protection from council tax
Published in the Islington Tribune, Jan 12 2024 For many years Islington Green Party have been campaigning to exempt Islington Council’s poorest residents from paying council tax. It used to be the case that people on the lowest incomes were given a 100 per cent discount from council tax, but the Conservative and Liberal Democrat […]
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Letters to the Papers: We need leaders who understand the full impact of the Climate Emergency
Storm Ciaran was already the third ‘named storm’ of this autumn and October has been the wettest ever recorded in some parts of the country. So-called ‘one in a hundred year’ weather events are happening more like every two or three years, now. And impacts are being felt across all sectors of the UK, with […]
Letters to the Papers: Proactive measures needed for Islington’s housing stock
It’s disappointing, to say the least, that Islington has had to be fined by the Housing Ombudsman for delayed repairs to its own housing stock (‘Council fined for housing complaints’, 27/10/23). Council budgets have of course been badly depleted by years of government austerity policies but every delayed repair is yet another household living in […]
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Letters to the Papers: Now more than ever, we must show solidarity with all Londoners
Last week, I and my wife, both in our eighties and both white skinned, joined thousands upon thousands of others to walk, in the drizzle, through central London in support of peace in the Middle East. What we encountered was, yes, some very angry people. But also acts of such kindness, love and concern from […]
Letters to the Papers: Celebrating our right to boycott
From the eighteenth-century campaigns against slavery, when the sugar boycott against buying goods produced by enslaved peoples attracted 300,000 supporters, to their role in bringing to an end apartheid and segregation, boycotts have been shown to work. They are a vital democratic tool to address global injustices, which take power back to the people from […]
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Letters to the Papers: We must hold our politicians accountable for the sake of the future
As my seventieth birthday approaches, it occurs to me I’ll never know, personally, if humanity manages to overcome the Climate Emergency challenge. With the best will in the world, it will still take years to slow and turn the ship of our carbon economy, then decades more to be sure we’ve avoided the catastrophes it […]