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Letters: Cambridge, where inequality rules

<span>Photograph: Allan Baxter/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Allan Baxter/Getty Images

In an article about inequality in Cambridge, a spokesman for Cambridge University claimed that a survey in November found 21 colleges to be paying at least £9 an hour (“Beyond the colleges, UK’s most unequal city battles poverty”, News). This was in response to FOI figures from July showing only eight of the 31 colleges to be paying the “real living wage” of £9 an hour. As students involved in campaigning for colleges to pay the living wage, we are sceptical of this claim. Aside from the fact that the living wage was recalculated to £9.30 outside London in November, it is unlikely the earlier £9 figure applies to subcontracted college workers or those on casual contracts. Indeed, in response to our latest FOI requests, colleges claimed they did not even know how much subcontracted staff employed via agencies were paid.

Worse still, the cost of living in Cambridge is much higher than the national average from which the £9.30 living wage rate is calculated. Those employed directly by the central university are paid the “Cambridge living wage” of £10 an hour set by the city council, although this does not apply to subcontracted workers. Our data found that no Cambridge college does the same.

Poverty pay and insecurity are endemic among Cambridge colleges. Thousands of workers are employed on zero-hours contracts and reports of workers being overworked and understaffed are common. This all exacerbates poverty in the most unequal city in the UK.
Colleges have enormous wealth, with endowments of up to £1bn and extortionate spending on wine and academic prizes. They have a responsibility to their workers to pay the Cambridge living wage, join Queens’ and Girton in accrediting with the Living Wage Foundation¬ and provide fair conditions to all workers.
Jake Simms, Chloe Newbold, Ben Margolis and Sam Festenstein
Cambridge University Living Wage Campaign

I appreciated the impetus of Donna Ferguson’s piece on Cambridge inequality, which was both timely and necessary. I must, however, take issue with this claim: “Some of the city’s inequalities continue to reflect its traditional ‘town and gown’ divide. Academics are protected from the worst financial pressures of living in Cambridge, benefiting from central, subsidised college accommodation, free meals and access to a cheap, university-backed shared equity mortgage scheme.”

This might have applied to the senior fellows of Trinity and St John’s in the 1930s, but it is far removed from the common experience of most of those who teach and research, more than half of whom are on fixed-term contracts or no contracts at all. The idea that academics en masse are enjoying a gilded life merely reinforces a dangerously prejudicial myth. Some of my colleagues use food banks. The overwhelming majority of those working for the university and its colleges – from cleaners to lecturers – share the same corrosive levels of precariousness as those characterising swathes of their local civilian society.
Dr Michael Hrebeniak
Wolfson College
University of Cambridge

What is Labour for?

Andrew Rawnsley is right to ask what Keir Starmer stands for, yet a bigger question is what is the point of the Labour party itself (“Keir Starmer has the ability and the character, but what does he stand for”, Comment). Faced with the decline of its traditional base in the organised working class, Labour needs to face up to this existential question. It cannot simply be the political representative of the poor, the oppressed and the dispossessed. It cannot be just the opposition to the Tories, a useful punchbag to bring some political legitimacy to Johnson’s government. It needs a fresh purpose or it will surely cease to exist.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham

Enough northern miseries

In 1848, Charlotte and Anne Brontë had to get the train from Keighley to London to prove to a publisher that they were from Yorkshire, they were women, they were writers and Charlotte was the author of Jane Eyre; 172 years later, the Observer has felt the need to do something similar (“True north”, the New Review).

Although author Graham Caveney says that “writing can be a way of wrongfooting people about stereotypes”, your article about northern writers does nothing to reinforce this. It’s great that the Portico book prize is there to celebrate literature that evokes the spirit of the north of England, but this feature puts more emphasis on stereotypes than literary achievement. There are hundreds of great northern writers who have written bestsellers; Benjamin Myers – just read his novel The Offing, brilliant – comes up with a list of 22 of them for starters, from Bede to Andrea Dunbar. All the highlighted quotes, however, speak of that supposedly famous northern separatist grumpiness, best of all: “The north is so diverse – the only thing that really unites us is a strong aversion to the south.”

At first, I enjoyed the article, then that north/south stuff that I have wrestled with all my life crept in. I am a writer and an art curator, grew up in Tadcaster, proud to come from the same place as Adelle Stripe, two of us writers from one small Yorkshire town. But soon I started to feel annoyed and, worse, couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe it was Richard Saker’s beautiful but strategically northern photographs: Stripe and Benjamin Myers as Cathy and Heathcliff against the dark moorland background and Robinson in his furry hood as Beowulf. I could almost hear the photographer saying: “Whatever you do, don’t smile – you’re northerners.”
Jane Sellars
Clifford, Wetherby
West Yorkshire

Colonialism exposed

How inspiring that Matilda Marcus and her friends are taking such positive action to inform the British public of our whitewashed history (“Read all about it – the truth about British colonialism”, Comment). On the road to inclusivity and respect for all, this is long overdue. It is a disgrace that the debt we all owe to empire, and how it was achieved, is so conveniently erased from our education and collective awareness.
Pamela Hackett
Leominster, Herefordshire

Of mice and mycelium

Your article on biodegradable building materials is interesting but may give an overoptimistic view on the ideal of a fungal recycling of plant and other waste (“How can you build a house out of this?” Design magazine, winter 2020). It is describing a technology that has been established for nigh-on 20 years and that has never really expanded much beyond a novelty stage. Although companies such as Evocative in the USA are producing insulation board from fungal mycelium, its main product is packaging for fragile products. This has the advantage of being rapidly biodegradable once it has achieved its objective. As one of the Biohm staff states in the article, their product “smells like a cereal bar and is edible”. I fear that mice everywhere will rejoice on the day that it is incorporated into buildings.
Chris M Moiser
Watchet, Somerset

The trouble with elites

Hashi Mohamed makes an important point: recruitment to elite professions is biased towards those with private schooling and this is grossly unfair (“The boy who dreamed of a different destiny”, the New Review). There is another more practical issue. Research among high-flying entrepreneurs and university vice-chancellors indicates that institutions led by those with private school backgrounds perform less well than those led by individuals who attended state schools. In other words, not only is Britain unjust in the way it recruits members of its elites, it is also shooting itself in the foot. Greater social mobility would not only lead to a fairer society, it would contribute to the success of our declining nation.
Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby
University of Kent, Canterbury

Dressing for the union

Will Hutton suggests lighting a candle to show continued allegiance to the EU (“Remainers aren’t going to vanish on 31 January. We fight on, sure of our cause,” Comment). An EU badge – blue disc, yellow stars – worn everywhere, every day, also keeps the flame burning. And it makes you feel properly dressed.
Claudia Pritchard
London E1