Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image Description: illustrated images of period products on a pink background. At the start of 2021 the UK Government announced that, from this year onwards, the tampon tax would be abolished in the entire country. This comes roughly three years after a protest was held outside Westminster, calling for an end to period poverty amid […]
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Image description: Two cooking pots on top of a rusty metal shelf with a kitchen towel hanging in the background There is a common trend online whenever the topic of food poverty re-enters the public consciousness in this country, and it is utterly lamentable. Condescending commentators online, many of whom have never experienced abject poverty, […]
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Image description: the painting Applications for Admission to a Casual Ward, a Victorian painting by Sir Luke Fildes. Impoverished men, women and children line up outside a police station to prove their eligibility to spend a night in a workhouse. Read Matteo’s last column: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/24/the-scarcity-of-politics/ In my last column, I argued that we rarely acknowledge […]
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The British railways have come to be one of the most blatantly obvious examples of where privatisation has failed. Commuters and tax payers are being ripped off by dividend collectors, while services deteriorate, prices climb much faster than wages, and incompetent Conservative ministers like Chris Grayling fumble around a problem they have no desire to […]
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Image credit: John Cairns/Blavatnik School of Government I recall sitting in my economic development course as an undergraduate. Paul Collier’s acclaimed bestseller, The Bottom Billion, was a classic on our reading lists. Fast forward a year later, I am sitting opposite him in his office at the glass-walled Blavatnik School of Government for an exclusive interview […]
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Many food bank users are falling deeper into financial and food insecurity, according to a report released last week. The study, commissioned by the Trussell Trust – a poverty charity with a 400-strong food bank network – highlights income insecurity and the prevalence of food insecurity and material deprivation in the population of food bank […]
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Much has been published criticising the phenomenon of ‘voluntourism’, whereby individuals (often students) mix foreign holidays with voluntary work for NGOs. With social media littered with images of westerners hugging young African children, it is easy to appreciate why critics accuse voluntourism of trivialising poverty, treating it as a spectacle, rather than a complex issue […]
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According to Oxford charity Oxfam, global inequality is rapidly increasing. The top 1% now own more than the rest of humanity combined. The richest 62 individuals are even as wealthy as the poorest 3.6 billion people. In light of that development, the NGO stresses the importance of legislating equitable taxation, increasing minimum wages, pursuing women’s […]
Continue ReadingOxford’s admissions process has been intensely criticised in recent months by the national media for failing to admit enough students from state schools. The Social mobility and Child Poverty Commission, in a report published in December, found that although Oxford increased its intake of state educated students by 6% between 2003/04 and 2013/14, a further […]
Continue Reading“Hungrier than ever: Britain’s use of food banks triples”, read one national newspaper last year. Even within the headline itself, there was a dangerous conflation of cause and symptom that requires urgent clarification. It is the sort of poverty that drives a family to rely on food banks that is the problem (which one might […]
Continue ReadingYou would be hard pressed to have missed the latest charity craze sweeping Oxford at the moment. ‘Live Below The Line’ challenges participants to live on £1 a day for 5 days in order to raise awareness of the global poverty which so many people across the world sadly live in. The website says that […]
Continue ReadingIf your news feed has, like mine, been absolutely rammed with instagrammed photos of grinning girls holding miserly looking plates of yam then you probably already knew about Live-Below-The-Line. For those that didn’t, it’s a charity campaign where participants live off a pound a day for one week to raise sponsorship and awareness. The issue […]
Continue Reading[yop_poll id=”6″] Proposition – Tyler Overton Here are some facts about injustice: according to UNICEF’s 2012 report on child mortality, 1 in 9 children in Sub-Saharan Africa die before age five (as opposed to 1 in 152 in developed regions). Over a billion people still live on less than pound a day. And, more […]
Continue ReadingThe logic behind Fairtrade, and why it can change the world.
Continue ReadingOxfam is to receive the Freedom of the City of Oxford in October in recognition of its achievements both in the city and worldwide. Chief Executive Dame Barbara Stocking and Oxfam Chair Karen Brown will be presented with a Freedom of the City scroll at the Town Hall by the Lord Mayor, Councillor Alan Armitage. […]
Continue ReadingIn our fourth external contribution, Muhammad Yunus examines capitalism, the free market and the financial crisis in relation to the multiple sources of human happiness, bidding us consider the theory at the heart of ‘social business’.
Continue ReadingStereotypes and hoards of tourists apart, Oxford houses some of the most deprived areas in the UK. Lizzie Porter reports on the city’s lesser known side
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