Education cuts have been dominating Westminster this past month; cuts to higher education, cuts to Educational Maintenance Allowances and cuts to sports at school. The Tories claim that the younger generation should not pay for the mistakes of the past generation, but with these slashes in allowances and the raising of fees, we are being asked to do exactly that. With the new buzz word of the Tories being 'fairness', I am struggling to see what is fair about the scrapping of what Alan Johnson MP stated as the "single biggest contributor to keeping kids from poorer homes in education"? Something which Cameron pledged to support before the election: �We�ve looked at Educational Maintenance Allowances and we haven�t announced any plan to get rid of them.� David Cameron, January 2010 As EMA was successfully introduced by Labour in 2004 to combat the financial barriers to learning, thousands of young people in disadvantaged areas were given help to pay for transport, books, educational trips, and so on. This proved they were more likely to be successful and stay on into further education. Now countless young people with the ability to stay on in further education, but without the financial means, will miss out. So it comes as no surprise that Labour are a party that people are coming to, not moving away from. Over 43,000 new members have joined us since the General Election and we�ve been winning by-elections all across the country. In the words of Ed Miliband �We know the scale of the challenge we face; there's no short-cut or quick fix to this. But I have a sense of optimism about what we can achieve. We need to show the people that our values are their values." Mr Cameron, as you are definitely aware, the fight back has begun. You can help in the fightback by signing the Save the EMA petition here