Today Jan Moir of the Daily Mail newspaper, has called teenagers on EMA “spoilt brats”. You may remember her for the disgusting things she said about Stephen Gately when he died. Please email Jan Moir and let her know what you think!

This is her email address: [email protected]

Feel free to compose your own message to Jan Moir, or alternatively copy and paste our pre-written letter:

Dear Jan Moir,

I am writing to you about your article on Friday 21 January in the Daily Mail entitled: “Stop whingeing you spoilt brats - and get a paper round!”. I found this highly offensive and hugely inaccurate and I and the Save EMA campaign would like you to issue an apology. There are numerous parts of your article you should reconsider:

1. You call recipients of EMA “spoilt brats”, yet 80 % of teenagers on EMA are from household incomes under £21,000 a year, do you really belive such people are spoilt?EMA helps young people in this country to get to their place of study, it pays for books and other course equipment and for many it pays for lunch while away from home.
2. You also suggest that young people should ”get a paper round” or other work, however, there are over 600,000 teenagers in the UK on EMA, do you really believe there are enough jobs to go round when 1 in 5 adults are chasing every vacancy?
3. You claim that Michael Gove always believed EMA was a flop. Yet he is on the record only last March 2010 saying he he supported EMA and that it was a lie to say he was would scrap the scheme. David Cameron told the Save EMA campaign in January 2010 that he supported EMA and the Government inJune 2010 after the election again stated its support for EMA.
4. You claim scrapping EMA is “common sense”, however, many lower and middle income families will simply not be able to fill the financial gap scrapping EMA creates. And under the Government’s plans no new applications for EMA will be processed and people currently receiving EMA will only receive it until the end of the academic year. The government has given no real details about what will replace EMA next year except that the funds available to support such activity will be cut from around £570 million to just £75 million. This seems rather nonsensical to many millions of ordinary working people who support our campaign!
5. You describe EMA as “waste of time and public money”, and falsely claim that it fails to get more young people from poorer backgrounds to stay in ­education after GCSEs. However, numerous studies by respected independent institutes such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) demonstrates that not only does EMA increase levels of participation in post 16 education, any costs are completely offset. In addition, the Audit Commission claim that it saves UK tax payers around £4billion by helping keep young people who would otherwise become NEET (not in education, employment or training) in education.

I hope these points have made it clear why your article is both innacurate and offence to the over 600,000 recipients of EMA and the millions of supporters of our campaign.

Please in future refrain from covering this issue so inaccurately and show some empathy for some of the poorest teenagers in this country!

Yours sincerely,

[Insert your name]

P.S. The Save EMA campaign have sent a letter of complaint to the Press Complaint Commission.

Feel free to let us know what if she responds to any of your emails?