National News End Child Food Poverty

Just a suggestion here. How about as the country is in a financial black hole now and for god knows how long why don’t all premier league players donate 5% of their wages for say 3 months. They are in a hugely privileged position and a good number of them( not all and I understand Rashfords idea) have no idea how the real world works these days.
 
Marcus Rashford's campaign is to get the state to provide meals in school holidays to all children eligible for FSM.
It needs to be more nuanced than that and target those most in need.
There are plenty of kids of FSM who, whilst obviously not rich, are doing OK and parents neither want nor need FSM in the holidays.
Equally there are lots of children who are in dire and desperate need of support not just with food but with a whole range of complex issues.
So rather than spend the money on a broad brush approach for hundreds of thousands who don't want it, it should be better targeted and direct help for those most in need That's also why Government has given Councils additional funding for localised and targeted help for those families among other things during Covid.

It is far broader than meals alone, and needs social services et al to get to the root of the problem for some children.

Unfortunately it is also a fairly large publicity band wagon for folk to jump on.
 
Just a suggestion here. How about as the country is in a financial black hole now and for god knows how long why don’t all premier league players donate 5% of their wages for say 3 months. They are in a hugely privileged position and a good number of them( not all and I understand Rashfords idea) have no idea how the real world works these days.
A bit like MPs then....but without the subsidised meals and bars.

Here's the menu from the Members dining room from September 2019: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/mdr-main-10.09.19.pdf

And I have signed the petition.

And it is fantastic to see so many local businesses offering to feed kids for free over half term and subsequent holidays...and equally shameful that the government voted against putting their hands in their pockets to meet the genuine need in the first place....including 6 ministers from the DoE.

Slow.Hand.Clap
 
Marcus Rashford's campaign is to get the state to provide meals in school holidays to all children eligible for FSM.
It needs to be more nuanced than that and target those most in need.
There are plenty of kids of FSM who, whilst obviously not rich, are doing OK and parents neither want nor need FSM in the holidays.
Equally there are lots of children who are in dire and desperate need of support not just with food but with a whole range of complex issues.
So rather than spend the money on a broad brush approach for hundreds of thousands who don't want it, it should be better targeted and direct help for those most in need That's also why Government has given Councils additional funding for localised and targeted help for those families among other things during Covid.

It is far broader than meals alone, and needs social services et al to get to the root of the problem for some children.

Unfortunately it is also a fairly large publicity band wagon for folk to jump on.
I don't disagree that the issues why support is needed go much deeper. It is an absolute crying shame that the Tories spent the last decade ripping the a**e out of all of these services in the name of austerity, don't you think?

What they are providing, even if it is a bit extra, will not go far enough and the measures that the government voted against last week were to recognise that. It is a real problem that needs addressing now.

There may be people who don;t really need it who will take advantage, but they will be the minority and it seems to be a risk the the government is willing to take when it comes to supporting business: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54432916. This is orders of magnitude greater than the government have been asked to find to help feed hungry children.
 
Marcus Rashford's campaign is to get the state to provide meals in school holidays to all children eligible for FSM.
It needs to be more nuanced than that and target those most in need.
There are plenty of kids of FSM who, whilst obviously not rich, are doing OK and parents neither want nor need FSM in the holidays.
Equally there are lots of children who are in dire and desperate need of support not just with food but with a whole range of complex issues.
So rather than spend the money on a broad brush approach for hundreds of thousands who don't want it, it should be better targeted and direct help for those most in need That's also why Government has given Councils additional funding for localised and targeted help for those families among other things during Covid.

It is far broader than meals alone, and needs social services et al to get to the root of the problem for some children.

Unfortunately it is also a fairly large publicity band wagon for folk to jump on.

Hello, Ben. You really need to be a bit more careful on social media and probably should avoid going on BBC Breakfast when you can be skewered so easily over your tweets.
 
Dave Cameron must have woken up with a raging stonk-on seeing all these individuals and businesses doing the job of government. This is his dream, the big society is here.
 
A bit like MPs then....but without the subsidised meals and bars.

Here's the menu from the Members dining room from September 2019: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/mdr-main-10.09.19.pdf

And I have signed the petition.

And it is fantastic to see so many local businesses offering to feed kids for free over half term and subsequent holidays...and equally shameful that the government voted against putting their hands in their pockets to meet the genuine need in the first place....including 6 ministers from the DoE.

Slow.Hand.Clap
I am not saying MP’s aren’t lucky by wages although they have a hugely important job whichever party they represent but just for comparison the average MP gets £82000 a year and the average Premier league footballer gets £2,880,000 or 35.12 times as much.
I have a child who gets free school meals but we certainly don’t need them during school holidays so as Essex yellows says it needs to be targeted to those who need it.
 
Great to see Essex Yellows is out defending the "Don't Give Food to Hungry Kids During a Pandemic" Party.

I knew he was a loyal Conservative, but I thought even his Loyalty had limits.

Imagine describing feeding hungry children, or demanding that hungry children get fed "jumping on the bandwagon'

Better to jump on that bandwagon than push kids under the bus.
 
Hello, Ben. You really need to be a bit more careful on social media and probably should avoid going on BBC Breakfast when you can be skewered so easily over your tweets.

To save you looking for more "oh,he was right but Twatter is what is..............." People taking things out of context to suit their views...

THE TRUTH:
Pretty clear now that I am about to be hit by a proper social media s**tstorm, as the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party has chosen to share something I wrote and completely change the context and meaning of it. It's gone so far already as to have been shared by a local school.
With that in mind I thought it best to pre-empt things and explain. Twitter is an awful place
?

Angela Rayner - famous this week for shouting 'scum' at a Tory MP in the Chamber of the Commons - has shared a tweet that suggests that I think all parents on free school meals spend their money on drugs and in brothels.
Needless to say, that is just as ridiculous as it sounds and I have said no such thing!! I'm sorry if the context of what I said was not as clear to others as it appeared to me, but quite obviously I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT. It is totally and entirely ridiculous. So much so, that I hope fair minded residents will see it for what it is: an orchestrated Twitter pile on. Sadly I have no doubt that it will make news, and she will win at her game.
To explain - I shared a tweet citing a very specific example of the most chaotic and problematic childhood, such as living in a household that is dealing drugs, or where prostitution takes place. Obviously this is a VERY specific scenario, and so the whole discussion is very specific to it. I was clearly not talking generally about families on free school meals.
I was saying that kids in that scenario need a huge amount of targeted and holistic help, and that we need to look beyond free school meals to help the most vulnerable children.
Another Twitter user suggested that giving money to the parents in that specific scenario was a bad idea. In response I said that in some cases, where vouchers in the summer were not restricted to buying just food, FSM vouchers were effectively like giving cash as they could be spent on anything (in the supermarket!)
Angela Rayner has decided that this was me saying that FSM families are all living in brothels and drug dens, or spending their money there. Clearly that is not true, it's not something I have ever thought or would ever say, and it's so outrageous that I would hope sensible folk can see that I would never say that!
I'm sorry if it causes distress to anyone, and I'm sorry if my words or the context weren't specific or clear enough... but I 100% have not said what Angela Rayner is suggesting that I have said!!
 
The CONSERVATIVEs have spent 12 BILLION Pounds on a test and trace app that didn't work. Hundreds of Millions on Dodgy PPE contracts for donors.

They don't care about saving money
 
Great to see Essex Yellows is out defending the "Don't Give Food to Hungry Kids During a Pandemic" Party.

I knew he was a loyal Conservative, but I thought even his Loyalty had limits.

Imagine describing feeding hungry children, or demanding that hungry children get fed "jumping on the bandwagon'

Better to jump on that bandwagon than push kids under the bus.

If you give away free stuff funded by the state people will expect it..... or demand more.
FSM are nothing "new" and have been used to support people for many years across many governments of all political persuasions.

I understand circumstances change, parents split up, some die, some lose jobs etc etc.

So what is so wrong with targeting those in most need rather than FSM for everyone?
 
He got it right and folk take it out of context to jump on the band wagon.

Using one example involving a crack den to run down the whole system is at best careless or involving a school (that disagree with him) and then saying you aren't involving the school. Could more be done on support elsewhere, yes it could. But then those services all got cut under austerity, and in some cases got rid of such as many youth services across the country which caught these things, as Council budgets got slashed.
 
Actually there's a lot of good reasons for free school meals for everyone. happens in Sweden and Finland,

All kids get healthy and nutritious lunches , eats together no discrimination and you don't have to spend money on collecting money.

But int his case we are talking about extending meals to those who receive Free School Meals in the holidays and at half term, where there is a pandemic where millions have lost their jobs or receive no finding and many people are getting a proportion of the minimum wage
 
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