It depends on your political bend.
If you’re right-leaning, it’s the feckless, lazy parents who have too many children and then waste their small amounts of money on tattoos, booze and Sky packages.
If you’re left-leaning, everyone is a victim of a callous government where the most vulnerable are left behind. No one is to blame but the heartless bastards in power.
In truth, you could find examples to support both sides of you go looking for them. For every Romanian migrant getting £30k in benefits reported in the Daily Mail, there will be a Jack Monroe detailing the pittance she genuinely had to live on in the Guardian.
For me, it’s a pandemic, many have lost of will lose their jobs due to measures that have been taken to control or stem the spread of the virus. Even if FSM are offered as a temporary measure for the holidays for the time being, that seems to me the right thing to do for now. You put a plaster over a cut to deal with the immediate issue. You don’t let it bleed out blaming the knife that cut you.
@Essexyellows does make a very good point about education to ensure future parents know how to budget correctly. It’s not just a concern for the poorest but for every generation. I’m staggered by intelligent people who don’t know about changing their energy supplier for example and end up overpaying on standard tariffs or people not realising that buying a mobile handset outright with a cheap SIM is nearly always cheaper than a contract deal over the two year lifespan of the phone. Martin Lewis does his best to educate of course but a basic ‘household costs’ course open to school pupils and adults would create a generation of far savvier people with basic spending.
