Tories vote against kids getting free school meals

[Jools 584]

9 minutes ago, NFN FC said:

Your*

I believe that was deliberate so as Lefties could better understand it 😀

[A Load of Squit 5,134]

1 minute ago, Jools said:

 

I'll tell you what you ought to challenge: Your mental state 🤪

I don't suppose he's ever claimed to have been visited by David Bowie. 

[NFN FC 1,123]

1 minute ago, Jools said:

I believe that was deliberate so as Lefties could better understand it 😀

Wow, your jokes are funny! *Chuckle chuckle*

[Jools 584]

Just now, NFN FC said:

Wow, your jokes are funny! *Chuckle chuckle*

 

[Jools 584]

Chortle, chortle, guffaw, guffaw...

[Herman 9,717]

😀

 

[horsefly 4,287]

13 hours ago, Jools said:

 

The most intelligent post Scrounger Jools has ever made.

[horsefly 4,287]

14 hours ago, Jools said:

I already mentioned malnutrition in a previous post and again my answer to that is the same: It's down to poor parenting and a basic lack of life skills -- It's not through lack of money.

I'll tell you what you ought to challenge: Your mental state 🤪

What a surprise, Scrounger Jools posts unsupported bigoted trash yet again. It doesn't take much effort to research the truth on these issues, but you have demonstrated time and again you don't let a little thing like truth get in the way of your goggle-eyed, gammon-faced spewing of bile.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/29/uk-deep-poverty-study-austerity

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/child-poverty-rise-north-east-19099109

https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/uk-poverty-2019-20-work

https://www.basw.co.uk/resources/psw-magazine/psw-online/child-poverty-rise-warning

https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/

https://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-poverty-measurement-child-poverty-benefits-uk/uk-poverty-set-rise-next-three-years

https://www.threehands.co.uk/news/2020/socialissuesspotlight-2/

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/call-action-shocking-rise-child-poverty-revealed/

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/shock-over-child-poverty-figures-22887473

 

Perhaps they should follow your example and get the tax-payer to fund what they refuse to fund themselves. 

[TheGunnShow 5,932]

[Rock The Boat 1,326]

On 24/10/2020 at 19:00, horsefly said:

How interesting! just a couple of posts ago you said:

"Well, I'm not an expert on UC/Benefits, but I have staff members who are in receipt of UC that tops up their wages and it's enough to feed their kids, ffs."

"They're paid the minimum wage which is livable, but many choose to work p/t, hence it's their choice to have their wages topped up via UC."

And now that we've outed you as a scrounger you suddenly claim that none of your full time workers claim benefits. I suspect all the Part-time ones are on zero hours contacts. But maybe I'm being too harsh. Just imagine being such a crap manager that you have to go cap-in-hand to the tax payer to pay your workers a living wage. Just think of the sense of social ignominy and disgrace that any normal human being would feel in that situation. 

We have great difficulty in recruiting full time staff as they all want to work part time and then topup their income with benefits. The system allows them to do this and they take advantage of the rules to work 2 or 3 days a week. Ask them to work full time and they refuse because they lose benefits.

[A Load of Squit 5,134]

Vintage Squires today.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2020/oct/27/david-squires-on-marcus-rashford-boris-johnson-school-meals

The 2nd from the left on the last line is just perfect.

 

[Rock The Boat 1,326]

Parents on Universal Credit receive £236 per month per child. A first child born before April 2017 will receive £285 per month.

It is perfectly possible to feed a child on £236 per month.

This money was available pre-covid as well as post-covid. So where were the pre-covid demonstrations? There were none.

So despite a generous child allowance already in place for children in Universal Credit families, this is not my objection to continuing payments for free school meals during school holidays.

'Hungry children' is not a problem in the UK. It is a symptom of a problem. It is a symptom related to poverty of the parents of those children, and if you are going to solve a problem then you'd better start addressing the underlying causes rather than dealing with the symptoms.

I have already addressed what the underlying causes of poverty are and how it is possible to break out of the poverty gap earlier in this thread. Some of you asked why not treat both the long-term solutions as well as the short-term solutions at the same time? At first it seems like a reasonable response but if you analyse it further you can see why this is a bad idea. I briefly mentioned this in a reply to Aggy but I think the point needs further development to show why you are mainly wrong if you think the government should continue to provide free school meals throughout the holidays.

Firstly, making these payments is a distraction from the longer term solutions. If you make these short term benefits then you just kick the can down the road. The urgency, the desire and the need to address the underlying problem is removed by providing a temporary relief. Rashfords campaign is already not a novel request, but a request for continuation of a short-term palliative. If you try to hold a government minister to account for action on poverty they can point you to the amount they are paying in short-term benefits allowing him or her to duck responsibility for long-term action.

Further. Once short-term measures become extended they become entrenched within the system and end up replacing measures that address the more difficult long-term solutions. Opposition MPs demand periodic raises in the amount of benefits raised, and extension of benefits to cover newer scenarios. Just as we are seeing now in the rollout to holiday cover as well as term-time cover.

Next, other lobbyists demand that there constituencies are being treated unfairly by not being included within the scheme, If poor schoolkids can receive free meals then why not low-income pensioners? Let's means-test everybody so that we can provide free meals to everyone below a certain income level.

There is no such thing as a free lunch either. If you go onto benefits then the government curtails your freedoms. You must attend regular appointments at the DWP office. So if you need to visit, for example, a sick relative on the other side of the country, then you have to throw yourself on the mercy of a civil servant as to whether you are allowed to travel or face sanctions as a result. Sanctions are a great tool for keeping a population in line. They also create a resentful, dispirited and negatively inclined people who are much more likely to find themselves unable to escape from poverty and give up hope of a better life.

Now if you as a private individual wish to do charitable acts and help towards feeding hungry kids then more power to you. Those who have a surplus should always consider helping those with less. 

But don't trap the government into short-termism as in will never turn its attention to the long-term underlying problems that cause poverty and then hunger.

If I were a cynical person I could see how poverty actually helps the left because it creates a natural constituency for the left, and I think many of those that craft policies on the left know this, too. Rashford would have been far more effective if he had used his energy to campaign for kids not to drop out of school, and to leave school with qualifications not a baby stroller if he really wanted to end poverty.

[horsefly 4,287]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

We have great difficulty in recruiting full time staff as they all want to work part time and then topup their income with benefits. The system allows them to do this and they take advantage of the rules to work 2 or 3 days a week. Ask them to work full time and they refuse because they lose benefits.

Which means they are not being paid enough to make full-time viable

Edited October 27, 2020 by horsefly

[A Load of Squit 5,134]

31 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

Parents on Universal Credit receive £236 per month per child. A first child born before April 2017 will receive £285 per month.

It is perfectly possible to feed a child on £236 per month.

 

If you spend all £236 on food what do you do when the child requires clothes etc.?

 

[Herman 9,717]

26 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

If you spend all £236 on food what do you do when the child requires clothes etc.?

 

Heating,cooking, cleaning, lighting, rent etc. 

[nevermind, neoliberalism has had it 159]

Lovely to see Johnson, the man who has possibly ruined the future of six children, but it could possibly be 17 children, being emphatically and metaphorically been beaten up by Rashford. I'd like to have a go as well, not just empty my shopping into food bank trolleys, then walking out and giving a pittance so our injured soldiers can have some resemblance of a future.

10% of the homeless population are ex forces, so the next time you see somebody kicking or peeing on a homeless person, stop them with a civil arrest for GBH, more responsible than wearing a poppy and feeling good about it, in mho.

[horsefly 4,287]

The Tories just can't bring themselves to help those in genuine need. When it comes to a choice of helping a hungry child with a few quid to spend on food, or chucking multi-millions of tax-payers money to their pals in uncontested government contracts, we know which they choose everytime:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9137379/amp/Marcus-Rashford-blasts-unacceptable-food-parcel-supposed-feed-family-three-days.html

Keir Starmer and Marcus Rashford slam 'disgraceful' free school meals parcel given to mother to 'last 10 days' that she estimates cost £5.22 as children's minister vows to look into claims

Edited January 12, 2021 by horsefly

[Herman 9,717]

Not an isolated case. Jack Monroe has a massive list on this. 

Ignoring the cost for a minute but what sort of substantial meal can you make from those ingredients? 

[horsefly 4,287]

2 minutes ago, Herman said:

Not an isolated case. Jack Monroe has a massive list on this. 

Ignoring the cost for a minute but what sort of substantial meal can you make from those ingredients? 

A f*king shi*te one. And that's supposed to be several days worth. What sort of tin-pot morally bankrupt country have we declined into?

[Herman 9,717]

A country run by and for profiteers and spivs. 

[A Load of Squit 5,134]

3 minutes ago, Herman said:

A country run by and for profiteers and spivs. 

"We gave the PPE contract to a friend"

"Ok and how did that go?"

"Bad"

"Ok so what did you do next"

"We gave the Test and Trace contract to a friend"

"Ok and how did that go?"

"Also bad"

"So learning from this what did you do?"

"We gave the food box contract to a friend"

[Rock The Boat 1,326]

On 27/10/2020 at 14:10, horsefly said:

Which means they are not being paid enough to make full-time viable

No, it means they would have to give up their gig work, which they don't wish to do. For us, it means we employ 3 part-timers instead of one full-time. 

[Creative Midfielder 1,985]

On 27/10/2020 at 13:09, Rock The Boat said:

We have great difficulty in recruiting full time staff as they all want to work part time and then topup their income with benefits. The system allows them to do this and they take advantage of the rules to work 2 or 3 days a week. Ask them to work full time and they refuse because they lose benefits.

Well there were 370,000 redundancies in Q3 2020 alone, taking us to 1.69m unemployed and that number is expected to rise by a further million by the middle of this year.

But ever since the first lockdown many businesses have been reporting that they are receiving hundreds of applications per job, even for low paid ones. So if you are having trouble recruiting then clearly you are either not paying enough or you are an extremely unattractive employer in some other respect - or possibly both 😀

Edited January 12, 2021 by Creative Midfielder
Spelling

[Herman 9,717]

[Bill 1,788]

and you mugs seriously think RTB owns and runs a care home............................jeez 🤪

with care homes overburdened with the work and concerns of COVID you seriously think someone would have the time or thought to spend most of their day on here ?

the man who claimed to have worked at the GATT talks in Uruguay, and yet didn't know that the final part of the A11 had been dualled

he posts on here (as hand crank) to get a reaction, and he knows that none if you will bother to remember the regular mistakes and contradictions

........and oh, the figure for the child part of UC is wrong

Edited January 12, 2021 by Bill

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

No, it means they would have to give up their gig work, which they don't wish to do. For us, it means we employ 3 part-timers instead of one full-time. 

But if wages were better, and I don't say that lightly as we employ people, then the reliance on benefits would be less.

Of course there are those who cheat the system, no-one is that daft to deny it. But it does suit many employers to to have several part timers instead of full timers.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Rubbish school meal hampers supplied by Chartwell Catering, part of the Compass Group whose Chairman until 6 January was Paul Walsh, a former Cameron adviser.

[Bill 1,788]

1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Rubbish school meal hampers supplied by Chartwell Catering, part of the Compass Group whose Chairman until 6 January was Paul Walsh, a former Cameron adviser.

hamper ?

Skimper, more like

Just as with the privatisation of the care system where underpaid staff are left to try to run a system that is aimed at personal greed rather than medical need

[Herman 9,717]

 

[Herman 9,717]

On 12/01/2021 at 13:15, horsefly said:

A f*king shi*te one. And that's supposed to be several days worth. What sort of tin-pot morally bankrupt country have we declined into?

I turns out that this bag of food was government guidelines. 🤨