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Let Them Eat...?

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allenlondon | 09:37 Fri 23rd Oct 2020 | News
387 Answers
MPs rejected the plea for free school meals to be given during holidays.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/21/marcus-rashford-in-despair-as-mps-reject-free-school-meal-plan

Should be very good news for all the Answerbanks who think poor families spend too much on smoking, gambling, etc, so should get NO more handouts!

Let them eat cake! Or nothing.

Charles Dickens would not believe it.


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Lol.
16:07 Sun 25th Oct 2020
// Regardless of why? Okay, let’s assume I don’t want to work because I’d rather get up late and stay at home watching television all day. Are you happy for your taxes to fund my chosen lifestyle? //

My taxes fund a whole bunch of things I'm unhappy with. The price of being a member of society is that not everything about it is to your liking. I'm not sure that supporting a lazy person is necessarily any different, in that regard.
Jim, In that case you're encouraging - and enabling - the feckless to continue to be feckless - which helps no one except the feckless.
I don't see it that way. In the first place, the lifestyle you're describing isn't very fulfilling, so you might naturally want a change anyway; in the second place, I never said I wouldn't want to intervene to try to encourage this hypothetical you to do something more with your life, so I'm not encouraging anything of the sort.

In the third place, if the alternative to "enabling" the feckless lifestyle is to leave the person to starve, then I'd prefer to be an enabler. I don't mean to imply that you'd prefer the opposite, but, then again, I'm not sure what you'd see as the third option. With only a few limited exceptions, people cannot and should not be forced by the State to do anything against their will.
Jim, people who prefer not to work are fulfilled. That's what they want to do. You say the State shouldn’t force people to do anything against their will - which means those who so choose can just carry on sponging off the rest of us regardless - so how about this for a third option? Benefits should only be available to fit and able people if they work - and then only as a top up to those receiving low salaries.
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Too many blind alleys here.

The question is:

Do you let children go hungry?

OR

Do you feed them?

All the rest can be sorted out later... ONCE their bellies are no longer empty!

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If you continue to shower feckless parents with money and gifts they will continue to take it. The more you give them the more they will take and the more they will spend. They are being led to believe that when they run out of money they will be given more (and who can blame them, as the current public debate illustrates?).

When they are forced to budget properly to feed their children it will concentrate their minds. Instead of thinking "they" will have to do something for us they will have to think "we" shall have to do something for us - the same as everybody else does. When they see their children go hungry (though I'm yet to see any evidence that hungry children are a widespread problem), instead of thinking about booze, fags, drugs, tattoos, nails, eyebrows, and I-phones they will have to think about food.

As I said earlier, there are a very few people who have hit hard times through no fault of their own and need help. The problem is the government is unable to differentiate between them and the career work-shy.
//All the rest can be sorted out later... ONCE their bellies are no longer empty!//

Just out of interest, how many children in the UK go around with empty bellies? I'm not talking about those suffering so-called poverty. Because of the way it is defined in the UK that term is all but meaningless. How many children go to bed hungry?
According to the Office of National Statistics, between 1957 and 2017 the share of household expenditure spent on food has halved, and in 2020 it is now just 8%. So what are the parents of all these starving children spending their money on?
feeding kids at school is an opportunity to teach them discipline, manners & prepare them to achieve their goals & lots more control.
judge 12:49 - bang on, there's your BA Allen
"According to the Office of National Statistics, between 1957 and 2017 the share of household expenditure spent on food has halved, and in 2020 it is now just 8%. So what are the parents of all these starving children spending their money on? " - now lets see.....
tambo - it doesn't seem to have taught any of them to use a knife and fork properly, judging from the video we see on news clips/.
Housing and fuel costs plus possible debt repayments are some of the reasons given in relation to poverty, not just today but for a very long time.
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“ judge 12:49 - bang on, there's your BA Allen”

He’s already got one!
Isn't Cummings an unelected civil servant who is running the country?
I dont really understand why you cant be pro Brexit and also pro free school meals being extended. Or a labour supporter and against school meals. It's just lazy stereotyping along with "fat I phone using, chip eating wasters"
"Am I the only one who finds the phrase ‘virtue signalling’ a VERY lazy cliche?"

Yes, it's such a pity that it continually needs to be pointed out. But if there's another phrase meaning the same thing that folk prefer...

"The question is: Do you let children go hungry? OR Do you feed them?"

That is not the question at all. No one thinks children should go hungry. The question is; given that the welfare state already provides resource to feed poor children, do we cause a fuss and insist we pay again for the same thing, trying to make out that is the moral high ground and shame others, or alternatively realise that having provided, the moral obligations have been achieved, and try to convince the rest of the irrationality of their position ?
//As I said earlier, there are a very few people who have hit hard times through no fault of their own and need help.//

But sadly, as your BA states, those people seem to be acceptable collateral in assuring that the undeserving get nothing. A good government ensures its most vulnerable are catered for. It remains to be seen if the current lot are a good government.
Should say "collateral damage" in that post.
People are still not really getting the point. There are lots of people in work who live in poverty. Especially during school holidays. It's not only providing extra meals, for many they have to pay for childcare, which isn't cheap. People end up working for hardly anything.
//People are still not really getting the point. There are lots of people in work who live in poverty. Especially during school holidays. It's not only providing extra meals, for many they have to pay for childcare, which isn't cheap. People end up working for hardly anything.//

Especially during current times, when jobs have been lost or furloughed.

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