[Closed] Scrapping the £30 meal vouchers

You think this will reflect badly on the government?

Think again, social media & BBC, dm comments section will be full of Johnson fans who think that's far to much good to give to any lazy workshy child

And apparently the company responsible are part of Compass group, who are big donors to which party 🤔

And they got busted doing this in March

https://twitter.com/MarinaNigrelli/status/1348701472461090817?s=19

Shameful isn't it but we all know who will be paying for Brexit and the pandemic and those that will profit from it don't we?😕

As kimbers says though, there are many out there that would genuinely prefer that no help be given, food or voucher.

Classic levelling down.

I've seen that response on Twitter but it makes no sense.

Even if you don't agree with feeding children, surely you still want the government to get good value for money.

The worst example I've seen comes from the woman who runs a local food bank. The £30 box of food delivered to a local family comes to a grand total of £5.22.

As someone responsible for the Pastoral Care of 160 students, to say I'm a little miffed about this might be an understatement...

https://twitter.com/RoadsideMum/status/1348646428084760576?s=19

It's just ****ing outrageous, the latest in a long line of them. And you know nothing - nothing - will change.

And apparently the company responsible are part of Compass group, who are big donors to which party 🤔

It certainly has all the hallmarks of classic corruption hiding in plain sight - something this gov't seem adept at. I could give you £30, but instead I will give my mate £20 and claim I saved the country a fortune. He in turn will give you £5 worth of food and send £5 as a donation to me, and pocket the £10. Everyone wins. Except you.

You've really got to hand it to the Tories haven't you? When it comes to ****ing over the general public, they've really got it dialled.

Public (spokesperson: Marcus Rashford): You should feed the people you've driven into poverty with years of austerity made palatable by a compliant media.
Tories: No.
Public: No, you really should.
Tories: No.
Public: We're not going to shut up until you do.
Tories: OK...
[conferring] I know, let's pretend we're feeding them, but actually just give them crumbs, whilst charging the treasury as if we're actually feeding them properly. We can split the difference between us and that mate of ours who runs a firm with no experience in supplying food.
Tories: We shall feed the poor!

If they were worried the cash was not being spent on food vouchers would be more appropriate, that way people get to choose their full £30 and it goes on food.

With the food box approach you're paying for a load of infrastructure, people to pack and deliver the food, so even if it's not corrupt it's not the best value for money when we have a range of supermarkets that already do that and it's already in the food cost.

A Gousto box for 2 for 4 complete meals including meat, veg, spices etc. is not much more than £30 and contains a lot more food than the picture up there.

Lots and lots of people voted for them, I guess the only real thing you can do today is think where you are spending your money. Make sure as little gets back them as possible. Perhaps we can make a list of retailers who don’t support tories by county and sticky it? If STW allow.

If they were worried the cash was not being spent on food vouchers would be more appropriate, that way people get to choose their full £30 and it goes on food.

Lots of people saying they did vouchers before, and you could NOT spend them on alcohol, nicotine, the Lottery, etc etc, contrary to much Daily Heilesque misinformation.

I think stumpyjon has it. Seems like a really poorly implemented idea. The idea of vouchers is not a bad idea but this is just crazy adding the extra overheads and hence the middle men taking their cuts.

It's poorly implemented, unless your goal is to try and extract some value for yourself/your rich friends, in which case it's much more effective.

That Chartwells example is disgraceful. There’s a small Manchester company doing it right… I’ll dig out an example… like all schemes like this… contract to your cronies and the people suffer from a double whammy of poor service and tax money being taken for old rope.

https://twitter.com/michaeljebelli/status/1348771567296253955?s=21

Utterly shameful, it's not like even like they're quietly trying to skim off an extra 10% for themselves, it's so blatant they know they'll get away with it, as others have said I wonder why that might be?
My wife is a teacher and says the quality of the stuff Chartwells supply in schools is utter shite as well.

Utter T#ry scumbags will be scumbags. So long as their mates are getting fat off the public and taxpayer they don't care.

How someone thinks they can profiteer from the poorest in society right now is just utterly disgraceful

I'm just surprised that anyone's surprised.

It's what they do.

As the PPE 'Fast Lane' cronyism scandal (of which I'm sure we'll hear a lot more come the public inquiry), and the £22 billion test and trace farce demonstrate, the priority for this lot is to funnel as much public money as possible into the pockets of their mates.

They're so utterly shameless, they barely even bother to pretend their priority is anything else

I'd be amazed if nobody on this thread voted Tory.

All my (rapidly aging) life we've known what they're like. But the UK votes them in, often in landslide fashion.

Scrolling through this it seems this is not uncommon at all, do the whole thread

https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348917929132367872?s=19

Ffs

Utter disgrace, insulting tbh

The contents of the boxes delivered to those shielding were bloody awful too, I expect the same graft was involved in that ostensibly helpful gesture.

These service companies have been ripping off schools and pupils for years in the form of school dinners delivered to primaries who don’t have kitchens. I’m amazed anyone’s amazed. Service companies like Serco are some of the biggest leeches on society.

If only there was something you could do, as an individual, to register your disgust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Group

General Enquiries
Compass Group PLC
Registered Office:
Compass House
Guildford Street
Chertsey
Surrey
KT16 9BQ
UK

T: +44 1932 573 000
F: +44 1932 569 956

This surely has got to be the straw that breaks the camels back, right?  I am so close to pulling a Falling Down on the nearest Tory MP right now.

Francie Boyle has posted that those boxes are costing the tax payer £44, but my googlefu has let me down and I can't see a reference to this.

Covid is protecting the government as right now I want to march on Downing Street with pitchforks and vent my utter contempt for the bastards.

^ same here. If these ****s can screw anyone they will.

This is why I hate the Tories.

If you voted Tory, this is your fault.
No one else.
You.

I hope you're proud of yourselves.

This is why I hate the Tories.

If you voted Tory, this is your fault.
No one else.
You.

I hope you’re proud of yourselves

Pretty much this here too. This is all a choice, and the government and their supporting majority not only make the choice but plainly have no issues with it being a reasonable choice. They **** anyone over if there was money to be made out of it. They're shits. There used to be some decent Tories in the mix that brought some balance, though frequently not enough, but they've been culled or at least moved to irrelevance in the party.

I hate the motivation behind these choices, and I suspect that it's only possible to make these choices from an ivory tower and with obedient media engines to relay the messages you need. If you had to look people in the eye and explain it to them, you'd never get away with it, but they don't so they do.

But the UK votes them in, often in landslide fashion.

More people voted Labour or Libdem than Conservative in the last election, so all is not lost - it's our electoral system that delivers us this shit.

Surely this would be a great opportunity for the supermarkets to step up and offer to do the boxes for a vastly reduced cost. They have the stock, the infrastructure and if they all banded together to do it then the cost would be shared and they would get great publicity.

Anyone know how to suggest my idea to Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys etc by Twitter or similar?

If you voted Tory, this is your fault.

Wonder how much of it is down to Tory corruption / ideology vs good old fashioned government (not political) inability to run things efficiently. I know there's been a fair few clear cut cases of jobs for mates no one can argue with but I suspect there is also an element of someone in the civil service not looking at what they thought they had procured vs. what is being delivered, were basic service levels even stipulated in contracts, and who actually worded them. It's easy to blame the ploticians (unintentionally misspelling but I think I've leave it), especially at the moment with the most corrupt bunch we've ever seen, but they may not be the only cause.

WCA, supermarkets, obvious when you think about it, they provide £30 of food £30. With Asda we get free delivery for £6 per month, infrastructure and supply chains already in place, great PR for them, probably still do it at a profit with massively better delivery.

Wonder how much of it is down to Tory corruption / ideology vs good old fashioned government (not political) inability to run things efficiently. I know there’s been a fair few clear cut cases of jobs for mates no one can argue with but I suspect there is also an element of someone in the civil service not looking at what they thought they had procured vs. what is being delivered

..Blah blah consplaining (my term to invent a word)

Just bring the ****ing vouchers back.(except now the dumb ****s would have to pay the penalty clause for ending the contract early)

Why couldn't they just email a voucher for a supermarket of choice that couldn't be redeemed against cigs, booze or petrol?

The schools have the email addresses.

I’m just surprised that anyone’s surprised.

Never be surprised at what you opponents do, disappointed yes, surprised, no.

There are a lot of people who find it offensive that 'their' taxpayer money is being spent on food for kids(Cameron and Osbourne certainly did a job, didn't they?), yet don't even blink when it comes to their taxpayer money being 'transferred' on PPE contracts.

The absence of logic is disappointing, but in the same way that evangelicals voted for trump, they will dance with the devil, if the devil achieves their aims.

I doubt Cameron had any concern that when he used the term 'broken Britain', he was referring to the voters of his own party.

Wonder how much of it is down to Tory corruption / ideology vs good old fashioned government (not political) inability to run things efficiently.

There is an element of truth to that, aircraft carriers starting off at 3.2bn and ending up at over 6bn for instance, and the likes of serco and G4s constantly getting Government contracts. When it comes to the latter, its down to no other organisation being big enough to handle those contracts, so they end up in the hands of the shysters. Again. And again.

But this lot are corrupt, and their incompetence in Government make matters worse.

There are a lot of people who find it offensive that ‘their’ taxpayer money is being spent on food for kids

Plenty of "if you can't afford to feed your kids maybe you shouldn't have had them" type comments on this story on my local newspaper's facebook page. There really are some unfeeling heartless bastards out there.

This is a proper failure -and it reflects the culture in our public services and politicians leading it.

Why couldn’t they just email a voucher for a supermarket of choice that couldn’t be redeemed against cigs, booze or petrol?

The schools have the email addresses.

According to my lovable Daily Mail reading family member, because even if they can't spend the voucher on booze and fags, they sell them to the local drug dealer for £15 of drugs. Even the drug dealers need to buy food, so they then make the profit on the drugs and a commission on the transaction. Win win.

(probably completely untrue. I suspect that the vast majority of families on FSM/vouchers are not more concerned with feeding their kids than anything else, although I'm sure someone, somewhere has done this. But that's the other side of the echo chamber, that we don't see very much)

I doubt Cameron had any concern that when he used the term ‘broken Britain’

Not forgetting that Cameron wrote to his local council complaining about the level of service & got a terse letter back asking him what did he expect when local government funding was cut by x%, stupid isn't a new thing in the Conservative party

With Asda we get free delivery for £6 per month,

Sounds great!

BTW I've got a free bridge you can have if you PM me your bank details 😉

chartwells response: https://twitter.com/Chartwells_UK/status/1349050962531528705