Particularly coming from a government headed by a PM who has fathered an undisclosed number of kids, the exact number of which remains a mystery

Which I presume he supports them and isn’t claiming off the tax system – i am not sure that is of any relevance, is it?

There does seem to be a huge issue in society that a certain sector of the population are not able to support of feed their kids properly. And hence that needs to be fixed – by all sides working together to address the issues. Like education and health, it would be great if some sort of cross party group could be formed . But with current partisan politics that isn’t going to happen.
I cannot believe that holding back getting support to this that need it, is any parties interest. So local authorities would appear to be getting money that is not getting to the front line – or there needs to be a short term solution.
But if it is a chronic problem , then the system of funding has to be looked at.

Which I presume he supports them and isn’t claiming off the tax system

You presume so, do you? Presume away. We’re all just guessing because the prime minister won’t actually disclose how many of his offspring are out there in the world, never mind whether he supports them financially or not. If he won’t publicly acknowledge them, I doubt he’s having an awful lot to do with their upbringing.

Let’s not forget that this is a man recently looking for sympathy for having to ‘make do’ with his paltry £150,000 salary and described his £250,000 Daily Telegraph salary as ‘chickenfeed’, so thats quite a presumption you’re making there.

i am not sure that is of any relevance, is it?

Not relevant, you say? I think it’s very, very relevant when you’re head of a government who are accusing others of being lazy and feckless, and are lecturing those very people on both morality and personal finance. People in glass houses and all that…

It’s total ****ing hypocrisy!

Unless I’m reading it wrong, that implies or accepts that you shouldn’t have kids if you’re already know you’re struggling financially. Better to say that we live in an extremely rich country, where everyone should have enough wealth to be able to support a family?

Sorry that was poorly worded on my part. (keyboard rage) I basically mean what you said. Personal finance should’t dictate if your “allowed” to have kids or not and if people need extra support it should be there no questions asked.

To further add to my rage some moron Tory was on tv this morning claiming the reason he voted the deal down was because of how late Labour put it forwards. Its all some political game to them they are in their parliament bubble of free meals and fail to see the consequences of their actions.

There does seem to be a huge issue in society that a certain sector of the population are not able to support of feed their kids properly. And hence that needs to be fixed – by all sides working together to address the issues.

Don’t know if that’s possible because the tories are idealogically opposed to the welfare state being supportive enough and the living wage, whilst encouraging things like zero hours contracts.

Has anyone floated the idea that all school meals should be free….?
Isn’t this the continuation of Dave’s “Big society” where charities and private individuals step in to provide the safety net that Government should be providing?
(Don’t get me started on food banks and that they are a part of life in the UK in the 21st century)!

Boris has just answered questions where he wouldn’t say whether he’d had any contact with Marcus Rashford (obviously he hasn’t then), but is doubling down and refusing to back down on the issue of free school meals.

It seems a very, very odd thing to dig in and take a stand, then double down on in the middle of a pandemic where people are experiencing real hardship. Particularly when the sums involved are relatively trifling and the present optics are absolutely awful.

Then again, maybe it just perfectly illustrates exactly how out of touch with reality him and his chums are.

Don’t know if that’s possible because the tories are idealogically opposed to the welfare state being supportive enough and the living wage, whilst encouraging things like zero hours contracts.

Zero hours contracts should be made illegal. I have never understood how it is for the good of the country / workforce for them to exist.

Boris continues to not be able to see the big picture of anything. If the government feel they are doing what they need to, and local authorities are the issue, then they need to communicate it.
If not , then they need to come up with a strategy which works to address the issue.
Boris is proving to have awful management skills and no leadership qualities..

Boris is proving to have awful management skills and no leadership qualities..

Indeed. It’s not just Boris. It’s the lot of them. They’re just aimlessly drifting along, at the mercy of events they should have been on top of

With free school meals, they’ve already been here once. They had to embarrassingly backtrack and U-turn then. They knew the school holidays were coming up this time. They knew they would be faced with the same demands this time too. Yet here we are again. Like groundhog day.

What do we think is going to happen at Christmas? Exactly the same.

I heard that odious little turd Hancock on R4 this morning with his awful, oily little voice praising Rashford as only a totally insincere and patronising person could.

You could almost hear him rolling his eyes at having to say nice things about Rashford and then the cynical grin as he remembered that it is only another lie that he needs to tell to get through another day.

It seems a very, very odd thing to dig in and take a stand, then double down on in the middle of a pandemic where people are experiencing real hardship. Particularly when the sums involved are relatively trifling and the present optics are absolutely awful.

Despite the fact that its an astonishing act of political self-harm, they just can’t help themselves because class war is in their DNA. They have zero empathy or compassion for anyone who might need help. They’ve had periods when they managed to hide it under Major and Cameron, but in times like these when they have unchallenged power, they mask drops. The other element to this is racism. They’re not going to be told what to do by a working class black man who grew up on an estate.

They’ve had periods when they managed to hide it under Major and Cameron, but in times like these when they have unchallenged power, they mask drops.

Bloody worries me when you say they managed to hide it under Cameron! It’s all relative I suppose, but aren’t we here in some part because of the austerity measures put in place by the Tories under Cameron?

Children of all ages living in households on income-related benefits may be eligible for free school meals.

In England, about 1.3 million children claimed for free school meals in 2019 – about 15% of state-educated pupils.

Analysis by the Food Foundation estimates a further 900,000 children in England may have sought free school meals since the start of the pandemic.

That’s from the latest BBC article. From memory, to be eligible you need to be in receipt of some form of income related benefit, or if you’re on UC your household income needs to be less than £7400 a year. So according to that it could now apply to 25% of state school pupils 🙁

In June the Trussell Trust wrote…

Then there is the obvious question about how far £63 million will stretch. We suggested that to bring England in line with other UK nations, which already have comparable schemes in operation, annual cost would be about £250m. This money will be used up quickly, then, and must be topped up after a period of three months just to keep English councils in line with others across the UK.

I’m not aware this was disputed by johnson or any of his polyps; 4 months ago it was forecast the £63 million would not last beyond early September but tories are still referring back to that now spent funding.

First Find the Ducking Facts.

Despite the fact that its an astonishing act of political self-harm, they just can’t help themselves because class war is in their DNA. They have zero empathy or compassion for anyone who might need help. They’ve had periods when they managed to hide it under Major and Cameron, but in times like these when they have unchallenged power, they mask drops. 

They don’t regard it as political self-harm as they are appealing to the artificially generated (via media, social media etc) sense of victimhood of the overworked (but better off for being in a job – just) and underpaid. This is the crowning achievement of this bunch of wreckers. They have nearly totally eradicated any sense of societal cooperation. Instead of “We need a government that works for everyone” the prevailing attitude is “I don’t want a government that helps shirkers at my expense”.

They have created a ‘society’ where people are more concerned about someone else getting ‘undeserved’ help than questioning why we can’t all be more equal and (in the majority) better off. “Greed is Good” is more of a motto now than it ever was under Thatcher. Nasty politics designed to appeal to nasty tendencies.

The other element to this is racism. They’re not going to be told what to do by a working class black man who grew up on an estate.

And this. The image I got in my head when the slimy little turd Hancock was patronising Rashford is that he would (given the chance) like to pat Rashford on the head and say “Wow, well done you for bringing this up, but don’t worry your footballer’s brain with complicated stuff like this, there’s a good boy”.

The fact that Hancock would have to stand on a step ladder to pat Rashford on the head is the one thing that gives me any amusement at all out of this.

Good old Nige!

As the year 2020 gets yet more and more bizarre, here’s the latest ‘through the looking glass’ moment. The Brexit party launch a campaign to back Marcus Rashfords call for free school meals for poor kids (I presume even the ones who are the wrong colour) and stick the boot into the Tory’s, who they stood all their candidates down for at the last election.

The Government was happy to help adults to eat out in August, but now it lets the poorest children go hungry during the school holidays.

Does this seem fair to you? pic.twitter.com/EhmLzERFo6

— The Brexit Party (@brexitparty_uk) October 26, 2020

Judging from the comments underneath, it’s fair to say they’ve somewhat spectacularly misjudged their core support. God knows how. It surely must be pretty predictable what the average Brexit/UKIP voter would think about this?

It looks like their experiment with becoming the party of social justice isn’t going well

In response to any MP asking why people have children when they cannot afford them, I’d like to know why they became an MP if it wasn’t to help the people in their constituency that need it.

They have created a ‘society’ where people are more concerned about someone else getting ‘undeserved’ help than questioning why we can’t all be more equal and (in the majority) better off. “Greed is Good” is more of a motto now than it ever was under Thatcher. Nasty politics designed to appeal to nasty tendencies.

The issue of people being worried about the “undeserving poor” has been round for well over a 150 years as a Victorian concept and probably existed earlier

Vouchers in place of free school meals may or may not be the best long-term answer to the problem of children not getting fed properly. However expecting people who are potentially on less than their previous low income to cope without help isn’t really on. In the absence of a better solution it should have been a no brainer to just leave it running until something better was in place.

The current government seems to be myopic about what improves children’s life chances, giving the opportunity to succeed seems about as conservative (or any other party) a policy as you can get. You don’t do that by abandoning the kids of struggling families, as Rashford says, it’s never the kids fault

Binners – I’m loving that Brexit party ad – mainly because my tosser of a tory MP is ex-UKIP and has been vocal with his defence of Boris 🤣

Hopefully Mr Jenkinson is having a really bad week having been owned on twitter about ‘poor people swapping food for drugs’ and now his ex-paymasters showing how out of touch he is.

One of this morning’s government mouthpieces let slip the phrase “This government has already been extremely generous…” when pressed on the free school meals issue.

That throwaway line struck me as epitomising everything that’s wrong with the Tory mindset. When you’re the government, supporting people in need isn’t a measure of your benevolence – it’s your responsibility to do so.

They just don’t see it that way, helping people less fortunate than they are is not why they aspire to govern.

They just don’t see it that way, helping people less fortunate than they are is not why they aspire to govern.

To people like Boris it is their ‘born to rule’ birthright and entitlement

Like all people who’s wealth and privilege have allowed them to have all the odds stacked in their favour from birth, their whole philosophy is that everything is left to ‘The Market’ to sort out.

This allows them to refuse to acknowledge the hand that they were so extraordinarily lucky in being dealt, and also handily absolves them from any moral obligation to anyone who hasn’t had the same huge advantages in life.

That’s why, even as they toss their loose change at the poorest and least fortunate in society, they still bitterly resent even that

In response to any MP asking why people have children when they cannot afford them, I’d like to know why they became an MP if it wasn’t to help the people in their constituency that need it.

I think we all know the answer to that…

theotherjonv
Free Member

In response to any MP asking why people have children when they cannot afford them, I’d like to know why they became an MP if it wasn’t to help the people in their constituency that need it.

Answer, quite often:

“I ****ing could afford it when I had the ****ing kids, but then you drove the ****ing economy off a ****ing cliff, twice, and 10 ****ing years later I can’t just abandon them like the ****ing PM did with his, you ****ing ****-****.”

Lolz. The pub owner in Andrea Jenkyns FB post I put a pic up of has just been on look north, with bags of food to donate to kids, saying how bad it is the govt isn’t stepping up…

I think Northwind should stand against Boris at the next election

In response to any MP asking why people have children when they cannot afford them, I’d like to know why they became an MP if it wasn’t to help the people in their constituency that need it.

Surely you’d just flip it around – why have we built a society that provides a barrier to the most basic drive of our species.

I think Boris is prevented from going public about being father of some kids by the legal agreement with the mother. They probably took a cut in money terms in order to avoid the embarrassment.

Guardian front page – sunak pissed off and Treasury saying that williamson didn’t request additional funding to cover half-term FSMs…
https://www.tomorrowspapers.co.uk/guardian-front-page-2020-10-27/

Just got back from a holiday with no internet etc…… catching up on what’s happened….

WHAT THE ACTUAL ****?!?

If you are a politician and there are children going hungry on your watch, you have failed. End of conversation. It’s a knotty issue for sure, but actively voting against putting a (very cheap) sticky plaster over it takes a special type of scumbag.

This really does feel like in-the-thick-of-it at this point – why on earth would you oppose a bill to feed starving kids?! I mean, morality aside, if you (a professional politician) didn’t see the red flags sticking out of this thing a mile away, then you have no business choosing your own clothes in the morning, let alone running the country. And, this has already played out once – why on earth did they think this was going to go differently a second time around?!?

As much as I’m incensed by the lack of compassion shown by the people who are supposed to represent the population, and the insight this gives into their character – I’m equally enraged about the complete and almost absolute incompetence of these individuals who have been put in charge of steering the country through one of the most challenging periods in recent history.

Guardian front page – sunak pissed off and Treasury saying that williamson didn’t request additional funding to cover half-term FSMs

Who? Williamson? The name sounds like it should be familiar, but I can’t quite place him…

I sometimes forget that we actually have an Education Secretary. Has anyone seen him lately? Is he ok? He was last sighted at his last entirely-predictable debacle.

Do you think he’ll break cover next time? When we go through all this again at Christmas? Or do you think he’ll manage to stay undercover for a whole year, until next summers totally predictable ‘Exams Fiasco’?

If you are a politician and there are children going hungry on your watch, you have failed.

It’s a remarkably complex issue to fix as the Labour government found when Marcus was growing up

The solution in a pandemic is different to the one in normal times, they should have just done it and worked on improving it as it’s going to be at least 12 months before normality

I think the “Gavin never asked for the money” is suspicious, there is a strong likelihood they were informally told not to ask again. The PR for Rishi is prepping for the top job

I’m equally enraged about the complete and almost absolute incompetence of these individuals who have been put in charge of steering the country through one of the most challenging periods in recent history.

All parties constantly trawl for good candidates, you can always raise the standard by becoming one yourself or even stand as an independent

Judging from the comments underneath, it’s fair to say they’ve somewhat spectacularly misjudged their core support.

Out of morbid curiosity I clicked on that Twitter feed. Read the first 5 responses to that post and then had to leave, thoroughly depressed that people in our society are so ignorant

All parties constantly trawl for good candidates, you can always raise the standard by becoming one yourself or even stand as an independent

Exactly, the front bench of the Governmnet clearly shows we are living in a meritocracy where anyone can become leader through intelligence and hard work, and we are certainly not being ruled over by a bunch of thick as pigshit overprivileged Bullingdon bullies whose only achievement was to be born to fortune and opportunity that they ensure only a select few will ever have.

Exactly, the front bench of the Governmnet clearly shows we are living in a meritocracy where anyone can become leader through intelligence and hard work, and we are certainly not being ruled over by a bunch of thick as pigshit overprivileged Bullingdon bullies whose only achievement was to be born to fortune and opportunity that they ensure only a select few will ever have.

Other parties are available

I’m not making any assumptions on the poster’s social background, he may fit your description

I think the “Gavin never asked for the money” is suspicious, there is a strong likelihood they were informally told not to ask again. The PR for Rishi is prepping for the top job

We’ll never know whether or not williamson put his hand up and said…’please Sir, think of the children…’
It definitely adds to the ‘williamson is incompetent’ narrative which will see him
re-shuffled out of education – and possibly the clown circus.
As for sunak being groomed for the top job – only if Cummings and gove see him as a useful idiot to replace johnson who’s now proved to be a useless idiot to them.
Any sign of independence by sunak and that equates to shitting in his own nest.

Exactly, the front bench of the Governmnet clearly shows we are living in a meritocracy where anyone can become leader through intelligence and hard work, and we are certainly not being ruled over by a bunch of thick as pigshit overprivileged Bullingdon bullies whose only achievement was to be born to fortune and opportunity that they ensure only a select few will ever have.

Troll – or sarcasm; not clear which it is.
They have all sold their principles for a place at the trough.
Intelligence, you say.
Did (and does) johnson not know and understand that he has been used and manipulated by cummings and gove?

One of this morning’s government mouthpieces let slip the phrase “This government has already been extremely generous…” when pressed on the free school meals issue.

The main thing wrong with that is that it is ultimately OUR money, not the governments and if WE want it to be spent on such things as not having starving kids in the country that is what the government that WE elected should be doing. I am sure the MPs would have been judging the sentiment of their constituents on this as they are after all there to represent them…

The main thing wrong with that is that it is ultimately OUR money, not the governments and if WE want it to be spent on such things as not having starving kids in the country that is what the government that WE elected should be doing

That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how parliament works.
Our elected representatives take decisions on our behalf; those decisions do not necessarily represent the views of the majority of their constituents.
I note your ellipsis.

Did (and does) johnson not know and understand that he has been used and manipulated by cummings and gove?

He knows, but the extent probably varies week-to-week. He has used them too. What other circumstances would result in such a ridiculous oaf getting to be Prime Minister?

Boris is basically ‘done’ now. He now gets to say ‘I was PM, you know’ for the rest of his days. Ghosted biographies, constant media appearances, a seat in the Lords and (in some quarters) the best chat-up line there is.

Sorted. Job jobbed. He really doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything else.

One of this morning’s government mouthpieces let slip the phrase “This government has already been extremely generous…”

I don’t think we can dispute that the government has been very, very generous indeed…

to its mates.

It’s lavished upon them billions and billions and billions of pounds of OUR money. Its been a pinchfart when it comes to the rest of us though