The free school meals fiasco

A masterclass in deafness of tone…

When Nigel Farage calls you mean, you know you’ve taken a severe wrong turn. What the government’s done here really confuses me; it’s a political no brainer. Before we go into the morality of it, let’s think about the political optics. We could splash the cash on Eat Out To Help Out, but we can’t feed kids during the holidays in the midst of a GLOBAL PANDEMIC and potentially record shattering economic collapse. Just feed the kids, for god’s sake.

As has been said time and time over; we all know this is a sticking plaster, it patently doesn’t address the long standing problems with our society that mean kids go hungry. But how about you spend a little money and ensure, while we have those discussions about how to fix the widespread problems, that kids aren’t going hungry. I can’t think of many people who with the power to feed hungry kids at a manageable cost wouldn’t do it.

Tories don’t help themselves in terms of PR do they? Seeing them flounder all over the media defending the callousness people very clearly see, it’s like watching robots. Are these people human? Have they met working class people? Do they have empathy for hungry children? Going on about responsibility and dependency is of course a dog whistle against working people, stigmatizing and blaming them for an economic system that aims to punish them. But also, it’s idiotic on the face of it. Even if we lived in a world full of irresponsible parents, wouldn’t we want to feed kids going hungry no matter who’s fault it is they haven’t got food on the table?

This was tone deafness taken to an art form. The nasty party back to it’s old milk snatching tricks. A moral abomination, shame on this government, and shame on every MP who has let children in their constituency go hungry.