Free School Meals

[Beef Oven!]

The main purpose of the policy is not to save parents money: it's to ensure all children get a good meal every day.

What riles those who don't need any financial help with feeding their children healthily every day is that they are paying for the meals the less well-off families get. They can spend their school meal savings on luxury goods if they like, but they better make sure they're setting aside enough to pay their income tax - because 'the savings' will be clawed back from them. Isn't that why they think it's a bad idea?

There is no question that children need a good meal every day and should get one (at least!). But I don't think that the way to ensure all children get a good meal everyday is to get the state to provide it for them, through a local school. It would be better to help parents, people, whoever, to make feeding their family an important task to carry out for themselves. A basic life-skill/responsibility that we need to enable them with, not pass it on to the state.

We should equip people with the skills and understanding to know what to select as good food and how to prepare a good meal, rather than creating a dependency.

With food being relatively cheap (e.g. compared to the 1970s), aren't we trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist? i.e. people lacking the funds to provide a good meal for their family. And if they can't afford it? They can be given a free school meals. Just like they always have. That's what free school meals used to be for.

I find it all a little bit de-humanising and Big Brother.

[MrGongGong]

I find it all a little bit de-humanising and Big Brother.

So let me get this straight
Attempting to modify the behaviour of thousands of parents is a good thing
And protecting children is a bad thing

The first is obviously fine
And the second is a bit "Big Brother"

Fetishising choice isn't always a good idea

[french frank]

But I don't think that the way to ensure all children get a good meal everyday is to get the state to provide it for them, through a local school.

The key word being 'ensure'. I disagree with you: I think the best/only way to ensure small children get a good meal is to supply it. However much you 'educate' (at some permanent cost, no doubt) that does not ensure that all children get a good meal, and children should not be made the victims of their parents' fecklessness or incapacities.

Amateur alludes to Food Banks - the present considerable use of which would argue that all people don't have enough money to feed their families. Though, of course, if people don't have a food bank near them, they can always get into their cars and drive to the closest one; or beg off their neighbours.

What percentage of the UK population would consider free meals for Reception and Years 1 & 2 children (up to 7) to be 'dehumanising and Big Brother'? Why should it be moreso than any other 'universal' benefit, e.g. free prescriptions for the elderly? That's surely less dehumanising than being singled out as needing to 'live on the State'?

[ahinton]

There is no question that children need a good meal every day and should get one (at least!). But I don't think that the way to ensure all children get a good meal everyday is to get the state to provide it for them, through a local school. It would be better to help parents, people, whoever, to make feeding their family an important task to carry out for themselves. A basic life-skill/responsibility that we need to enable them with, not pass it on to the state.

We should equip people with the skills and understanding to know what to select as good food and how to prepare a good meal, rather than creating a dependency.

But who ae "we" and at whose expense could this happen? If it is at least in part the expense of chool meals provision to which you object, why would you necessarily feel more confortable with supplanting such public expenditure on public expenditure on educating and equipping people as you suggest above?

With food being relatively cheap (e.g. compared to the 1970s), aren't we trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist? i.e. people lacking the funds to provide a good meal for their family. And if they can't afford it? They can be given a free school meals. Just like they always have. That's what free school meals used to be for.

I find it all a little bit de-humanising and Big Brother.

...and presumably you'd prefer means-testing for eneitlement or otherwise to free school meals - but, again, who'd foot the bill for that?

[Serial_Apologist]

From next week's Radio Times, for Tues 18th March

"Food Prices: the Shocking Truth

9.00pm Channel 4

DOCUMENTARY Jimmy Doherty knows how to get our attention. He kicks off his look at the global hike in food costs with a barrage of stats. The price of a weekly groceries shop in Britain has gone up by a quarter in six years. Beef is up 64 per cent, coffee 41 per cent.

So why is this happening? Doherty traces the improvements in farming that lowered prices from the 1950s onwards, and the series of recent global shocks that have reversed the process. He tours farms and factories worldwide and makes big, troubling issues (extreme weather, geo-politics, draining of aquifers) palatable. Look out for the scene where he visits an Indian government rice stockpile - it's big. DAVID BUTCHER"

Looks to me like yet another apologia for how the global food industry maintains its profits at the expense of farming communities and consumers worldwide - I hope I'm proved wrong.

[Beef Oven!]

The key word being 'ensure'. I disagree with you: I think the best/only way to ensure small children get a good meal is to supply it. However much you 'educate' (at some permanent cost, no doubt) that does not ensure that all children get a good meal, and children should not be made the victims of their parents' fecklessness or incapacities.

Amateur alludes to Food Banks - the present considerable use of which would argue that all people don't have enough money to feed their families. Though, of course, if people don't have a food bank near them, they can always get into their cars and drive to the closest one; or beg off their neighbours.

What percentage of the UK population would consider free meals for Reception and Years 1 & 2 children (up to 7) to be 'dehumanising and Big Brother'? Why should it be moreso than any other 'universal' benefit, e.g. free prescriptions for the elderly? That's surely less dehumanising than being singled out as needing to 'live on the State'?

Obviously we are entitled to have a different view on where to draw the line. I am concerned about an overbearing nanny-state robbing people of their instincts and you are prepared to run that risk, or deny that risk. Either way is fine, it's what makes the world go 'round, as we used to say.

[Beef Oven!]

So let me get this straight
Attempting to modify the behaviour of thousands of parents is a good thing
And protecting children is a bad thing

The first is obviously fine
And the second is a bit "Big Brother"

Fetishising choice isn't always a good idea

You've not got it quite straight, if I may put it that way.

If we assume that the state needs to take action to feed the nation's children, then I'd prefer an enabling, and/or facilitating approach, rather than rendering the parents/carers families redundant in the issue.

[Beef Oven!]

...and presumably you'd prefer means-testing for eneitlement or otherwise to free school meals - but, again, who'd foot the bill for that?

Of course you would only give free meals to people who could not afford them. Why would you give circa £1,300 to someone on a six-figure salary, just because he has 3 little kids to feed. I would have just gone out and bought a Genelec sub-woofer with the money!

Who foots the bill for free school meals based on need? The tax payer will. A perfectly legitimate use of tax revenues I'd say.

[ahinton]

Of course you would only give free meals to people who could not afford them. Why would you give circa £1,300 to someone on a six-figure salary, just because he has 3 little kids to feed. I would have just gone out and bought a Genelec sub-woofer with the money!

Who foots the bill for free school meals based on need? The tax payer will. A perfectly legitimate use of tax revenues I'd say.

That wasn't what I asked; I questioned who would fund the means-testing necessary to implement what you'd like to see happen (and, by implication, the investigation and rectification of all the procedural and judgemental errors identified and arising as a consequence. of such attempted means-testing).

[Beef Oven!]

That wasn't what I asked; I questioned who would fund the means-testing necessary to implement what you'd like to see happen (and, by implication, the investigation and rectification of all the procedural and judgemental errors identified and arising as a consequence. of such attempted means-testing).

Same people who do the means testing and administration now. We have means tested free school meals already. Perhaps you hadn't realised.

[MrGongGong]

I think mr OXO might be suffering from "common sense" syndrome here
It's quite possible that the cost of working out who is entitled to some things is much higher than the cost of giving it to everyone and paying for it in tax...

What we do have now is a sad return to the attitude of the "undeserving poor"
and
Parents don't own their children
for those who maybe aren't very competent at providing them with good food for whatever reason it's a simple thing to provide food to those who need it rather than spending huge amounts of money working out who does and who doesn't.

But none of this is your point really
which is that Nick Clegg is a dick !
to which the answer is (of course)
"no shit Sherlock"
being a bit of a knob doesn't mean that he sometimes might have a good idea at times though

I suspect the rabid ones you spend time with would prefer something rather more extreme
along the lines of striped pyjamas ?
OR even a special badge to indicate the shame of having to rely on charity ?

[Beef Oven!]

I think mr OXO might be suffering from "common sense" syndrome here
It's quite possible that the cost of working out who is entitled to some things is much higher than the cost of giving it to everyone and paying for it in tax...

What we do have now is a sad return to the attitude of the "undeserving poor"
and
Parents don't own their children
for those who maybe aren't very competent at providing them with good food for whatever reason it's a simple thing to provide food to those who need it rather than spending huge amounts of money working out who does and who doesn't.

But none of this is your point really
which is that Nick Clegg is a dick !
to which the answer is (of course)
"no shit Sherlock"
being a bit of a knob doesn't mean that he sometimes might have a good idea at times though

I suspect the rabid ones you spend time with would prefer something rather more extreme
along the lines of striped pyjamas ?
OR even a special badge to indicate the shame of having to rely on charity ?

So you think it's a good idea to give free school meals to the fattest kids in Europe and let parents on say, a joint income of £200k, have their kids' food paid for? Well you and Clegg are BOTH knobs.

And WE ALREADY HAVE MEANS TESTED FREE SCHOOL MEALS!

[MrGongGong]

So you think it's a good idea to give free school meals to the fattest kids in Europe and let parents on say, a joint income of £200k have their kids' food paid for? Well you and Clegg are BOTH knobs.

You have proved my point exactly
Thanks

You made an assumption that isn't based on any evidence or fact
and assumed that there are only two ways of doing things

You said that
I didn't say anything about how much people earn
or how "fat" anyone was

Been reading the Daily Mail today ?

Political parties aren't really interested in nutrition
what they are interested in is getting power
sometimes that means appealing to so called
"hard working families" and other such nonsense phrases

It IS possible to address the deep issues of food, where it comes from, who grows it and how we can develop a more sustainable and healthy relationship with it. BUT no one in politics comes near that, but there are many others who do !

These people do

http://www.globalgeneration.org.uk/

as does this extraordinary young woman

http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

[Beef Oven!]

You have proved my point exactly
Thanks

You made an assumption that isn't based on any evidence or fact
and assumed that there are only two ways of doing things

You said that
I didn't say anything about how much people earn
or how "fat" anyone was

Been reading the Daily Mail today ?

I don't read the Daily Mail, what have I missed today?

[MrGongGong]

I don't read the Daily Mail, what have I missed today?

Try reading what people ACTUALLY say
rather than skimming it and making assumptions

(What you missed was a pile of shite anyway)

I'm sure you read this one

Former UKIP MEP accuses Nigel Farage of paying his wife and former mistress using public money

As David Bryne would have said