Free School Meals

[ahinton]

Then it is a straightforward matter of addressing the unhealthily high food/fat/sugar contents of pre-prepared meals.

But who can really do that? One might as well say that smoking should be banned, especially because of its drain on the NHS, but all that's happened is tax hikes and packaging revisions.

It's well past high time governments did something about regulating all this and saying, these are the maxima and if you don't stick to our rules your company will either be closed down or sequestered (as was once the polite euphemism for taken over) and handed to the workforce to manage for the benefit of a fitter, healthier happier society, and the former ceo's put on the basic benefits they demand of their political servants. Are governments afraid of upsetting the value of their holdings in the international markets in sugar and salt or something?

Up to a point, probably so, but what's a far larger part of the problem here is that so many packaged foods are imported and, were the UK government to try to impose such sanctions unilaterally, British packaged food companies would simply relocate and export their wares to Britain as far as possible. If the majority of governments got together to do this, that would be quite a different matter. That said, there's no great shortage of healthy fresh foodstuffs around, so it's a matter of individual choice and trying to educate people to make the most beneficial ones, as BO seems to suggest, but I've no idea who could finance such a project and how it could be guaranteed to work and produce the desired results.

[ahinton]

The old chestnut. I'm keeping down too many part time jobs to have time to cook.

It's about know-how. Perfectly possible to prepare food from onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbage chicken, milk cheese, eggs, bread etc and have a very busy work-life. But you've got to know how to do it.

The real challenge, and the real benefit concerns equipping people with necessary life-skills. Politicians, especially liberal ones don't like that shining pragmatism and good sense. Quick-win hits the spot for them.

It's not all about know-how (although of course it is partly so) and the work commitment thing is not a chestnut, as anyone who spends more than 12 hours a day working and commuting to and from work perhaps knows better than you appear to do.

[ahinton]

I support a forward-looking, relatively low-tax system where certain services (health, social services & welfare, education, water, gas, electricity, defence, communications &transport) are either delivered through state-owned industries or otherwise subsidised. Labour and capital engaged in entrepreneurial capitalism would be 'the way we get things done'.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but those two sentences seem to be somewhat incompatible to the extent that, if all of those things are to be delivered through state-owned industries or otherwise subsidised (by whom and how, if it's not to be the state?), it would be hard to envisage how a "low-tax system" sould be able to do all of this.

The credo would be based on a fundamental belief

Last time it was repetition; this time it's tautology. A credo based on a belief?...

in all people's ability and talent to make their way in life and be as self-sufficient as possible, with the security of knowing that if things do go awry, there is always help to get themselves back on track.

But what "things" and what might cause them to go "awry". Few people can affoprd to be so self-sufficient that they can fund their healthcare, their children's education, their energy usage, their transport, their homes &c. with ease, yet that "self-sufficiency" would be reduced by any part of all of this for which the state would assume part or full responsibility. Unless I'm missing something here (and it wouldn't be the first time), this appears to sound a little like trying to have it both ways.

[MrGongGong]

OK, so you're the forum's expert because you hang-out with school kids ?

I never said I was an expert on anything
(apart from Audiomulch)
Just wondered whether your experience was first or second hand ?

I thought it was about schools ?
and what young people eat when they are at them ?

I suggest you stop this ridiculous nonsense of being on the wagon
it's affected your brain

I've just found something that you might find useful

http://www.gatehousebooks.co.uk/

our children are fat.

???
Mine aren't

Gatehouse books might be useful for you I think

[french frank]

I think that accepting high taxation levels gives a green light to the kind of excesses that I alluded to. [...]

Re progressive taxation: yes, not everybody approves of the principle. How far our system is actually progressive is another thing. People repaying student loans have an effective top rate of almost 40% above £15k a year. That though, is part of another, and very complex discussion.

You keep replacing my 'relatively high' by 'high'. And I did specify a 'progressive' tax which can do exactly what you say - leave more money in the pockets of the low paid so that they could - if they wished - buy healthier foodstuffs. The tax system has been progressive in raising the Personal Allowance which has taken many of those on low incomes out of tax altogether. That doesn't mean that they will spend it on school dinners or even healthy packed lunches for their children.

Yes, student loans are part of another discussion, though I can't help remarking that the university application figures released by UCAS a couple of months ago showed that applications from disadvantaged areas were at their highest ever level in 2013, and students from this group are now almost twice as likely to apply as they were in 2004. The interrelationship between taxes and benefits is extremely complicated.

[teamsaint]

Actually, although raising tax threshholds (which I supported and thought was a good policy) looks progressive, it can in fact be regressive, since top rate tax payers actually benefit more than basic rate payers. In this case,(and I can't remember if the government compensated by reducing the higher rate threshholds) the regressive tax might actually be desirable.
Part of the problem with our current tax system is that marginal rates are so high for low end earners....EG almost 40% for the graduate on £16k. Calamitous, and unnecessary.

Re youngsters from disadvantaged areas; there are few decent employment opportunities, and just as importantly, they have figured out that if you take the full loans in the new loan regime, and, for example, reach top of the scale classroom teacher level, you will never pay the debt off, so you might as well borrow the lot, have a good time, and sod the consequences.

As to whether people will spend their post tax income wisely, do we not want a society where we trust ourselves to spend our own money well,wherever possible. Perhaps a smaller state might be a more responsive (to our needs) and responsible one. Well, it would be nice to think so.

[Beef Oven!]

It's not all about know-how (although of course it is partly so) and the work commitment thing is not a chestnut, as anyone who spends more than 12 hours a day working and commuting to and from work perhaps knows better than you appear to do.

Wrong. That is exactly what I have done myself, for years. I probably know more about long hours, long commutes and fitting everything else in than the people you are thinking of. And it is all about know how. Know how and will.

We should think more about how things can be done and produce solutions, not compensations. What's possible, not how things 'just can't be done'.

There are a lot of 'glass-half empty' and 'it can't be done' merchants in this forum. I understand that life might not have given many people what they expected or what they think they deserve, hence the low self-esteem that leads to all the negativity. But that should not prevent people from responding when a positive possibility is presented.

[french frank]

Actually, although raising tax threshholds (which I supported and thought was a good policy) looks progressive, it can in fact be regressive, since top rate tax payers actually benefit more than basic rate payers.

Not as a percentage of their income - it's peanuts. But the Tories got their way in lowering the highest rate, which, I agree, made the whole shebang 'less progressive' (but I don't think they reduced the higher rate threshholds - just the higher rate).

Re youngsters from disadvantaged areas; there are few decent employment opportunities, and just as importantly, they have figured out that if you take the full loans in the new loan regime, and, for example, reach top classroom teacher level, you will never pay the debt off, so you might as well borrow the lot, have a good time, and sod the consequences.

I don't know what evidence you have that they do 'borrow the lot'. It was built into the system that the institutions who raised their fees to the highest level had to provide a certain level of scholarships and bursaries for disadvantaged students.

As to whether people will spend their post tax income wisely, do we not want a society where we trust ourselves to spend our own money well,wherever possible.

Yes. But this comes close to Beefy's argument: trust the parents. And if the children suffer as a result, it's their parents' fault.

[amateur51]

I thought Jamie Oliver had tried to sort this out years ago.

Mind you, there is more than a touch of Mr Oliver about Mr Oven, I reckon.

[Beef Oven!]

I never said I was an expert on anything
(apart from Audiomulch)
Just wondered whether your experience was first or second hand ?

I thought it was about schools ?
and what young people eat when they are at them ?

I suggest you stop this ridiculous nonsense of being on the wagon
it's affected your brain

I've just found something that you might find useful

http://www.gatehousebooks.co.uk/

???
Mine aren't

Gatehouse books might be useful for you I think

Ah, Paediatric Doctor Doolittle has come home from talking to the kids!!

4 months and I'm off the wagon, and if you think I'm talking shite now, wait til the booze flows!

Mine aren't fat either, I was using the 'our children' label in a Sham 69, modern inclusive way.

[MrGongGong]

I thought Jamie Oliver had tried to sort this out years ago.

True
but I think it was derailed by those who fetishise "choice"

[teamsaint]

the evidence about "spending the lot" is anecdotal, but i have it on reasonable authority that the calculation about never paying it back at that level of earning is correct. And the expensive accommodation at universities is very popular !!

The question of whether the benefit of higher to higher rate tax payers is "peanuts " is a diversion. This is a measure that looks progressive, but isn't. The diversion is taking us away from discussing what truly progressive tax system might look like.

And back strictly on topic, surely at some point we have to trust parents..(even though some don't earn that trust). In our society, parents are now fined routinely for making the judgement that a family holiday is worth more to their children than another week in school. That sort of coercion worries me.
And we do have a free school meals safety net.

Perhaps governments might start by looking where power lies in our food industry and supply system. They could start by wandering down the first aisle in my local Tesco, which is routinely full of Booze, chocolate, crisps, and so on. A whole , very long aisle. Yum.
But bad.

[Beef Oven!]

Yes. But this comes close to Beefy's argument: trust the parents. And if the children suffer as a result, it's their parents' fault.

No. It's not about trust. It's about not having the state interfere with certain things.

[ahinton]

No. It's not about trust. It's about not having the state interfere with certain things.

So if it's not about trust and not about having the state interfere with things, what it is about, in your considered view?

[Beef Oven!]

So if it's not about trust and not about having the state interfere with things, what it is about, in your considered view?

It's not about anything. The state should not interfere in such matters.