to think a £7500 income cap on free school meals is a deathwish?

[thirdhill]

I'm so shocked to see the Children's Society analysis reported in most papers today about proposals to introduce a £7500 income cap on free school meals.

My initial reaction is this is sheer vindictiveness, taking away a meal from kids in dire need. Will the money spent on a daily lunch for a few children save our economy? Or perhaps we can be relied on to not care anymore? Or is there a wider picture nobody is reporting? My understanding is that the present income cap is £16k, which already seems a challenge for a family of say four.

Sarah Teather, the Minister, is a lib dem MP but this must tar both parties for many and seems an absolute deal breaker for mobile voters. Straw that broke the camel's back, death wish, etc.

Curious if anyone knows any more to this.

TIA

Ok flatpack

If this really affects 350000 children, and a school meal costs an average if £2.20, then if we say that's 5 days a week at 42 weeks a year I make that £162 million. Which is a tiny tiny fraction of the sums you've just quoted. So if you're saying cutting the Olympics or the jubilee spending won't address the debt, how can providing hot meals for the poorest, most desperate children in our society make any real difference?

I am partly responsible for this. I voted lib dem, I helped get these fuckers elected, and it makes me so viscerally angry I could cry. Nothing is sacred, nobody is too vulnerable to be attacked, and there is nothing any if us can do.

*Total Olympic bill: £10Bn

Jubilee bill: £2Bn

Welfare bill in 2012: £150Bn

Pensions bill in 2012: £137Bn

NHS bill in 2012: £125Bn

Education bill in 2012: £90Bn

Deficit in 2012: £170Bn*

do you have a figure of what free school meals actually cost as opposed to the total welfare bill? or figures for how much money is lost through tax avoidance and evasion in the UK, or through government adminstrative errors? what about MP's expenses? i'm sure there's room for movement there.

also, the jubilee and the olympics might 'only' total £12b but i'd rather they were cut than even 1 child being in school hungry.

I think there needs to be a cut off point, for sure, but that's just too low. This government keeps voicing that it aims to show the work shy that they are better off at work than on benefit, but there will be many who think the opposite once this is instigated. I wouldn't mind, but my daughter has lovely meals for £2.42 (she only goes on Friday as she's a fussy five y/o), but they rush her to eat to the point she didn't get a dessert the week before half term, and this has happened more than once. The portion sizes aren't great either- they don't do "seconds" any more as they did in my day. They also don't cater for allergies, so my son wont be partaking of any of them due to severe allergies.
I think there are better things they could cut- bonuses for utilities firms and banks for a start, and this ridiculous notion we can carry off an Olympics with Boris in charge- what a waste of money that has been.

beenthere - thank you! preens

Someone said above that she was astounded that anyone agreed with this and despairing that they did - actually I'm mildly encouraged by the fact that the vast majority see it for what it is and are angry.

flatpack: The jubilee and olympics are inconsequential compared to the costs of the welfare state.

so it's every penny counts when it's food out of kids mouth but just an inconsequential sum when it's having a big party?

odd priorities.

Cutting the Jubilee would pay for a fair few school dinners, wouldn't it, flatpack? If you had a choice which would you go for?

This is criminality pure and simple Dave.

And class war. Bastard.

Sorry folks, I'm too pissed off to be reasonable.

It's a question of philosophy for me. Do we want to live in a society where there is a strong element of divide and rule, where people are set against each other to argue about how to rob Peter to pay Paul?

Or do we want to grasp the opportunity that financial disaster has brought, in order to rebuild society in a more equitable way, starting with the very basics, such as access to water, food, heating/light, housing, education and health? After WW2 we were considerably poorer, yet we managed to find a way to do that via establishing the NHS, bringing in free secondary and higher education, and expanding the social welfare system considerably. It takes commitment and compassion to do this, but that is something the country had a lot of, at one time.

Yet at the moment, all too often it sounds to me like we are scrabbling about in the first category and missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in the second.

Just feed the fucking kids, as Geldof might put it. For fuck's sake.

flatpack, you see, the trouble is your lack of consistency.

First you say the list others want to cut will have no effect on the £170bn, then in the same breath you say cutting free school meals will have an impact on your lovely £170bn.

Are you cutting or not? Say very clearly that where you are is, not cutting your little party, while you hold up the shield of the NHS, schools and old people against the obviously uncivilised [at least to some] notion of taking a daily meal from a few kids, who may be yours one day.

We're not talking about a difficult matter that requires in-depth anaylsis. We know what these lunches cost. Does it make a difference to your £170bn? Do you dare say it does, with facts to back it up? Say how you think cutting a few lunches to deprived kids will make a difference. Maybe you're right but we'll never be convinced unless you show us how it will save our "unborn grandchildren".

I propose that we pay the FSM bill by imposing a radical new tax...

Impose VAT on caviar. It's currently zero rated.

Anyone who is in favour of this, just try this for a minute.

Imagine tomorrow you are killed in an accident. Your partner is unable to cope with your loss and slides into depression and alcoholism/prescription drug dependency. He loses his job, defaults on the rent/mortgage and alienates friends and family. They try and help but are rebuffed again and again. This goes on for a year, maybe two. Your family have to move to a cheaper area and lose touch with any support. Your partners health begins to suffer, he struggles to get up in the morning to see the kids off to school. They go to school as an escape, it reminds them of their old normal life, and they get their first meal of the day there. On bad days, their only meal of the day.

Now take that meal away from your child 2 years down the line. Still support it?

but our unborn grandchildren might not get to have million pound bonuses anymore that would be terrible!

oh wait, did i say our? i meant their.

The 'sins of the fathers being visited on the grandchildren' argument is an oft-quoted fallacy - we could have had massive economic growth by then and a more stable economy as a consequence, or we could have ticked along in a painful but steady repayment scenario (as we did after WW2).

However if we compromise on basic public nutrition and health needs, then we'll see the return of 1930s style legacy health problems visited on these very same putative grandchildren. We already have rickets, bedbugs and TB - what else do you think we'll start seeing around us if we continue to ignore basic needs?

And I REALLY don't want to offend or upset anyone with that, but it is 'there but for the grace of god go I'.

flatpack Whilst the welfare bill may be 150bn, FSM is not 150bn, it does not make up the entire welfare bill for this country. I also doubt the FSM programme comes to the 12bn you state the Jubilee and Olympics games are totalling. I know which I would rather see scrapped!

As I said in my previous posts, how about scrapping (or even drastically cutting) foreign aid to countries with their own space programme? Bankers bonuses, MP's second home allowances, the high speed rail link (lets be realistic, the way unemployment is going, who will be using the blasted thing anyway?)

There is a list as long as my arm of services or areas that could be and should be cut before we consider letting children go hungry.

The difference between spending money on the Olympics and spending money on school dinners is that the former is a one off, the latter is permanent, and the price only increases every year. We are not in the position we were in post World War 2. Then we made things that the whole world bought. Now we do not. As people have already said, any government can simply spend money that it hasn't got to keep people happy. It's a lot harder to make cuts and try and bring the country into line with what it can really afford.

That's the whole point, isn't it? Nearly all of us are 3-6 pay packets away from major financial discomfort, and 12-24 pay packets away from a degree of poverty we would be ashamed to admit to. It is that tie to earned income that keeps the economy ticking over. Part of that, however, is an acceptance that there will be times people are unable to help themselves. Another part of it is the acceptance of a small degree of abuse of a support system. However overall the benefits to the majority as well as the economy of providing a generous welfare net are so significant that previously this was not regarded as a major problem.

The difference between spending money on the Olympics and spending money on school dinners is that the former is a one off, the latter is permanent

Like the royal family, you mean?

wheredidiputit

*We have children going to the school i'm a governor at who have to get 2 buses to school which cost £3+/£2+ for each person for each bus. Then you have either £8.50 or £8.75 per child per week for school dinners.

These amount soon add up if you have more then one child. So what happen is the children don't come to school as the parents can not afford fares or food.*

I agree that's pretty rubbish. However, I still find it hard to get my head around parents not being able or willing to look after their kid's health and nutrition by throwing together a half decent meal. Don't they cook for themselves? I never had school dinners and my packed lunches were often just chocolate spread on bread and crisps. But we always had an evening meal, and despite the constant protesting on MN food is actually quite inexpensive if you stick to cheap vegetables, grains and pulses and eat meat sparingly.

The Royal family work for a living! How many other 85 and 90 year olds do you know that work?

Jesus, when did "children our the future" stop being relevant?

flatpack repeating the same arguments on all benefits threads, doesn't make the argument correct. You're right, to some extent, everyoe has their own special area. Yours is protecting this government and making everyone think they're wrong and that everything else is inconsequential, you say that about the Olympics, Defence spending and everything else that means this government may just have got something wrong. What I'd rather hear is just how do you justify taking the biggest proportion of necessary cuts from those who are least able to afford it. So far, you've shot everybody else down in flames, backed it up with the same old figures from various websites, and not said once, that actually penalising the disabled, children, the poor and vulnerable is wrong.

TOSN you bring it home, don't you?

I may not be exactly where you are. But I can see why some would say it's OK to turn a blind eye to those who we look to, and away from those we'd rather not be with.

Is this what it's all about? We're OK to let other people's kids sink, when as Bof says most of us are a few pay packets away from them. Just because some of them are not naice people, some even quite objectionable, it's OK to let them all drown? We use all sort of pseudo-science to persuade ourselves about exceptional vs recurrent costs, but in the end all it says is those kids don't eat, and that's OK.

Then there's no need to discuss it anymore, is there? Just look in the mirror and ask yourself who you are.