To think this 'Austerity Day' is one of the most patronising things I've ever seen?

[NoHunsHereHun]

St Paul's Girls school having to eat baked potatoes and fresh fruit for lunch. For a day. I mean FFS, there are SO many better ways to help. Volunteering at a food bank for one.
www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-44578499

*sorry wrong thread.

Yeah, the austerity meal should've been microwave burgers...

I had a lovely meal at a private school once - there was a range of options but I do remember the lovely salmon fillet in creamy white wine sauce for the main (three courses, with an option for cheese and biscuits for those who weren't full already) How the other half live...

There are those that think their children have an insight into disadvantage because they do a bit of volunteering for DofE.

“Poorface” is not an edifying look.

"A huge limitation on choice", but you can still have something healthy, that you'd normally choose and that you enjoy.

That's not austerity, and gives no concept of what people go through in real life. Austerity is zero choice and little joy or nutrition in the food you have. It's not knowing when you'll next eat, it's not having any means of cooking even when you do have food.

I wouldn't want any child to experience poverty, but I do think some pithy experiment like this is counterproductive.

Classic SPGS 😂😂😂

I think it's ridiculous - it's a perfectly healthy and tasty meal. Why not try tinned spaghetti on toast or instant noodles in a pita bread (either with tinned meatballs if the food bank was generous enough). Why not give them an accidentally overcooked meal or an undercooked one (sorry - the meter wasn't topped up so electricity got cut off) and tell them it's that or nothing. To the students, that "austerity" meal will be an interesting break from their normal fare. They learnt nothing - they left the table with their bellies full and feeling good about themselves. All the more ready to create policies that will affect the poor the most. But that's ok because they know what it's like, right?

They still have their posh dinner to look forward to, exotic holidays (or any holidays at all) and the like. They have hope for the future - short- and long-term. They're not wearing clothes they've outgrown a while ago and worn-out shoes while sitting on a sofa that is all lumpy and uncomfortable but cannot be replaced in the foreseeable future. They're not watching their parents darting about the store with a calculator in hand hunting for 10p reductions in the hope of getting fresh food only to get to the check-out and have their card rejected through no fault of their own (benefits stopped with no notification; admin error; you will be paid back) and suffer the shame of it and the attitude of the cashier. So yeah, YANBU.

I really hate this kind of thing and I think those "sleep out for the homeless" events are the same.
It's one thing to be surrounded by a group of 10 people you trust, with a mobile phone and portable charger, a £50 sleeping bag and bag of snacks and hot drinks In a flask for 12 hours. It's a very different thing to be dirty (because of lack of facilities) cold because your sleeping bag has holes in, no
Food and no drinks on you and completely alone and cold in the dark, in a place where you could easily be attacked, robbed or worse, with no phone, or no charge,
To call 999 if anything happens.

The same as its one thing to have a healthy but frugal lunch for one day and another to have £15 to feed yourself for 2 weeks and to have nothing but a boiled potato or a bowl of plain pasta to look forward to day in day out.

I hate these events, it's no better than middle class virtue signalling and I dearly wish they'd fuck off. These events and days don't help people like me and my family. If you want to help give your time, if you can't give your time then quietly give a donation of food, toys (where applicable) or money. A slideshow of the facts, maybe a short documentary on foodbanks and a few statistics about how many people go hungry every year and a letter home asking for a £2.50 donation to the trussel trust or some dried foods for the nearest
Food bank would probably hit home more and not come across as if being in poverty is something to try and fail to imitate.

I think calling it “Austerity Day” is a bit off but apart from that it’s a nice idea. On Fridays during lent at my school our students can opt for a cuppa soup and a roll for £1 instead of the (very popular) fish or pizza and chips that are on offer from the canteen. The proceeds go to charity. It’s good for teenagers to learn to make little sacrifices for someone else. A simpler meal might not be a huge thing but it does teach an important lesson. We could raise more money with non-uniform days or cake sales but I think it’s important to teach that sometimes you have to give up something you want or like to help others.

At our children’s school they do a lunch replacement once in a while with the proceeds going towards the nuns’ charitable works in the community (Catholic school). The replacement lunch is a bowl of rice and a glass of water.

noblegiraffe

That track immediately came to my mind as well especially

^But still you'll never get it right,
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night,
Watching roaches climb the wall,
If you called your Dad he could stop it all^

It's patronising.

We did it at my private school it was called frugal lunch. I fail to see the issue. How else can you educate rich kids?

Clearly the rich kids weren’t actually educated by frugal lunch if they can’t see the issue with it.

"e always had "family fast day " too at school as people above mention. It's been going on since at least the 1960s in schools actually and is a very good idea. If people don't like it then we can just ensure the money collected doesn't go to their charities and instead to a different one. many religions do it too not just Catholics. Mormons do as well. it helps children remember others do not have as much as they do.

Do they have charitable status? Maybe they could do it every day and really earn it.

However I object to the political word austerity being used by the school. Austerity is ensuring we have enough money to feed the poor. It does not mean the poor go unfed. St Paul's is making a left wing political point here and thus annoying everyone. They could just have called it fasting for the starving in Africa or something like that.

The name is what jars. Horribly.

I was at another school for training on the day I saw this on Twitter. We had lunch with the students (SEMH school, provides lunch free of charge to all students) and it's pretty much exactly what we had. Now, to be fair, most state schools are in austerity mode now so...

Frugal lunch. Austerity lunch. FGS for most people that would just be called ‘lunch’.

If they were having rice and water like another school mentioned by a PP then it wouldn’t sound so bloody patronising.

But to be so well-off as to see a perfectly normal meal as somehow a deprivation just goes to show how out of touch some people really are.

They could just have called it fasting for the starving in Africa or something like that.

Neatly making my point about being out of touch. A lunch of jacket spuds, beans, coleslaw, fruit is nowhere near fasting. Nowhere near austerity. It’s not even frugal.

All they'll have learned is how bloody good a jacket potato is when you're hungry!

I still maintain that the point the school is making is being made through the lack of choice as much as through the actual food on offer.

noblegiraffe and Sarahconnor1, the extended version is especially relevant:

''Cause everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh
Yeah and the chip stain and grease will come out in the bath

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why''

Indeed, the kids are really slumming it by not having a choice for lunch. Except the choice of beans/coleslaw/orange/apple

How pampered must they be for that to be advertised as a real hardship for them.

The people defending this are just making it worse, really.

It not

@noblegiraffe
You beat me to it