A loaf and a block of cheese is not lunch for ten days THREAD 2

[ZazieSheHer]

A loaf and a block of cheese is not lunch for ten days ORIGINAL THREAD

The food parcels seem to vary uite a bit. Alittle bit of an odd mix. And agree not £30 pounds worth. I am not on free school meals but I once was and I hink those that are should create a stink and do should the schools.

Let's not bring pensioners into this it's a distraction and gives the yeah but brigade an out!

This is wicked profiteering and it's totally immoral! Its also sadly unsurprising, just another Tory crony making hay while the sun shines.

An you imagine being on your knees financially and having to rely on any help you can get and this arrives. “Sorry kids it’s one dry sandwich for lunch”. As you sit in your flat that you cannot afford to heat, having to pay high internet charges so that your kids can homeschool. Of course people are upset!

@CrotchBurn I presume your ridiculously ideal idea of children getting three good meals a day is because you live under a rock.

The FSM are very often the child's main meal
If the day, they're not going home to a hotpot or lasagne FFS!

Also cheese sandwich every day? Why is that reasonable? Oh because they're poor, treat them like second class citizens?

You would be crying out in anger is this happened to a pensioner, children didn't ask to be born.

It seems to me some people on here want to punish the children for their parents situation. That includes you @CrotchBurn.

You've no empathy at all!

Disgraceful.

I received free school meals for a while when I was at primary school. Ot was never made obvious really, I jist didn't understand why on Monday mornings the teacher asked some children for money and not others.

It was a rural school and the food was wonderful except the liver, we all tried to leave the liver Proper hot meals with proper puddings.

I'm shocked to see these packages passing as a weeks worth of lunches.
Some of them I would be able to stretch albeit rather creatively but some would stump me completely especially if I didn't have access to things like oil and spices ( most people do but not all)

[quote CrotchBurn]@inquietant
Your analogy is messed up. Pensioners dont choose old age, it happens to them. Parents choose to have children. Pensioners have nobody else legally responsible for them. Children are the legal responsibility of their parents.[/quote]
Errr, no. Pensioners who receive financial support in their old age do so because they choose not to save for retirement during their lifetime. In any event, children do not choose to be born and do not chose to be hungry. Give your head a wobble

I can’t quite cope with the fact that people are okay with both the fact that children are going hungry and a company is creaming off an 80% odd profit on said children’s food.

@Gilead

I can’t quite cope with the fact that people are okay with both the fact that children are going hungry and a company is creaming off an 80% odd profit on said children’s food.

I had a bit of a read about system justification. The worse a society gets, the more people justify it, to protect themselves from the upset of acknowledging the injustices and unpleasantness. Humans are their own worst enemies

@Gilead

I can’t quite cope with the fact that people are okay with both the fact that children are going hungry and a company is creaming off an 80% odd profit on said children’s food.

Indeed Gilead. As a childless woman I was once told that childless ppl don’t have any empathy & only mothers would understand

Judging by the discussions on this, it seems not.....

Don't know why I grinned there, think is more appropriate

It’s the contempt behind these boxes that gets me. Cutting a red pepper in half , a spoonful tuna. Be grateful for what you get.

So bloody true @rottengreentomatoes

Errr, no. Pensioners who receive financial support in their old age do so because they choose not to save for retirement during their lifetime. In any event, children do not choose to be born and do not chose to be hungry. Give your head a wobble
Maybe those pensioners who cannot save during their lifetime are the same people who had fsm for their children.....because they were in low paid jobs or other difficult circumstances.

In any event, this morning it has just been reported on BBC Breakfast that the Govt have stated the standard of these food parcels must be improved and that they must also be standardised across all suppliers too.

I read that one box had half a tomato in it.

@JamieLeesCurtains

I read that one box had half a tomato in it.

Imagine going to the effort to cut a tomato in half. My mind boggles at how disgraceful those boxes were.

It’s the contempt behind these boxes that gets me. Cutting a red pepper in half , a spoonful tuna. Be grateful for what you get

This is so true, and contempt is the exact word I would use. Doff your caps in thanks, peasants. It's disgusting.

Errr, no. Pensioners who receive financial support in their old age do so because they choose not to save for retirement during their lifetime

The pension issue is muddying the water but I can’t let this go unchallenged. Poor pensioners don’t choose not to save for their retirement, they can’t afford to. They didn’t suddenly get poor at pension age, they’ve always been poor. It’s astonishing how many people live in Ivory towers.

This little gem carried from the last thread...

Perhaps we should be finding better parents for these kids?

1.4 million children get free school meals, are you honestly suggesting we remove these kids from their parents because of poverty? You do know there’s not enough help and support for children being neglected (far beyond food poverty), abused, subjected to domestic abuse - children we know are facing significant harm much less children whose parents struggle to feed them. Social services budgets have been stripped to the bone, there aren’t a plethora of care placements waiting for kids, even if it wasn’t morally, ethically and legally repugnant to remove children from their parents for being poor.

Errr, no. Pensioners who receive financial support in their old age do so because they choose not to save for retirement during their lifetime. In any event, children do not choose to be born and do not chose to be hungry. Give your head a wobble
I saved. I had it stolen by ex. Life isn’t as simple as you would like it to be. Give your head a wobble.

I posted this on the last thread but will repost the link so it doesn't disappear. My dc's school use Morrisons to provide the free school meal boxes. It is a Mat so can choose which company to use, Chartwell provides its lunches & the portions are miniscule at the best of times.

I suggest that you all email your headteachers with alternatives to chartwell for fsm lunch boxes. Someone on twitter posted a picture of what £10.50 bought them from their local community kitchen shop. They bought 1 large box of fresh fruit & veg and another large box of dairy, bakery products & grocery essentials. Now compare that to what Chartwell are providing.
Morrisons FSM lunch boxes

There is no doubt that some of these boxes are disgraceful BUT the £15 per week the company receives to provide the meals is not meant to equate to £15 of food you can buy in a supermarket. The amount the company are spending is the equivalent per head that they would normally spend on a child’s hot FSM. If the parents were given the £15 as a voucher there would be thousands and thousands of people who would lose their jobs at the FSM catering companies. It’s a sensitive subject but even the £15 example food parcels people are making themselves will not have cost Tesco £15. They will probably have cost £6.

Yet another example highlighting just how useless this government is. In what world does this even remotely make sense.

I realise most governments are useless but BJ and his cronies top the lot. I'm definitely voting to get them out next election and it can't come soon enough.

I don't work for Morrisons, I just wanted to highlight that there are alternatives to Chartwell. If schools are MAT led then they have a bit more freedom than other schools. The only way these greedy bastards will change is when you hit them where it hurts...... their profit margins.

In America, businesses such as the Marriot Hotel are cutting off their funding to the Republicans after last week's riots. If schools/society refuse to line the pockets of companies like Chartwell then you might see a change. Sadly, people/companies only change if there is something in it for them rather than for the greater good.

@Gilead

I can’t quite cope with the fact that people are okay with both the fact that children are going hungry and a company is creaming off an 80% odd profit on said children’s food.

This is the nuts and bolts of it.

Frankly, I am not sure whether or not parents "should" feed children is the issue. The issue is my tax money being used in a way that I personally think is wrong.

I want less going to Matt Hancock's mate down the pub and more going to providing decent meals for children who - through no fault of their own - are hungry. And that means more going all through the chain, from me right to the children. Every one involved in a chain of events that takes £30 to produce a hamper must be accountable for making sure the very maximum portion of that money is used for quantity and quality of food.

I am just one voter so I'll do what I can: I'll put pressure on the current government to make this better and, if I think they have failed, I will put my vote to work next time around.

I hope it also highlights the disparity in FSM provision across the country. As someone who worked in school in May when only some children went back to school I can categorically tell you that children did in fact receive from Chartwells a cheese sandwich in their cold FSM packed lunch EVERYDAY for 7 weeks! Aswell as 2 pieces of fruit and a cake/biscuit.