Can't afford school meals for kids, but billions for homebuyers, sure!

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cheesyboy said:
As I said earlier, I think quite a number have never loved another human who's not their parent. There's certainly a strong incel whiff on some of the opinions being shared, so I'm taking that at face value.
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Why should a person without kids, subsidise those who do have them yet fail to provide their basic food requirements?
 
2 in every 100 women per year will get pregnant despite using a condom (in the UK, NHS figures)
 
Allnamestaken said:
I know people who have used condoms/contraception at the same time and still ended up pregnant lmao.

It happens quite a bit, nothing is perfect.
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Ok, so the condom breaks and you have one kid, then it breaks again and you have a second kid - then what, keep doing that till you have 5 kids and expect the tax payer to foot the lunch bill?
 
I thought this was quite succinct from Lee Rowley (MP)

A number of residents have been in touch regarding the vote on Wednesday evening on free school meals. I know that there has been a significant amount of discussion (and quite a lot of misinformation on social media and the web, as is usual) about the vote and I wanted to explain more.

Before I get into the detail, I completely accept that hunger is an important issue – and one which Government has a responsibility and role to try to alleviate. Nobody wants to see a child go hungry and its extremely important that we consider how to alleviate this for the long-term. Growing up in Derbyshire in the 1980s, I can remember the importance of free school meals during tough times for some families. And, on a personal level, both sides of my family have been through very tough times before, struggling to put food on the table and beset by illness and unemployment in decades past. A generation ago, some of my family were on the breadline – and I will never forget it.

So, what happened on Wednesday evening?

Well, firstly, some posts on social media seem to be suggesting that MPs voted yesterday to end all free school meals. That’s totally false. Free school meals remain in place and will continue to be there for over a million children every school day – covering all children in reception, year 1 and year 2 and many children up to the end of secondary school for those families receiving income support, jobseekers’ allowance, employment & support allowance, the guaranteed element of Pension Credit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit. And eligibility for free school meals during term time has been substantially increased in the last ten years. Nothing changed on any of this. In a few days’ time when children return to school, free school meals will still be served to every child who had them before half term.

Instead Wednesday’s vote was about whether to extend a temporary voucher scheme used recently, on an exceptional basis, during the start of coronavirus. That voucher scheme was put in place at the beginning of the year when school ceased for most children, at a different time in the pandemic, when school meals weren’t available because children weren’t physically there and when we didn’t know exactly how the virus worked. After discussions, that scheme was retained until the start of the Autumn term when all children went back to school. It was a policy that was right for a more uncertain time and one where we had to move quickly when most children weren’t physically in class. It was never intended to last forever and wouldn’t be the right policy for the future – free school meals have never been the mechanism, in the eighty or so years that they have been around, for feeding children outside of term time. Successive Governments of all colours have accepted that – through recessions, wars, economic crises and issues of the similar magnitude that we face today.

That isn’t to say, in any way, that we are withdrawing support for the families who need it – quite the reverse. Over recent months, the Government has provided the most unprecedented and huge amount of state support for communities, ever. I will hesitate to list all of that (and I completely accept that it will not cover everyone – as nothing ever can) but that has included billions of support to protect jobs, for self-employed people and businesses. Specifically, on welfare, we have increased welfare spending by £9 billion on a temporary basis to support those in the greatest need covering 4 million households, increased Universal Credit by £1,000/year, increased Local Housing Allowance, created a £63 million fund for councils to use for local welfare assistance and awarded £16m to food charities. We will continue to support where we can.

And this is exactly the place where we should help families. The whole point of the redesigning of the welfare system in the last decade is to try to ensure that we are both rightly supporting families as much as possible whilst, at the same time, helping them to get on their own two feet and, over time, to help them into work where that is possible. Obviously that latter pathway is extremely difficult at the moment and so we are focusing on helping – and we will continue to do that. Yet, it’s the welfare system, not voucher transfers, which is the best way to provide the support needed and to help people and families, over time, to move forward.

I also need to touch on politics because, inevitably, lots of this is about politics. Yesterday’s vote was another example of an Opposition Day vote – these votes that happen, like clockwork, every couple of Wednesdays. They are motions of no legal consequence and where no action is mandated irrespective of how MPs vote and are merely there to draw lines, create media storms and, it seems, to try to deliberately characterise and demonise MPs of certain political parties. Whilst I wish it wasn’t the case, I accept that this is the reality of politics. Labour had a right to propose other approaches yesterday. And we have the right to highlight the baselessness of what is happening and that, in spite of what is being suggested, that we are supporting those families in different ways with support, help and assistance through a mechanism that we think is more effective in the long-run. That’s not the Government being heartless but, instead, another discussion ultimately about process being twisted into something else just for the headlines. But there we are.

We are all committed to solving child poverty, but as ever it’s much easier to identify the problem than it is to solve it. We all agree that children should not go hungry. That’s an absolute. How to prevent that happening is something which, obviously, people take different views on. I personally want to find a real long-term solution to solve this. Simply transferring money, in the form of vouchers as I believe some people are advocating, does nothing to solve the long-term issues causing poverty. Marcus Rashford himself, who has spent so much time discussing this on social media in recent months, himself said that we shouldn’t just have a sticking plaster. I agree. Free school meals have never been designed to help children through the holidays. So, let’s stop having votes designed solely to embarrass (and which achieve nothing) and recognise that the best way to support people is through the welfare system. Of course, there is a valid discussion to be had about the best way to structure welfare provision, and the level of funding provision allocated to it. But the fundamental remains – the Government will continue to offer a huge amount of support and assistance for those in need in the coming months.
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Outcast440 said:
Why should a person without kids, subsidise those who do have them yet fail to provide their basic food requirements?
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Why should a person who doesn't ride a bike pay towards medical care of someone injured riding a bike?

Why should a person who doesn't smoke pay towards medical care of someone who does?

Why should a person who doesn't drink pay towards medical care of someone injured whilst drinking?

Why should a person who's house has never burnt down pay towards the fire service?

Why should I pay any tax or NI at all for anything not do with myself?
 
Outcast440 said:
Ok, so the condom breaks and you have one kid, then it breaks again and you have a second kid - then what, keep doing that till you have 5 kids and expect the tax payer to foot the lunch bill?
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That is not what happens though, people generally don't just keep accidently having kids but it happens and it can be a financial burden if it happens despite doing everything to prevent it. Abortion is also not an easy solution in situations like this for many.

What's more is that it really isn't even just about having sex, single parents where the father or mother may have left due to marital issues, leaving one partner looking after the child with no support from the other also happens.
In circumstances like these where the single parent struggles alone, help with school lunches is a big deal.

I know when I was in school I needed school lunches, my mother brought me up alone and she needed that help, that isn't because she chose to marry some dead beat or because she was having a child she couldn't afford.
Circumstances change and affect peoples lives all the time, its sad to see that people do not really grasp this.
 
I think defending people having kids by suggesting sometimes it's happening despite precautions is just buying into the whole incel belief that women are corrupted and corrupting. It's just another form of judgement : there are noble, trustworthy, deserving women, who just got unlucky, and then there are the untrustworthy, sneaky jezebels whose ignoble act of sex mean they don't deserve help.

Really, a society set up such that a decent chunk of working families are living in poverty is the problem. Those people are playing by the rules, but still being ****** over. Being in poverty is due to a lack of money, not a lack of morality.
 
LOAM said:
Why should a person who doesn't ride a bike pay towards medical care of someone injured riding a bike?

Why should a person who doesn't smoke pay towards medical care of someone who does?

Why should a person who doesn't drink pay towards medical care of someone injured whilst drinking?
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That's a great case you've made for having some form of mandatory medical insurance, or contributary payments scheme for using the health services.
 
Allnamestaken said:
What's more is that it really isn't even just about having sex, single parents where the father or mother may have left due to marital issues, leaving one partner looking after the child with no support from the other also happens.
In circumstances like these where the single parent struggles alone, help with school lunches is a big deal.
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Free school meals, child benefit and others, are all available to parents on low incomes already.

It's just now that the left want MORE money , MORE free meals. That's the issue.
 
Outcast440 said:
That's a great case you've made for having some form of mandatory medical insurance, or contributary payments scheme for using the health services.
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It's not because all that means is people die because they can't afford it (see America for details).

And it doesn't end there tax revenue would become even less effective than it is now because bins would remain uncollected, roads would disintegrate and crime would rocket before our government stopped giving back handers to their bezzys.
 
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Outcast440 said:
Free school meals, child benefit and others, are all available to parents on low incomes already.

It's just now that the left want MORE money , MORE free meals. That's the issue.
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I'm not really sure who the left is but I think you'll find most people who you think are "left" just want the government to stop wasting money on none existent supply contracts to their mates and edifice projects. Then the whole conversation about "more money" wouldn't even exist.
 
Outcast440 said:
Why should a person without kids, subsidise those who do have them yet fail to provide their basic food requirements?
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Because it benefits the society which you live in to not have kids grown-up in poverty.

Even as simple as lowering crime rates. Or encouraging people to actually have kids, so that we keep the fertility rate at a level high enough to maintain population and, therefore, make it economically viable to pay for retirements (the alternative being immigration, which seems to be unpopular with many too)
 
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