Marcus Rashford letter

lemongrove how on earth do you justify the fact that Johnson ( or should I say Cummins the puppet master) wasn’t listening in the first place? Some things you should just know, not have to be told. An open goal which says the utter failure in no 10

Can we still really be discussing the deserving and the undeserving poor in 2020?

Well can we have Narcus a Rashford in place of Cummings he seems to have a kind heart and good sense

Good lad - pat on the back from me.

Like I said frenchie of course I realise that some people have situations in their life where they struggle financially through maybe illness or disability and it’s right that they are helped.

What I am horrified at is how there are apparently hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children born into households which basically can’t afford them.

I’m sorry but it’s totally irresponsible to keep producing child after child under those circumstances if as you say the parents are very very poor.

How many of us on here planned our families years ago according to our finances?
I would guess most.

What then has changed over the past few decades to explain this shift in a sense of personal responsibility?

Rosina - you asked about taxpayers not fund Government spending. I suggest you read Richard Murphy's book "The Joy of Tax", and in particular, Chapter 3 - "Why We Tax".

In the opening paras of that chapter he states:
"The most obvious practical alternative to tax is for a government to print money to pay for its expenditure. As a matter of fact, although many like to deny it, modern governments do often do this so that they might meet the expectations they have raised among their electorate as to the services they will offer in exchange for their votes."

Guess how they keep Income Tax at 20% basic rate today - one of the tools is of course to print money, another being to borrow against government bonds.

That said, Richard Murphy's book is an entertaining and enlightening read.

Not only shoud his mother be congratulated on raising such a person, perhaps she should be asked to help advise the government on issues such as child poverty. She must be an admirable , intelligent and caring person, with first hand knowledge of this shameful state that children are still in.

There are some very uncaring posts that make you wonder about the mentality of there people who couldn't care less about a child going hungry for whatever reason while allowing the likes of Richard Branson etc to get away with paying no tax. You should hang your heads in shame. Lets hope you and your families never fall on hard times.

The person who got off his butt and put his money where his mouth was and got this particular government to rethink an obviously untenable position didn’t feel the need to crow - I’ll reserve my admiration for him alone, not folks who are political motivated on other folks misery.

I am all for ‘u turns’ btw which show that the gov of the day is listening.

I am presuming that food vouchers are never given in the Summer holidays as a rule, so the education dept was adhering to what is normal.
Until people are back at work though, extra money/ food for
Those in need really should continue.The government said that they had given councils extra money for those cases, but the councils cannot be relied on to spend it a certain way, which is why it should go direct to parents.

The fact that the government was considering not giving hungry children food and tried to defend their position tells you all you need to know about the paucity of empathy and care.

lemon there was nothing else this shower could have done. Believe me if they could have avoided it they would have done so.

Can’t agree with that at all MaizieD as billions have been spent on supporting working people in the UK.
Paying employers 80%of workers salaries whilst they are furloughed for a start.

I don’t understand how people beg and plead for a Government to change their mind on something on good grounds, as in this instance, and then crow about them doing a u turn!

It's because, Pantglas the government has had to be shamed into its U turns. They're not bothered about the rightness or wrongness of the issue, they'll u-turn if they think what they're doing will lose them votes.

I don't know what other people on here think that the function of government is, but I think it is there to provide a safe, stable and supportive environment for all the citizens of the UK. This government is not interested in that at all.

QQ is as entitled as anybody else to their own views on this
And doesn’t have to agree with anybody else.She shouldn’t be singled out for any verbal abuse either.

Good post Pearl ....I had a similar childhood situation as you, although not such a large family.
Free school meals wasn’t handled well in the past, even though ( obviously) it was a good thing.I was a small thin child who was always hungry and scoffed everything that school could put on a plate.If only they could have handed out school dinner tickets differently...Children who paid used to be called to the front, handed over the dinner money for the week and were handed out white tickets.After that the children who had free dinners were called to the front, where purple tickets were given.There were only three children in my class who had free dinners.
In the Summer holidays I remember we were sent to a hall in the next village ( a long walk) for a free meal twice a week.
It was awful, run by hard faced women who never smiled and you had to sit at trestle tables and slurp up your cabbage and mash and grey liver in near silence.We felt so humiliated by the whole thing that we soon gave it up ( nobody enquired why) and spent an hour in the park instead.
Food vouchers to spend at a supermarket seem a much better way to ensure more food for a family, but I suppose it still isn’t ensuring a plate of food is going down their throats.
I think it was the right decision to continue the vouchers right throughout Summer until Autumn term starts as this year is a special case.Although councils have been given extra millions
There is no confidence it will be spent on children, so well done Marcus Rashford for highlighting this.

Did they have the latest iphone and a widescreen TV too Rosina?

This is a complicated situation; there are single mothers and/or parents who have very little to juggle with and yet have children who are well fed and do not lack the basics in spite of being hard up. There are parents with more disposable income who feel it is important to have tattoos at sixty pounds a time and yet send a child to school with no break time snack, and feed them whatever is on special offer at MacDonalds that week - I have met parents who never cook anything, and buy takeaways every day. Hence poverty. I have also met many mothers who do everything they can - like Marcus Rashford's mother, and my own grandmother, who always put the children first. People are so complex - but this very welcome innovation is such good news.

Then let's call out Tinydancer for an unpleasant judgemental reply to QQ and Framilode for agreeing with her.

Thanks for your reply Sparklefizz I must point out though that my father and mother were not irresponsible in having 3 children, they could afford it, my father had a well-paid job and was the first person in our street to own a car. Unfortunately things changed the moment he left. My mother had no skills and could only get low paid work. Situations change for many families and it is not just the feckless that require or ask for help. I am afraid that I don't think it's me that's being judgemental, but QQ's comment was.

I come from a very loving family. Mum, Dad and 5 siblings. Dad work hard as an engineer. Mum brought up the family, washed, cooked, cleaned, sewed, did the gardening and whatever else was needed.

Then my Dad passed away with a heart attack. Six kids under the age of 13.

My Mum was a very proud woman, and when she was advised by Social Services to ‘put the kids up for adoption and go and start your life again.’ she told the social worker where to go.

She was unqualified and took part time jobs to keep us together. She had 6 different jobs to keep us together, and pay the bills and run the house. On a low income, we as kids qualified for a free school meal. That meal Monday to Friday was heavenly. It also helped as our neighbour and Mums best friend Auntie Daphne was a school meals assistant who looked out for us. There was always a little bit extra if there was ‘leftovers’ after everyone had been fed.

Without the meals we would have been hungry. It was our main meal of the day. In the evening we’d have toast and egg or beans. Whatever Mum could afford. We still had a good childhood even after Dad had gone. The holidays to the caravan stopped and it was quickly sold. We were asked every year ‘What do you want for Christmas, some nicer food and goodies or gifts?’

Everyone of us plumped for our bellies. And we had the best Christmas’ because we were well fed and happy. Not because we had toys or presents galore.

So for me school meals was a lifesaver. It’s upsetting to read people saying women shouldn’t have kids for the government to feed them. In our situation we couldn’t summon my Dad back from the dead to pay for us to eat. My Mum did her best for us, and kept us all together as a family. The alternative would be to shove us all into Care, where the authorities would be paying for everything for us out of your taxes!

(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges

“This is the really damaging thing about No.10’s mishandling of all this. The view amongst senior Ministers is there’s no point in going out and taking bricks for Boris because in the end he’ll cave anyway.“

Hodges is a Tory supporter. So many of them are now critical of so much of what the Johnson government is failing to do.

The verdict of the way Johnson has handled the pandemic will be damning. With mistake after mistake leading to 64000 excess deaths to date.
We are also on course to suffer the deepest depression of any other developed country. Brexit is just around the corner.

Johnson locked down too late.
Shut down it’s testing regime too soon
Early on travel restrictions and quarantine were missed
Britain is opening up before the alert levels have dropped, largely because we can see the will to comply with the lockdown requirements evaporated after Johnson failed to sack his aid Cummings after Cummings broke lockdown rules.

Which minister was responsible for instructing hospitals to clear their wards of elderly with covid and place them into care homes?

Who has signed over contracts to private companies for NHS contracts, without competitive tender or a cursory check that they are up to the job?

Which minister decided the expertise of LAs check and trace systems were not needed in the covid T&T?

The buck stops at No 10.

(Some stuff taken from the Guardian editorial)

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JenniferEccles my daughter’s school children are very very poor. They were already poor before Covid 19 and will still be very poor, probably even poorer after the pandemy. If their parents work it’s low pay jobs. Obviously you have no idea!

But it's great that they have that system up and running!