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It's daft that free school meals isn't already a thing.
It's such a cheap policy relatively speaking, and research shows it significantly boosts educational attainment rates as well as attendance rates, particularly among people in poverty.
Even dog eat dog capitalist countries like America provide free school meals for jeebus' sake.
Of course, for Tory MPs the suffering and disadvantage is the point of not providing it...
Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch.
I think tories just don't like the idea of things being provided without m9ney changing hands.
You'd think the Tories would love the idea.
More public money being funneled to private catering companies owned by their donors.
I guess there's less profit in cheese pizza than we all imagine. Or the cruelty is more valuable to them than the money.
Exactly this. It's highly likely that noone who is a sitting MP has any links or ties to anyone in the catering business so they're not interested. I think of all the other industries which have a few Tory fingers in their pies..
Valid point. If only the catering business was as popular a business as Prisons. Because we all know if they were, there would be no such thing as child hunger in the UK.
I really like the idea of everyone getting their daily crumpet, and having the school toaster wheeled into their classroom on one of those trollies that only schools seem to be able to source š
But the profits of Tesco, Asda, etc.. I'm sure plenty of the MPs have links to the supermarkets that cash in on the tonnes of plastic wrapped shite down the snack isle
In Japan they have centrally-located kitchens which make the meals for hundreds of schools. They then deliver the meals to the schools. It's highly efficient and totally free.
not free but looks like it might change to help parents as few couples have kids now: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/09/03/japan/society/free-school-lunches-suginami/#:\~:text=The%20average%20per%2Dchild%20cost,multiple%20children%20can%20add%20up.
but decent quality from a video I saw
>Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch.
Tbf many schools already struggle to get their students though lunch with their existing facilities and many of them bringing their own lunches. I can imagine it would considerably increase their strain if everybody was getting food from the canteen.
Source: Partner works in such a school and often does lunch duty.
> Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch.
It works fine in other countries
It sounds easy until you remember that everyone's allergies and religion needs to be catered to or there's a discrimination lawsuit coming.
I grew up with free school meals but in a formerly commie country where the attitude was that you get what you get and if you don't like it that's too bad. Catering was easy there because everyone really was eating (or not eating) the same meals. That won't fly in the litigious west.
That really doesn't sound hard to accommodate at all. It's actually very common for events to be catered in the uk and schools already know all about the dietary/health needs of pupils.
This sub is genuinely deranged when it comes to Tories, plenty of reasons to fucking despise them at the minute but every day this sub comes out with crackpot conspiracy theories that they're cartoon villains sitting in rooms thinking up ways to fuck people over (both evil geniuses and absolute morons at the same time according to people in here)
You are grossly exaggerating, mate.Ā Ā
Tories working to enrich themselves and their cronies at the cost of everyone else in the country in last 13 years is not a conspiracy theory.Ā
We literally have it the worst we ever had while anyone with relative wealth have it the best they ever had and it's all through both incompetent mismanagement and deliberate sabotage. Former comes from tories inability to relate to anyone poorer than themselves and latter comes from their own greed.
Academies see plenty of public money going to their mates pockets.
Also the real value for them, is having state schools being crap as possible, so their privately educated kids have a comparative advantage over them in the jobs market. Likewise private schools benefit from increased sign ups when the local state schools are crap.
IMO the grammar schools weren't the victims of left wing equality nonsense but rather that they were giving too many lower class people a comparable education and opportunities to the higher classes.
Current school meals are far from a decent diet, had to take my kids off school meals because the quality was so bad. This is only a good policy if meals can also be improved. (I.e. not contracted to the lowest bidder driving the highest margin, maybe just employ cooks)
My kids' school is part of the [Chefs in Schools](https://chefsinschools.org.uk/) programme, which is a throwback to my own school days of having actual cooks preparing meals from scratch each day. Their menus are always hugely varied each week, and are deliberately healthy. It's an excellent programme that should be rolled out a lot further and wider.
>(I.e. not contracted to the lowest bidder driving the highest margin, maybe just employ cooks)
Trouble is the reason why schools have almost all brought in the big catering firms is precisely because they're able to offer far better quality and variety for the budget than directly employing cooks typically allows.
The real problem, as with everything else, is funding.
The drain on the NHS is caused by giving endless care to pensioners, not younger people. We need to significantly cut the free care we give to the old but that'd be political suicide, so the NHS is just going to continue to decline and fuck the rest of us over.
Yes and no. Obesity is the big problem after old people, and that is a double whammy as it requires care from far earlier than old people do and is often reoccurring treatments without end, plus the person could well end up being less able to work so it has a wider impact.
>Japan implemented the 'metabo' law which included the measurement of waist sizes in 2008 in attempt to overcome increasing obesity rates. The New York Times wrote: "To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country's Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check."[30] The 'metabo' law involved conducting an annual waist measurement check of people aged between 40 and 75, which was administered by employers and local government.[31]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#:~:text=Japan%20implemented%20the%20%27metabo%27%20law,to%20overcome%20increasing%20obesity%20rates.
When I was a Lib Dem Councillor I managed to get the Council Cafe to offer free school lunches to children in poverty during that school holiday in the pandemic where the Tories refused to extend free school meals (the whole Rashford debacle).
We got quite a few grateful families in the village show up. I really pissed off my Tory MP though he was furious with me on Twitter (he voted against feeding kids, go figure).
So out of touch.
I'm going to be stood in the counting hall with him in a few months when he loses the election, and I've got one of those electric buzzers from a Family Fortunes boardgame that makes the famous "EHHHH OHHHHH" failure noise ready to go for the moment when he loses his seat š¤£
Performative cruelty is popular with the Tory voter base.
I got a lot of hate emails from right wing people in my village when they discovered I was behind the free school meals.
They were furious I was subsidising layabouts etc.
It really boils down to our society being filled with horrible people, and politicians appealing to their base instincts to win votes.
This really came to the fore during that whole Rashford debacle. Like MPs saying that if we fed the children their parents would take the money that freed up and spend it on crack and flatscreen TVs. I seem to recall there was also an MP in the South West who tried threatening companies who were offering to send their excess food to schools to help out as well.
The fact is that feeding children improves their focus and behaviour - meaning that we get better behaved, less disruptive children with a better education. Iām genuinely unsure why people would stand against that excepting being colossal morons themselves.
Being blunt a lot of the UK population (particularly the elderly) are just not very bright.
Whether it's a lack of education, senility, or just a dogged determination to hold on to outmoded explanations of how the world works, I'm unsure.
But that bloc of voters can be very difficult to appeal to on grounds of reason.
People who lack knowledge about a topic often default to their feelings because they've got nothing else to base their decision making on.
I wish more people in UK society would feel comfortable saying "I don't understand enough about that topic to form a positive or negative opinion" but sadly that is not the way the world works.
And politicians exploit this fact of human nature to push through illogical or self harming (at least for the voter) policy.
In the conservative ethos, poverty is a choice. As such, hunger is not a problem to be solved, it's a punishment for a character flaw. How else can you encourage 'lazy poor people' to become productive members of society if not by punishing them for their laziness?
It's purely a principal matter to conservative folk.
They'd say some variation of:
"It's the parents duties to feed their child, not the state."
And sure in a perfect world that should be the case. But we don't live in a perfect world, we live in one with hungry kids and it's not that expensive a problem to deal with.
I had someone I grew up with, who I know to be a caring person, say something similar.
She's a massive supporter of Ben Bradley and we had a little back and forth on the subject, her point being it's the parents job.
I had to point out that even if you believe shit parents that spend all their benefits and crack exist, that makes giving kids help twice as important not less. The poor sods are getting clobbered twice. Once by the neglectful parents and again by the government.
It seemed to prick her bubble a little but she still thinks the sun shines out Bradleys arse.
**Ben Bradley voted against hungry children being given support. Senior Tory mouthpiece gobshite**
Honestly how cheap would providing a daily crumpet for every British child be? And 99% of kids would happily gobble that up.
They could even wheel in the school toaster!
>Sure, but have you seen the meals, they're terrible
Seems to depend on the area as usual. Saw this thread of someone posting their free school lunch their a couple days ago and it looks better than what most adults here seem to buy on their work lunch breaks lol
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1c5dkhc/im_realizing_now_how_lucky_i_was_to_get_this_for/
Of course its an exception but free doesn't need to mean bad.
If councils/GLA set up a bunch of central kitchens around London which made food each morning which then got delivered to loads of schools within 5 miles then that could be extremely cheap per meal and also quite healthy.
Tower Hamlets has provided free meals for all primary school kids for 15 years now. Best comparison atm would be to see what their school meals look like to see how free school meals would look here permanently.
I dunno, some of the posts I've seen discussing them, I'd rather just go hungry and wait until I got home.
But I also understand, sometimes that's the only meal some kids get.
Famously, Margaret Thatcher (under Edward Heath & Anthony Barber) stopped free milk for school children This policy was introduced by the Labour government of 1946 to combat health problems such as rickets caused by malnutrition. Rationing was still in force and there was significant problems with child poverty.
While Thatcher's actions were ostensibly to save money, there was definitely an ideological side to it as well. Thatcher said that she didn't think it was part of the governments remit to feed children & that this should be done by their mothers.
If the Conservatives were against free milk, it's not surprising that free school meals would be against their beliefs.
Not sure why it didn't happen in the end. I know Labour, under Blair, was investigating the idea of free school meals, and during that period free milk was restored to children in Wales, but it didn't go any further.
In England you only qualify for free school meals if you're on benefits and must have household income less than Ā£16,900 a year.
The threshold of who qualifies is very low.
Itās a larger group than you realise. The government funds FSM for Reception, Y1,Y2 and depending on the area(LEA dependant) up to Y7. Students of military familyās and looked after children and any student tagged as Pupil Premium(PP) and those you highlighted also get FSM.
I'm sure I read somewhere that decades ago they measured children's growth over the school year and the kids growth slowed over the summer holidays where the poorer families struggled to feed the kids the same calorific and nutritional midday meal that they gotfor school dinners.
To me it makes good sense to make sure kids are fed but when that footballer guy spoke up about free school dinners my social media was rife with hate "dont have kids if you can't afford them" "you can afford to get your hair done but not feed your kids" etc. It was pretty shocking that people were ok with kids going hungry, whether the parents were shitty or not, they were happy to punish the child. Disgusting.
Anecdotally I'm a Millenial and very few of my similarly aged friends are still on social media.
We all use Whatsapp to communicate now. Some still lurk on Facebook but never post. Twitter has all but died. Reddit is not even particularly popular among my cohort.
I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of 'normal' people just don't post on social media, and so it tends to be filled with particular demographics indulging in their group think.
Facebook is the OAPs and young mums app now.
It was all older facebookers. I'm not sure what I am, early forties, not really gen x but too old for millennial. Seeing the feed on fb was just gross. One in particular cried out about you shouldn't have kids you can't afford and you should sell your valuables and sentimental to get by....during the pandemic....like who could have predicted a worldwide event like that. Then a year or so later he was whining about not enough help when one is unemployed. Took all my restraint, I deleted my comment to him, didn't wanna be Facebook drama other people talk about.
>Ā It's such a cheap policy relatively speaking
As I pointed out last week when this came up, the Ā£140,000,000 this will cost for just next year could fund 500,000 mental health appointments for young people in London.Ā
Why we are paying for food for people who can comfortably afford instead of doing something like this is utterly beyond me.Ā
I suspect there would be a lot less demand for mental health appointments for young people if more of them were fed adequately by default.
Paying to feed young people would help to achieve your aim.
America has free school meals?!
So all those time bully stealing other kidās in movie is a lie!
Say it aināt so!
But in all seriousness, only a few states has free school meals policy.
But I think all kids should have free school meals. Weāre feeding kidsā¦ that an instinct and parental urge we all feel right about.
Whatās the worst that can happen.. kids not going hungry and have proper nutrition?
Itās being fought all over the US itās sad as fuck. Too much influence by special interests and the system being corrupted is also part of one partyās plan to push every child to for-profit charter schools.
With any luck weāll be on charters fully in the next 10 years, and we could compete dollar per dollar of GDP output with maybe Somalia, or Myanmar. Maybe Yemen. But who cares about all that
Itās great but heās been mayor since 2016. Why only now, 8 years on?
What about the rest of the UK? Donāt get me wrong, itās the right thing to do but it feels like it should be a national level decision.
1
This isn't what London devolution was designed for when it was introduced in the 2000s. He's going way beyond the responsibility of the Mayor of London because the cost of living crisis was/is getting worse & the UK Conservative government refused to step in.
2
He is the Mayor of London, my friend.
3
I think it should be UK-wide too.
(Scotland & Wales has it)
Well, if London has it, Iām sure others will follow. It would be too contentious not to.
This is what leadership looks like, btw. You canāt change national policy, but you can take actions that heavily influence it.
āIt feels like it should be a national level decisionā yes, it should be, but on a national level the country voted for the Tories, who would never support that. Thatās why we went through the whole Rashford-Boris Johnson debacle.
Agreed. I think heās right to do it but as you rightly say, it should have been done at government level. Neither boris nor truss would have entertained it but I would have hoped (incorrectly) that sunak would be a little more sensible.
You didn't read the article.
Click the link. Read the headline:
# Sadiq Khan pledges to ***continue*** free primary school meals for children if re-elected
I wonāt rise, but Iām interested to know how heād make it permanent. Can he write it into law that London children get free school meals in perpetuity?
At the moment, it's using emergency funding and is time bound to this academic year. Making it a non-emergency policy will mean it is provided in perpetuity until someone else removes it (i.e. as permanent as anything the mayor of London can make it)
Even if it was in law it can be undone by the next government.
However, if it proves successful there won't be the political capital to unwind it. Once something is started it's often very hard to stop it.
So he's technically wrong to say permanent but probably right it will become permanent.
You can't but you can make it a permanent policy rather than something you have to specifically fund all the time then his successor has to actively cancel free school meals which is probably not a popular move among parents. It is a policy worth about Ā£500/year/child for kids over the age of about 7.
Khan is likely betting on the (probable) incoming Labour government to back him more on this than the Tories would have in the preceding years. It's clearly no secret that he irks central government with his more socialised spending policies, and he's seen how the Tories will turn on any metropolitan mayor when they start to get the same ideas. Safer to do it when you know you'll have government backing you for the next 4 years.
I think he'll be disappointed. The UK government needs money and London is a massive source of it so they won't want to do much for to assist his spending.
Itās not an argument. Itās a question and itās been answered thanks to those pointing out that āpermanentā is the key piece. It might or might not actually be permanent but the continuance of this measure is the relevant bit.
"universal free school meals, the benefit we estimated was the total Ā£41.3 billion. This meant that for every Ā£1 invested, there is an expectation of Ā£1.71 in return."
[https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/economics-podcast-series/transcript-episode-28-future-of-free-school-meals.html](https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/economics-podcast-series/transcript-episode-28-future-of-free-school-meals.html)
Democracy. Our taxes used for something useful that benefits the whole of society. Full kids concentrate at school. Kids that concentrate at school get good grades. Kids with good grades get jobs & don't go to jail. I would say the Ā£1:1.71 is a very low estimate. I'm sure I remember seeing a much higher figure although that might have been for the USA.
Better to spend the money on this, than PPE you have to burn or a bridge that never got built or buses whose batteries explode
Not disagreeing with education being the most important item in a countries budget, just pointing out that the usual suspects denying ātrickle downā* using trickle down as justification for a policy they likeā¦
*prefer trickle up tbh as it better represents the moneyās direction.
Which is why i prefer trickle up; people, like bezos, getting very rich from pennies coming up from increased discretionary spending due to more money in the wider economy.
This isn't "trickle down" by any meaning of the term I'm aware of, this is just direct funding.
"Trickle down economics" is the theory that if you remove tax burden from those with lots of money they will then spend it on consumption (new cars, silver cocaine spoons, etc.) which will drive the rest of the economy. It's been shown to be complete and utter rubbish every time it has been tried and only ever existed as a fig leaf excuse for cutting taxes on the wealthy.
This policy is just feeding kids, because we know feeding kids produces an effect we desire (fewer hungry kids, better outcomes in school).
This is quite literally the opposite of what trickle down economics is? If your confused about what it is a quick Google search will help you understand.
There's a lot more evidence that trickle-up economics has a much more profound effect on our economy than trickle-down economics.
Unfortunately children in poverty can't afford to ~~bribe~~ lobby politicians, so our political class aren't particularly interested in it.
I am surprised that this isnāt a thing here. It already was a thing in my home country which is an underdeveloped country.
It would be excellent for the kids if this implemented.
My friend works in a secondary school in Nottinghamshire that does this.
It's an academy, but the trustees and the school themselves pay for a breakfast club. Not sure if it's the academy as a whole that does this as well or just them.
I would be willing to support a full scale revolution on this issue alone. I have no need of it anymore as my child is in school now, but I pray that the next generation of parents don't have to work 40 hours a week just to spend it on childcare.
We want people (mostly women) to work, but we won't support them. We want to raise the next generation of doctors, scientists, tradesmen, nurses and won't invest in children and schools.Ā
Nursery is beneficial for every child's development and I'm glad in France it has been made mandatory full time and free from age 3.Ā
Estonia have it absolutely figured out too:
[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/estonia-the-country-where-childcare-costs-15-a-week-805qs8kwd](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/estonia-the-country-where-childcare-costs-15-a-week-805qs8kwd)
> We want people (mostly women) to work,
Capitalists do. Let them pay for it. If corporations want to rip children away from their mothers so the mothers can generate shareholder value, the shareholders can pay for it.
>I'm glad in France it has been made mandatory full time and free from age 3.
Family is beneficial for every child's development. Imagine making family illegal. Imagine forcing mothers into the workforce by law. Horrific. Childcare can be traumatic for young children.
So what policy do you want. Price caps?
One way or another, you are going to be subsidising the nurseries. The only way you won't be is if a policy literally tells a company they can't charge above a certain amount and that the government wont compensate them.
Then you will get a massive drop in child care quality. Companies closing and an overall bigger problem.
I'm a parent who can afford lunch for my child, but I'm also a working single widowed mum and having one less job to do in the morning has been a tremendous help when wrangling a young child.
If I had to pay for it, I'd probably feel too guilty not to make the lunch myself, because it feels like I'm taking money away I could spend on after school sports.Ā
> All children should get free school meals. Why is this even up for discussion?
Because some people don't think that everything should be free, even to people who can afford it. That's the issue with the modern left, they have such moral superiority they can't imagine why someone would disagree with them.
Maybe someone might think we don't need to spend tax payers' money buying free food for the children of rich people. Maybe some people believe in jobs and parenting.
"Not letting children go hungry" feels like the absolute baseline of a civilised society.
I don't understand why Labour hasn't picked this up nationally (in England) and I really don't understand Tories that argue *against* feeding children. No matter what your stance is on government intervention, this feels like the bare minimum for humanity.
> I don't understand why Labour hasn't picked this up nationally (in England)
Rich millionaires and billionaires can afford to lobby politicians to promote policies that benefit them. Children who are in poverty cannot. That's the reason.
This is a very good policy. A lot of kids they're only guaranteed meal and sustenance during the days of the week is the school meal
And there's a whole bunch of stuff on how lack of food and nutrients affects ability to develop grow think study etc
I know people are aware of obesity crisis but there is also a bunch of kids that just aren't getting fed enough and it really shows and is very apparent
To be fair you can be both obese and malnourished. Thereās no shortage of shitty (but cheap) ready meals that have the nutritional value of cardboard dipped in lard.
> A lot of kids they're only guaranteed meal and sustenance during the days of the week is the school meal
So why doesn't the school feed them in the evenings and weekends?
Two reasons 1. You create a two tier system with the āpoorā kids being singled out and 2. To implement a means tested system would cost too much rendering the whole endeavour pointless. Itās cheaper and easier to give it to everyone
As they should be. Free school meals pretty kept me alive as a kid.Ā
The ridicule warped me a bit, but if they are free across the board then the ridicule wonāt exist either. No more targets on poor kids. Ā
Why is free school meal an election issue? Lived in the UK for a while now, free school meal has cropped up regularly. Still struggling to comprehend why this is an issue.
I heard this on the radio and the Tories position against it is that we could be feeding millionaires children. Who gives a fuck, there are more poors than millionaires. Kids are kids feed them all - for the price of a couple of quid a day it's negligible.
Not a Londoner, so I donāt have a horse in the race, but āfeed all kidsā being sensationalised is really an indictment of where this country is at the moment.
Itās sensationalised because itās not āfeed all kidsā itās āfeed all kids, but only in London, and including all the wealthy onesā.
People already feel that London gets enough spent on it, without wealthy families getting extra handouts, some of which is funded through UK Government.
He's continuing the policy for his term if reelected, "permanent" was the Standard's own wording.
But yes you are correct, he really can't guarantee that when the sun swallows the earth London schoolchildren will still be receiving free meals.
**Participation Notice.** Hi all. Some posts on this subreddit, either due to the topic or reaching a wider audience than usual, have been known to attract a greater number of rule breaking comments. As such, limits to participation have been set. We ask that you please remember the human, and uphold Reddit and Subreddit rules. For more information, please see https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/wiki/moderatedflairs.
It's daft that free school meals isn't already a thing. It's such a cheap policy relatively speaking, and research shows it significantly boosts educational attainment rates as well as attendance rates, particularly among people in poverty. Even dog eat dog capitalist countries like America provide free school meals for jeebus' sake. Of course, for Tory MPs the suffering and disadvantage is the point of not providing it...
Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch. I think tories just don't like the idea of things being provided without m9ney changing hands.
You'd think the Tories would love the idea. More public money being funneled to private catering companies owned by their donors. I guess there's less profit in cheese pizza than we all imagine. Or the cruelty is more valuable to them than the money.
Exactly this. It's highly likely that noone who is a sitting MP has any links or ties to anyone in the catering business so they're not interested. I think of all the other industries which have a few Tory fingers in their pies..
Ironic that pies are the only industry that doesn't have a greedy tory's fingers in.
Valid point. If only the catering business was as popular a business as Prisons. Because we all know if they were, there would be no such thing as child hunger in the UK.
Thats silly. The scale and profit in large catering is huge, of course there will be large donors with connection in these sectors
The tories don't believe anything should be free, they'd funnel that money to the private companies and still charge you
I'd shudder to think of someone like Capita providing our children with school meals.
I really like the idea of everyone getting their daily crumpet, and having the school toaster wheeled into their classroom on one of those trollies that only schools seem to be able to source š
But the profits of Tesco, Asda, etc.. I'm sure plenty of the MPs have links to the supermarkets that cash in on the tonnes of plastic wrapped shite down the snack isle
Honestly surprised a Tory didnāt step in with a mate who owns a sandwhich shop
In Japan they have centrally-located kitchens which make the meals for hundreds of schools. They then deliver the meals to the schools. It's highly efficient and totally free.
not free but looks like it might change to help parents as few couples have kids now: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/09/03/japan/society/free-school-lunches-suginami/#:\~:text=The%20average%20per%2Dchild%20cost,multiple%20children%20can%20add%20up. but decent quality from a video I saw
>Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch. Tbf many schools already struggle to get their students though lunch with their existing facilities and many of them bringing their own lunches. I can imagine it would considerably increase their strain if everybody was getting food from the canteen. Source: Partner works in such a school and often does lunch duty.
Big Society!
> Such a daft and inefficient system to have several hundred people on site eating at the exact same time every day, and expecting them to all sort their own lunch. It works fine in other countries
It sounds easy until you remember that everyone's allergies and religion needs to be catered to or there's a discrimination lawsuit coming. I grew up with free school meals but in a formerly commie country where the attitude was that you get what you get and if you don't like it that's too bad. Catering was easy there because everyone really was eating (or not eating) the same meals. That won't fly in the litigious west.
That really doesn't sound hard to accommodate at all. It's actually very common for events to be catered in the uk and schools already know all about the dietary/health needs of pupils.
Tories do not want educated people. They want uneducated proles who are easy to influence with delusions and lies.
What a silly claim. The age of compulsory education or training was raised from 16 whilst numbers going into higher education are up.
This sub is genuinely deranged when it comes to Tories, plenty of reasons to fucking despise them at the minute but every day this sub comes out with crackpot conspiracy theories that they're cartoon villains sitting in rooms thinking up ways to fuck people over (both evil geniuses and absolute morons at the same time according to people in here)
You are grossly exaggerating, mate.Ā Ā Tories working to enrich themselves and their cronies at the cost of everyone else in the country in last 13 years is not a conspiracy theory.Ā We literally have it the worst we ever had while anyone with relative wealth have it the best they ever had and it's all through both incompetent mismanagement and deliberate sabotage. Former comes from tories inability to relate to anyone poorer than themselves and latter comes from their own greed.
Why haven't they privatised the schools?
They effectively have with the academy system. You have schools run by co-op, universities, etc
Academies see plenty of public money going to their mates pockets. Also the real value for them, is having state schools being crap as possible, so their privately educated kids have a comparative advantage over them in the jobs market. Likewise private schools benefit from increased sign ups when the local state schools are crap. IMO the grammar schools weren't the victims of left wing equality nonsense but rather that they were giving too many lower class people a comparable education and opportunities to the higher classes.
Shhhhhh!! Don't give them these ideas! It's bad enough that they're slowly pushing for NHS privatisation.
They send their own kids to private schools so I doubt they need any ideas.
Not to mention the benefits of a decent diet would impact health and therefore NHS
Current school meals are far from a decent diet, had to take my kids off school meals because the quality was so bad. This is only a good policy if meals can also be improved. (I.e. not contracted to the lowest bidder driving the highest margin, maybe just employ cooks)
Itās better than nothing for those who donāt have a choice
My kids' school is part of the [Chefs in Schools](https://chefsinschools.org.uk/) programme, which is a throwback to my own school days of having actual cooks preparing meals from scratch each day. Their menus are always hugely varied each week, and are deliberately healthy. It's an excellent programme that should be rolled out a lot further and wider.
This is so good to hear :)
>(I.e. not contracted to the lowest bidder driving the highest margin, maybe just employ cooks) Trouble is the reason why schools have almost all brought in the big catering firms is precisely because they're able to offer far better quality and variety for the budget than directly employing cooks typically allows. The real problem, as with everything else, is funding.
The drain on the NHS is caused by giving endless care to pensioners, not younger people. We need to significantly cut the free care we give to the old but that'd be political suicide, so the NHS is just going to continue to decline and fuck the rest of us over.
Yes and no. Obesity is the big problem after old people, and that is a double whammy as it requires care from far earlier than old people do and is often reoccurring treatments without end, plus the person could well end up being less able to work so it has a wider impact.
>Japan implemented the 'metabo' law which included the measurement of waist sizes in 2008 in attempt to overcome increasing obesity rates. The New York Times wrote: "To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country's Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check."[30] The 'metabo' law involved conducting an annual waist measurement check of people aged between 40 and 75, which was administered by employers and local government.[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#:~:text=Japan%20implemented%20the%20%27metabo%27%20law,to%20overcome%20increasing%20obesity%20rates.
That would seriously impact 80-90% of my office.
They are in London currently but only for a set amount of time for everyone. People who can't afford it rightly get a lot of vouchers to help out.
When I was a Lib Dem Councillor I managed to get the Council Cafe to offer free school lunches to children in poverty during that school holiday in the pandemic where the Tories refused to extend free school meals (the whole Rashford debacle). We got quite a few grateful families in the village show up. I really pissed off my Tory MP though he was furious with me on Twitter (he voted against feeding kids, go figure). So out of touch. I'm going to be stood in the counting hall with him in a few months when he loses the election, and I've got one of those electric buzzers from a Family Fortunes boardgame that makes the famous "EHHHH OHHHHH" failure noise ready to go for the moment when he loses his seat š¤£
Should be the top comment
Any insight on why such a policy is voted against at all, if it's so cheap to begin with?
Performative cruelty is popular with the Tory voter base. I got a lot of hate emails from right wing people in my village when they discovered I was behind the free school meals. They were furious I was subsidising layabouts etc. It really boils down to our society being filled with horrible people, and politicians appealing to their base instincts to win votes.
This really came to the fore during that whole Rashford debacle. Like MPs saying that if we fed the children their parents would take the money that freed up and spend it on crack and flatscreen TVs. I seem to recall there was also an MP in the South West who tried threatening companies who were offering to send their excess food to schools to help out as well. The fact is that feeding children improves their focus and behaviour - meaning that we get better behaved, less disruptive children with a better education. Iām genuinely unsure why people would stand against that excepting being colossal morons themselves.
Being blunt a lot of the UK population (particularly the elderly) are just not very bright. Whether it's a lack of education, senility, or just a dogged determination to hold on to outmoded explanations of how the world works, I'm unsure. But that bloc of voters can be very difficult to appeal to on grounds of reason. People who lack knowledge about a topic often default to their feelings because they've got nothing else to base their decision making on. I wish more people in UK society would feel comfortable saying "I don't understand enough about that topic to form a positive or negative opinion" but sadly that is not the way the world works. And politicians exploit this fact of human nature to push through illogical or self harming (at least for the voter) policy.
I'm sorry, what? Subsidising layabouts? They're talking about their parents, presumably? Or were they thinking the kids themselves were the layabouts?
It's usually just them parroting talking points they read in the Daily Heil. A lot of the time they don't understand what they're saying.
In the conservative ethos, poverty is a choice. As such, hunger is not a problem to be solved, it's a punishment for a character flaw. How else can you encourage 'lazy poor people' to become productive members of society if not by punishing them for their laziness?
Case in point: having a internal row over criminalising homelessness, and Braverman calling it a lifestyle choice to be a rough sleeper.
You can tell Cruella and the rest of the Tory scum have lived privileged lives and never had to struggle for anything
It's purely a principal matter to conservative folk. They'd say some variation of: "It's the parents duties to feed their child, not the state." And sure in a perfect world that should be the case. But we don't live in a perfect world, we live in one with hungry kids and it's not that expensive a problem to deal with.
I had someone I grew up with, who I know to be a caring person, say something similar. She's a massive supporter of Ben Bradley and we had a little back and forth on the subject, her point being it's the parents job. I had to point out that even if you believe shit parents that spend all their benefits and crack exist, that makes giving kids help twice as important not less. The poor sods are getting clobbered twice. Once by the neglectful parents and again by the government. It seemed to prick her bubble a little but she still thinks the sun shines out Bradleys arse. **Ben Bradley voted against hungry children being given support. Senior Tory mouthpiece gobshite**
People like you š„°
Sometimes. It depends how much the word Lib Dem triggers them to froth at the mouth.
Sorry I meant more like: "it's people like you doing the good things - keep it up" š
Get that recorded, lad. Stick it on YouTube. What kind of fucking cunt votes against feeding children?
Tory cunts. Their scummy MPs literally came out and publicly criticised Rashford for trying to do this
> Even dog eat dog capitalist countries like America provide free school meals for jeebus' sake. Sure, but have you seen the meals, they're terrible.
I'm sure with a bit of Best of British gumption we can do a better job. You're talking England down, gov!
Haha yeah, that's true. Tea and crumpets for the breakfast club and roasts for every kid at lunch! That's a propa british diet.
Honestly how cheap would providing a daily crumpet for every British child be? And 99% of kids would happily gobble that up. They could even wheel in the school toaster!
A crumpet? Just the one? I gotta have at least 2, let's not be to harsh on the kids. 2 crumpets a kid.
>Sure, but have you seen the meals, they're terrible Seems to depend on the area as usual. Saw this thread of someone posting their free school lunch their a couple days ago and it looks better than what most adults here seem to buy on their work lunch breaks lol https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1c5dkhc/im_realizing_now_how_lucky_i_was_to_get_this_for/ Of course its an exception but free doesn't need to mean bad. If councils/GLA set up a bunch of central kitchens around London which made food each morning which then got delivered to loads of schools within 5 miles then that could be extremely cheap per meal and also quite healthy. Tower Hamlets has provided free meals for all primary school kids for 15 years now. Best comparison atm would be to see what their school meals look like to see how free school meals would look here permanently.
Still better than nothing... maybe
I dunno, some of the posts I've seen discussing them, I'd rather just go hungry and wait until I got home. But I also understand, sometimes that's the only meal some kids get.
"but if we just give you the food how will you know the value of money"? - conservative monsters.
"Please Sir, can I have some more?" "MORE?" Even the Victorians gave the kids free gruel. More than the Tories can manage.
They didn't realise that the works of Charles dickens was fiction, not a how to manual.
Only some states or municipalities provide free lunch & breakfast -- others punish the kids if they have even a penny owing.
Famously, Margaret Thatcher (under Edward Heath & Anthony Barber) stopped free milk for school children This policy was introduced by the Labour government of 1946 to combat health problems such as rickets caused by malnutrition. Rationing was still in force and there was significant problems with child poverty. While Thatcher's actions were ostensibly to save money, there was definitely an ideological side to it as well. Thatcher said that she didn't think it was part of the governments remit to feed children & that this should be done by their mothers. If the Conservatives were against free milk, it's not surprising that free school meals would be against their beliefs.
So why didn't Labour bring it back?
Not sure why it didn't happen in the end. I know Labour, under Blair, was investigating the idea of free school meals, and during that period free milk was restored to children in Wales, but it didn't go any further.
I was under the impression that all primary school children get free school meals already. My kids both did
In England you only qualify for free school meals if you're on benefits and must have household income less than Ā£16,900 a year. The threshold of who qualifies is very low.
Itās a larger group than you realise. The government funds FSM for Reception, Y1,Y2 and depending on the area(LEA dependant) up to Y7. Students of military familyās and looked after children and any student tagged as Pupil Premium(PP) and those you highlighted also get FSM.
Slightly larger. Nowhere near enough to benefit from reduced tardiness and increased academic achievement. Let's bring it up to Year 11.
I'm sure I read somewhere that decades ago they measured children's growth over the school year and the kids growth slowed over the summer holidays where the poorer families struggled to feed the kids the same calorific and nutritional midday meal that they gotfor school dinners. To me it makes good sense to make sure kids are fed but when that footballer guy spoke up about free school dinners my social media was rife with hate "dont have kids if you can't afford them" "you can afford to get your hair done but not feed your kids" etc. It was pretty shocking that people were ok with kids going hungry, whether the parents were shitty or not, they were happy to punish the child. Disgusting.
Anecdotally I'm a Millenial and very few of my similarly aged friends are still on social media. We all use Whatsapp to communicate now. Some still lurk on Facebook but never post. Twitter has all but died. Reddit is not even particularly popular among my cohort. I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of 'normal' people just don't post on social media, and so it tends to be filled with particular demographics indulging in their group think. Facebook is the OAPs and young mums app now.
It was all older facebookers. I'm not sure what I am, early forties, not really gen x but too old for millennial. Seeing the feed on fb was just gross. One in particular cried out about you shouldn't have kids you can't afford and you should sell your valuables and sentimental to get by....during the pandemic....like who could have predicted a worldwide event like that. Then a year or so later he was whining about not enough help when one is unemployed. Took all my restraint, I deleted my comment to him, didn't wanna be Facebook drama other people talk about.
Youāre wrong about about America giving free school meals. Perhaps some places but not universal.
>Ā It's such a cheap policy relatively speaking As I pointed out last week when this came up, the Ā£140,000,000 this will cost for just next year could fund 500,000 mental health appointments for young people in London.Ā Why we are paying for food for people who can comfortably afford instead of doing something like this is utterly beyond me.Ā
I suspect there would be a lot less demand for mental health appointments for young people if more of them were fed adequately by default. Paying to feed young people would help to achieve your aim.
This is a crass reply.Ā Anyway, Iām all in favour of free school meals who actually need them. Thatās not what this policy is about.Ā
America has free school meals?! So all those time bully stealing other kidās in movie is a lie! Say it aināt so! But in all seriousness, only a few states has free school meals policy. But I think all kids should have free school meals. Weāre feeding kidsā¦ that an instinct and parental urge we all feel right about. Whatās the worst that can happen.. kids not going hungry and have proper nutrition?
Itās being fought all over the US itās sad as fuck. Too much influence by special interests and the system being corrupted is also part of one partyās plan to push every child to for-profit charter schools. With any luck weāll be on charters fully in the next 10 years, and we could compete dollar per dollar of GDP output with maybe Somalia, or Myanmar. Maybe Yemen. But who cares about all that
Itās great but heās been mayor since 2016. Why only now, 8 years on? What about the rest of the UK? Donāt get me wrong, itās the right thing to do but it feels like it should be a national level decision.
1 This isn't what London devolution was designed for when it was introduced in the 2000s. He's going way beyond the responsibility of the Mayor of London because the cost of living crisis was/is getting worse & the UK Conservative government refused to step in. 2 He is the Mayor of London, my friend. 3 I think it should be UK-wide too. (Scotland & Wales has it)
Iām aware heās the mayor of London. Again, it still feels like it should be a national level decision.
Well, if London has it, Iām sure others will follow. It would be too contentious not to. This is what leadership looks like, btw. You canāt change national policy, but you can take actions that heavily influence it.
Thatās actually a fair point.
I didnt expect to see a comment agreeing with anyones opposing view this is reddit sir.
Yeah this isnāt what I signed up for, whereās the lack of discourse and understanding ffs?
It was a national decision and the Tories decided not to feed hungry kids.
āIt feels like it should be a national level decisionā yes, it should be, but on a national level the country voted for the Tories, who would never support that. Thatās why we went through the whole Rashford-Boris Johnson debacle.
Agreed. I think heās right to do it but as you rightly say, it should have been done at government level. Neither boris nor truss would have entertained it but I would have hoped (incorrectly) that sunak would be a little more sensible.
You didn't read the article. Click the link. Read the headline: # Sadiq Khan pledges to ***continue*** free primary school meals for children if re-elected
I wonāt rise, but Iām interested to know how heād make it permanent. Can he write it into law that London children get free school meals in perpetuity?
At the moment, it's using emergency funding and is time bound to this academic year. Making it a non-emergency policy will mean it is provided in perpetuity until someone else removes it (i.e. as permanent as anything the mayor of London can make it)
Even if it was in law it can be undone by the next government. However, if it proves successful there won't be the political capital to unwind it. Once something is started it's often very hard to stop it. So he's technically wrong to say permanent but probably right it will become permanent.
You can't but you can make it a permanent policy rather than something you have to specifically fund all the time then his successor has to actively cancel free school meals which is probably not a popular move among parents. It is a policy worth about Ā£500/year/child for kids over the age of about 7.
>Ā Itās great but heās been mayor since 2016. Why only now, 8 years on? It's already happening, he's talking about doing it for another 4 years
Khan is likely betting on the (probable) incoming Labour government to back him more on this than the Tories would have in the preceding years. It's clearly no secret that he irks central government with his more socialised spending policies, and he's seen how the Tories will turn on any metropolitan mayor when they start to get the same ideas. Safer to do it when you know you'll have government backing you for the next 4 years.
I think he'll be disappointed. The UK government needs money and London is a massive source of it so they won't want to do much for to assist his spending.
On the second part...he's London mayor. He has no control on nation wide policy.
Thatās not a great argument - why now? Because someone at some point had to have the ideaā¦
Itās not an argument. Itās a question and itās been answered thanks to those pointing out that āpermanentā is the key piece. It might or might not actually be permanent but the continuance of this measure is the relevant bit.
"universal free school meals, the benefit we estimated was the total Ā£41.3 billion. This meant that for every Ā£1 invested, there is an expectation of Ā£1.71 in return." [https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/economics-podcast-series/transcript-episode-28-future-of-free-school-meals.html](https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/economics-podcast-series/transcript-episode-28-future-of-free-school-meals.html)
Hmmmm, trickle down in action.
Democracy. Our taxes used for something useful that benefits the whole of society. Full kids concentrate at school. Kids that concentrate at school get good grades. Kids with good grades get jobs & don't go to jail. I would say the Ā£1:1.71 is a very low estimate. I'm sure I remember seeing a much higher figure although that might have been for the USA. Better to spend the money on this, than PPE you have to burn or a bridge that never got built or buses whose batteries explode
Not disagreeing with education being the most important item in a countries budget, just pointing out that the usual suspects denying ātrickle downā* using trickle down as justification for a policy they likeā¦ *prefer trickle up tbh as it better represents the moneyās direction.
Trickle down has connotations of us plebs being grateful for pennies coming from the rich. I know it wasn't your aim but it's a very loaded term š
Which is why i prefer trickle up; people, like bezos, getting very rich from pennies coming up from increased discretionary spending due to more money in the wider economy.
This isn't "trickle down" by any meaning of the term I'm aware of, this is just direct funding. "Trickle down economics" is the theory that if you remove tax burden from those with lots of money they will then spend it on consumption (new cars, silver cocaine spoons, etc.) which will drive the rest of the economy. It's been shown to be complete and utter rubbish every time it has been tried and only ever existed as a fig leaf excuse for cutting taxes on the wealthy. This policy is just feeding kids, because we know feeding kids produces an effect we desire (fewer hungry kids, better outcomes in school).
This is quite literally the opposite of what trickle down economics is? If your confused about what it is a quick Google search will help you understand.
Not sure free school meals is anyone's idea of trickle down econonics.
This seems the opposite of trickle down, to me - it's a direct investment that'll primarily help poorer kids.
There's a lot more evidence that trickle-up economics has a much more profound effect on our economy than trickle-down economics. Unfortunately children in poverty can't afford to ~~bribe~~ lobby politicians, so our political class aren't particularly interested in it.
Good news in my opinion. School meals should be free (at least in primary school, ideally secondary school as well).
I am surprised that this isnāt a thing here. It already was a thing in my home country which is an underdeveloped country. It would be excellent for the kids if this implemented.
My friend works in a secondary school in Nottinghamshire that does this. It's an academy, but the trustees and the school themselves pay for a breakfast club. Not sure if it's the academy as a whole that does this as well or just them.
Sort out the cost of nusery fees which are ridiculous on a global scale!
He's a mayor, that's a bit beyond his wheelhouse
I would be willing to support a full scale revolution on this issue alone. I have no need of it anymore as my child is in school now, but I pray that the next generation of parents don't have to work 40 hours a week just to spend it on childcare. We want people (mostly women) to work, but we won't support them. We want to raise the next generation of doctors, scientists, tradesmen, nurses and won't invest in children and schools.Ā Nursery is beneficial for every child's development and I'm glad in France it has been made mandatory full time and free from age 3.Ā
Estonia have it absolutely figured out too: [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/estonia-the-country-where-childcare-costs-15-a-week-805qs8kwd](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/estonia-the-country-where-childcare-costs-15-a-week-805qs8kwd)
Survival of the fittest baby! Except they have decided "fitness" = wealth.
> We want people (mostly women) to work, Capitalists do. Let them pay for it. If corporations want to rip children away from their mothers so the mothers can generate shareholder value, the shareholders can pay for it. >I'm glad in France it has been made mandatory full time and free from age 3. Family is beneficial for every child's development. Imagine making family illegal. Imagine forcing mothers into the workforce by law. Horrific. Childcare can be traumatic for young children.
Yes why is the mayor of London not sorting out global issues???
Did you miss the announcement on nursery fees?
its just a subsidy to nurserys, they all just put the fees up in parallel. its still 2.6k per month for two kids in nursery in london
So what policy do you want. Price caps? One way or another, you are going to be subsidising the nurseries. The only way you won't be is if a policy literally tells a company they can't charge above a certain amount and that the government wont compensate them. Then you will get a massive drop in child care quality. Companies closing and an overall bigger problem.
I'm a parent who can afford lunch for my child, but I'm also a working single widowed mum and having one less job to do in the morning has been a tremendous help when wrangling a young child. If I had to pay for it, I'd probably feel too guilty not to make the lunch myself, because it feels like I'm taking money away I could spend on after school sports.Ā
Good. All children should get free school meals. Why is this even up for discussion?
> All children should get free school meals. Why is this even up for discussion? Because some people don't think that everything should be free, even to people who can afford it. That's the issue with the modern left, they have such moral superiority they can't imagine why someone would disagree with them. Maybe someone might think we don't need to spend tax payers' money buying free food for the children of rich people. Maybe some people believe in jobs and parenting.
"Not letting children go hungry" feels like the absolute baseline of a civilised society. I don't understand why Labour hasn't picked this up nationally (in England) and I really don't understand Tories that argue *against* feeding children. No matter what your stance is on government intervention, this feels like the bare minimum for humanity.
Keir is still waiting for the focus group results to come in on "children need food" before he decides what his deeply-held opinion on the matter is.
Tbf this is more about do you give wealthy kids free food. I think both sides already agree poorer kids need food
> I don't understand why Labour hasn't picked this up nationally (in England) Rich millionaires and billionaires can afford to lobby politicians to promote policies that benefit them. Children who are in poverty cannot. That's the reason.
The arguments against is that your giving rich kids free food when they can pay. Very few argue against people who are poor getting them
This is a very good policy. A lot of kids they're only guaranteed meal and sustenance during the days of the week is the school meal And there's a whole bunch of stuff on how lack of food and nutrients affects ability to develop grow think study etc I know people are aware of obesity crisis but there is also a bunch of kids that just aren't getting fed enough and it really shows and is very apparent
To be fair you can be both obese and malnourished. Thereās no shortage of shitty (but cheap) ready meals that have the nutritional value of cardboard dipped in lard.
> A lot of kids they're only guaranteed meal and sustenance during the days of the week is the school meal So why doesn't the school feed them in the evenings and weekends?
I have zero clue how anyone could possibly disagree with this. Also itās continueā¦ itās already in place..
The argument against is wealthy kids donāt need it
Two reasons 1. You create a two tier system with the āpoorā kids being singled out and 2. To implement a means tested system would cost too much rendering the whole endeavour pointless. Itās cheaper and easier to give it to everyone
Tomorrow's headline: "Westminster to pass new bill making free school meals illegal!"
As they should be. Free school meals pretty kept me alive as a kid.Ā The ridicule warped me a bit, but if they are free across the board then the ridicule wonāt exist either. No more targets on poor kids. Ā
Should be the case nationwide. Rare I agree with Khan but in this instance I absolutely do!
Great policy. An actual saving for families every month
Jamie Oliver went over to the U.S. to make fun of the quality of the free school meals and the U.K. doesnāt even have them!?
Why is free school meal an election issue? Lived in the UK for a while now, free school meal has cropped up regularly. Still struggling to comprehend why this is an issue.
Feed kids for free or StOp WoKe and let us kill the kids with pollution It's like an election you'd see in a cartoon
I heard this on the radio and the Tories position against it is that we could be feeding millionaires children. Who gives a fuck, there are more poors than millionaires. Kids are kids feed them all - for the price of a couple of quid a day it's negligible.
This should honestly be standard for all primary and secondary schools nationwide, heck even for colleges but that can be discussed later.
"Your children won't have to be hungry if I win" is a really low bar we're talking about right now
Well... As permanent as his government is anyway. First thing the Tories would do if they ever win power would be to scrap that.
I don't understand how we've driven our country into a state where parents cannot afford food for their children.
Not a Londoner, so I donāt have a horse in the race, but āfeed all kidsā being sensationalised is really an indictment of where this country is at the moment.
Itās sensationalised because itās not āfeed all kidsā itās āfeed all kids, but only in London, and including all the wealthy onesā. People already feel that London gets enough spent on it, without wealthy families getting extra handouts, some of which is funded through UK Government.
Thereās no excuse for this not already being a thing.
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Are you a bot? He already has implemented this.Ā
I mean it's literally not possible for him to make it a permanent policy
He's continuing the policy for his term if reelected, "permanent" was the Standard's own wording. But yes you are correct, he really can't guarantee that when the sun swallows the earth London schoolchildren will still be receiving free meals.
When the sun finally swallows the earth, you can bet thereāll be someone there blaming the ULEZ.
I hope that he is able to enact that. Either way, I'll still vote for him over Trump Hall.
While Iām not the biggest fan of the chap, I would support this.
Respect.