Yet another £600 million down the drain

[Deleted User]

Labour get in, decide it'd be nice to extend the scheme up to year 6..

Tories get in, want to scrap the scheme to save money..

Lib dems get in (stop laughing) and think it would be good to reintroduce it and increase funding for food so it can be healthier. Children start complaining they don't want to eat well-prepared salads and appetisers.

zagfles

LydiaJ wrote: »

My daughter gets pretty good food. There are chips occasionally, but not that often, and the variety is good.

I suppose it varies from school to school but the meals at our kids' school are rubbish, even after all the Jamie Oliver stuff.

"Chips" are only on the menu once a week, but on other days there are "wedges", and "roast potatoes", so basically potatoes soaked in oil 3 days out of 5. The menu reads like a kid's menu in a pub, boring bland rubbish which I suppose appeals to a lot of kids, but ours have always preferred proper "adult" food even when they were very young. The packed lunches we make them are far tastier and more healthy, not all kids with packed luches have the stereotypical chocolate bars and crisps, we're not all chavs as they seem to assume!

michaels

Perhaps they should offer free lunches only to those kids who reguarly arrive with 'chav' style pack lunches and proceed to have a disruptive sugar rush and then fall asleep onc eit has worn off?

Loughton_Monkey

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Labour get in, decide it'd be nice to extend the scheme up to year 6..

Tories get in, want to scrap the scheme to save money..

Lib dems get in (stop laughing) and think it would be good to reintroduce it and increase funding for food so it can be healthier. Children start complaining they don't want to eat well-prepared salads and appetisers.

UKIP get in, kids over 7 will have to pay for school meals, but the menu will consist of boiled 5 to 7 year olds.

Helpfulone

If the country had the money I think it's a good idea - the problem is the budget really. But then again how do you differentiate. It would be like only poor people being able to use the NHS.

It's a difficult one but some children really don't get fed properly and while I agree it's the parents' responsibility how can you monitor whether they are or not.

Loughton_Monkey

Helpfulone wrote: »

......It's a difficult one but some children really don't get fed properly and while I agree it's the parents' responsibility how can you monitor whether they are or not.

Apart from extreme obvious cases, isn't the question why should we monitor it?

The more things like this are 'treated' by the Nanny State with so-called 'solutions' to a problem, the more people learn that it is no longer their responsibility and take on the attitude "why should we....?"

Do we monitor that children are being 'stimulated' and 'engaged' at home (rather than kicked out of the way with X-boxes)? Do we monitor what time the go to bed (or even if they go to bed)? Do we monitor whether or not 12/15 year olds are allowed to go out with knives and hoodies to loiter on street corners and sell/carry drugs for older dealers?

Conrad

The nanny state has bought about a whole landscape of moral hazards I see with my own eyes such as the chap this morning in here claiming he cannot work in the job environment he was trained for due to allergy and thus just assumes the rest of us will pay for him to loll about. God forbid he might get a job as a Tesco home shopping delivery man!

Having said this Loughton, the reality is many parents posses the minds of children, their only goal in life to catch Kim Kardashians Brother cutting the ribbon on a new nightclub (happened near me - all the thicko chavs were in attendance) or organise a 48 hr Playstation party in their flat.

They have literally not the faintest clue about nutrition as they have no interest in such things despite simple posters about an 'apple a day' being on the Doctors waiting room walls for the last 60 years.

Old_Slaphead

WellKnownSid wrote: »

It was in exchange for the reinstatement of the married couple's tax allowance, apparently.

Apparently this is only to be a transfer of tax allowance where it is not used by a stay at home spouse.

Clearly this household will need the extra money to provide some entertainment for s-a-h spouse who now has much more time on their hands having no longer the distraction of cooking offsprings meals.

Old_Slaphead

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

UKIP get in, kids over 7 will have to pay for school meals, but the menu will consist of boiled 5 to 7 year olds.

Settled then. With that policy I'll definitely be voting for Nige !

Thrugelmir

globalds wrote: »

I would think child benefit will either not go up or even fall slightly as this will be classed as just a reallocation of those resources.

Many parents don't spend the money for their kids benefit. So directly spending on children themselves to improve their well being is a good idea in principle. The sad case this week illustrates the problem society faces. If the poor boy had school meals then unlikely he would have only weighed 1 and half stone when he died. Even more likely that he would have survived.

As for "Yet another £600 million down the drain". Do you realise how much time is spent in hospitals, schools, social workers, police etc administering these cases of child abuse and neglect?