Dear Marcus.
Its only a week ago that schools were told to shut. Organising food for all those children entitled to free school meals will not be easy given the zero notice. And the food is NOT for a family (your tweet is inaccurate') it is for the child. Glad you raised it, but go easy on folk.
Keep up the good work.
Mick
Just playing devils advocate here but... surely this was very predictable? Should the powers that be not have had a plan in advance for this scenario? Food isn't one of those things that can wait to be sorted later - kids gotta eat!
>Should the powers that be not have had a plan in advance for this
They did. Let them starve. There was a vote and everything.
They overturned the result, but I don't suppose that there is much enthusiasm for the project, in certain quarters.
What's happening is criminal. £30 of tax payers money for £11 worth of food.
Of course it was short notice so why didn't the GVMT issue vouchers?
Reminds me of the recent sketch on Spitting Image about DC's suggestion to compost asylum seekers. I've not seen it all yet but Spitting Image are missing a trick if there isn't a Rashford based gag in there somewhere too.
> Just playing devils advocate here but... surely this was very predictable? Should the powers that be not have had a plan in advance for this scenario? Food isn't one of those things that can wait to be sorted later - kids gotta eat!
Plan? In this case that would be very difficult. Everything was all set to go until a week yesterday. Sorting all that fresh food at such short notice would be impossible. I fear that Marcus may have actually shifted blame away from the government and onto schools/suppliers. And he is technically wrong: the food is not for a family.
In Wigan over the summer, some children got £2.50 a day, others could pick up a basic Grab Bag (sarnie, fruit, snack). Many parents complained that they didn't get the £2.50. However, many headteachers knew that some parents wouldn't spend it on food so giving a Grab Bag not only ensured food but also gave school contact with the family. Talking primary here, and my wife reckons the amount of food is adequate. So, 1 loaf of bread, small amount of cheese, 5 fruits and 5 snacks would do the job - and some of the complaining photographs contain not far short of this. And all of this is via social media which is often nonesense.
Rashford has got the media and the government wrapped around his little finger - not a bad thing generally but he should give folk a bit of time.
Just talking none Covid times here: Child food poverty does exist in the UK but is more down to parenting (in turn linked to poverty/oppression and media pressures). Even in 'deprived' communities, obesity is probably a bigger issue then being underweight. Food is (too?) cheap in the UK, and most areas i know now have a vast network of food banks and 'shops' (eg places where you can get a weeks of food for £3).
> Rashford has got the media and the government wrapped around his little finger - not a bad thing generally but he should give folk a bit of time.
Why should we give them time? Why should we accept incompetence? Generally folk will accept failure to deliver if they can see effort was put forth. I don't see any evidence of this and again all I see is a con where the tax payer pays cronies of the tory party.
We don't give those in charge enough of a hard time. I'm pleased that for once somebody who is is being listened to.
What would you have done?
> Should the powers that be not have had a plan in advance for this scenario?
Come on; they only had 12 hours notice of the change from schools being safe to the schools being so unsafe they had to close...
I mean, you couldn't possibly expect them to act on their October 14th report that showed children 12-16 were seven times more likely to be the first covid case in a household than anyone over 16... Who would have guessed that schools might be contributing to the spread of covid.. ?
> What's happening is criminal. £30 of tax payers money for £11 worth of food.
Looked a lot less than £11 of food to me. Maybe it was Waitrose organic range...
All because 'the poor' can't be trusted not to blow the money on drugs and booze, eh.. ?
Still, I'm sure it's a nice windfall for David Cameron's mate (CEO Compass).
> All because 'the poor' can't be trusted not to blow the money on drugs and booze, eh.. ?
It's rather naive to suggest that there aren't plenty of families where that indeed happens, but a voucher system avoids it to the same extent as paying for the logistics of distributing actual food.
I certainly agree that the grab bags are a good idea, for the reasons you outlined. Its also useful (from a providing food perspective) that many of those in need of these are the same vulnerable students that are currently in schools.
I don't know... but its not my job to have made a plan so you wouldn't expect me to. I would expect the person in charge of feeding vulnerable kids to have foreseen this scenario months ago though and to have had a plan for it.
(I know the food isn't for the whole family - I'm not disagreeing with you there).
> It's rather naive to suggest that there aren't plenty of families where that indeed happens,
Oh, it happens. But there are simple ways around it.
The vouchers couldn't be spent on anything age limited (booze, fags, lottery tickets etc) so they don't even have that (non) argument.
Some LEA's have administered vouchers in recent past. I have been involved in this in Wigan as part of my job. Some folk are against because the money may not be spent on the childs food. But sorting a voucher system involves: having agreements in place with specific outlets, devising a list of eligible children (constantly changing), admin......takes ages.
As an example, in the summer Wigan Council decided (correctly in my view) to use some of its extra emergency cash to give school uniform vouchers to children on free school meals. The logistics still meant it took weeks to sort.
In reality, thats not how it works: some families will use the vouchers for child essentials then use the money saved for other stuff. I know examples of this happening.
The best plan is to give food as it provides a school/family contact. And I don't doubt there has been the odd cock up, but not half as bad as is being implied (although our media loves making a great big song and dance about things).
And all these families will be eligible for food parcels and can access other food poverty initiatives. I know this as I regularly make referrals and was the Chairperson of one in Wigan (as a volunteer). Indeed, the Friday before Christmas I was driving round distributing food parcels donated to asylum families (its my paid job)
Why? Because people in receipt of free school meals are most likely to blame the wrong people. They will. I know from my job. They will blame headteachers and the council because they are in charge of distribution and are 'innocent'.
You'll struggle to find someone who hates our government more than me.
> In reality, thats not how it works: some families will use the vouchers for child essentials then use the money saved for other stuff. I know examples of this happening.
Agreed, but locally here about 2000 kids get FSM's only about 6 families do this.
The other problem the last minute change of policy has caused is the difficulty school caterers have had, they thought they needed to feed the whole school for a week, but were only open for a day. Some but not all of this food has been redistributed.
The company supplying the food said the package pictured was not correct for their specification and they were looking into it.
> The other problem the last minute change of policy has caused is the difficulty school caterers have had, they thought they need to feed the whole school for a week, but were only open for a day. Some but not all of this food has been redistributed.
Agreed. And then you have all the wholesalers expecting to supply schools with a tonne of food going off, tonnes of which ain't suitable for a child's food parcel. Big mess all round, feel sorry for those at the front line left dealing with this who will end up getting blamed.
> Looked a lot less than £11 of food to me. Maybe it was Waitrose organic range...
I saw a post on Twitter (yeah, I know, not high quality reporting!) that did a cost breakdown on a food parcel in terms of buying it from Waitrose (so, not just a couple of cheese slices or cake bars but a whole pack) and it came to about £11, so your intuition's not wrong!
> The company supplying the food said the package pictured was not correct for their specification and they were looking into it.
Interesting. These companies know they are under the microscope and I doubt very much some delivery person is stealing a carrot. Bigger chance of someone creating a social media storm, saying 'this is for 10 days' when it was actually for 5 days (could even be a genuine mistake, see similar all the time).
I'm at work so just a quick reply - the problem I have is yet again it's a private company getting a public contract (I think it's a no tender contract but I may be wrong) and on top of that delivering terrible value for money.
And I'll take a few people misusing the vouchers over the above.
Surly if we are going to privatise this then it should be divided between the main stream supermarket chains, they have the logistics, delivery drivers etc. They each submit a variety of £30 food boxes for government approval and away you go. All we've done is over complicated it to allow more grubby paws in the pot.
Link to the post on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/sproooce/status/1348658234572333056
(and it's apparently £10.01 for buying the full packs)
> Surly if we are going to privatise this then it should be divided between the main stream supermarket chains, they have the logistics, delivery drivers etc.
These are the Morrisons food boxes for £30-35. Although, the greyed out school meals box doesn’t look as generous.
https://www.morrisons.com/food-boxes/boxes/food-boxes/everyday/all-boxes
> Surly if we are going to privatise this then it should be divided between the main stream supermarket chains
That's one option, another would have been to do it through the existing school caterers.
Not sure the whiskey cocktail box is suitable 😀😀
> Not sure the whiskey cocktail box is suitable 😀😀
Well we all know, that’s what their feckless parents would spend it on anyway
> That's one option, another would have been to do it through the existing school caterers.
It is up to each school to decide (from .gov)...
......We strongly encourage schools to work with their school catering team or food provider to provide food parcels to eligible free school meal pupils who are at home. Where school kitchens are open this should be the approach taken by schools.
The steps schools take during this national lockdown period will depend on local circumstances.
This could include:
providing food parcels through the school catering team or food provider
providing vouchers for a local shop or supermarket
using the Department for Education’s national voucher scheme, which will reopen shortly.......
Like I said at the start, there simply wasn't the time to get some of the logistics sorted coz of the overnight u turn on shutting schools, and when parents get shit delivered they are more likely to blame the school/council than the government. Most (all?) school kitchens are open but how the hell could they sort that with 1 seconds notice?? 1.4 million children get free school meals and whilst many will be in school most wont be.
The problem ain't as bad as Rashford has made out.
Aye. Rashford has had a meeting with the 'blamed' company and they have said 'but it isn't us and please tell everyone it isn't us.'
He could end up looking like a bit of a fool. Slow down dude !!
There is also the issue of more suspected cronyism. The catering firm in question are part of the compass group. It has been reported that a CEO of compass group was an adivisor to Cameron and a major tory pary donor.
Its not just one incident in one area, it appears quite widespread. It's difficult to dismiss as anything other than a private company (with links to the tory party) profiteering from free school meals for disadvantaged children.
Totally get that. Rashford needs to bang about about cronyism them and really go for it.
Sorry Mick, I don't care about the circumstances one bit, there is never any need to not do all we can to feed vulnerable and hungry children as quickly as possible.
"But they government didn't know..."
Well they should have done. That's their f*cking job.
Besides around Xmas time every journalist, pundit, contributor and man on the street seemed to expect the schools to close in January (I know I did), so if the government didn't have a scalable, robust plan to deal with this happening then that's on them.
I see a chef (ex Master Chef contestant) has decided to join in. Two of his children are entitled and he is moaning that until the hampers are ready thy are having to put up with a ham roll, biscuit, carrot sticks and a banana which he says is not balanced. He is actually horrified !! Looks good to me dude.
> Sorry Mick, I don't care about the circumstances one bit, there is never any need to not do all we can to feed vulnerable and hungry children as quickly as possible.
> "But they government didn't know..."
> Well they should have done. That's their f*cking job.
> Besides around Xmas time every journalist, pundit, contributor and man on the street seemed to expect the schools to close in January (I know I did), so if the government didn't have a scalable, robust plan to deal with this happening then that's on them.
Today I have spoken to a board of governor at a Wigan school, a governor at a separate Wigan school and my wife; no problems reported. I'm working from home know, with phone switched on and the parents of 115 asylum children have access to the number: no problems reported so far. And part of our service is to advocate on their behalf and food parcel referrals. That's not to say there wont be the odd cock up (and don't get me going on cronyism !) but I think the plan/delivery is better that people are going on about. But eh, why listen to facts when some anonymous poster on twitter can spout bollox !!
I have not received one single request for food.
This is the free and 'horrific' and 'not balanced' packed lunch which some children have to eat before the voucher system kicks in. (hopefully soon but i know they do take a while). Mr Master Chef needs to get things into perspective.
> Dear Marcus.
> Its only a week ago that schools were told to shut. Organising food for all those children entitled to free school meals will not be easy given the zero notice. And the food is NOT for a family (your tweet is inaccurate') it is for the child. Glad you raised it, but go easy on folk.
> Keep up the good work.
> Mick
I don't think he's on UKClimbing. He's busy doing something about it. Suggest you call your local food bank and see what you can do to help.
> > Should the powers that be not have had a plan in advance for this scenario?
> Come on; they only had 12 hours notice of the change from schools being safe to the schools being so unsafe they had to close...
I recognise your sarcasm, but as others don't, there are two issues - the food providers offering £4 of food that perish too quickly to last 2 weeks and making money and the second is the government not offering vouchers that could be used as reliable food distribution points (eg supermarkets).
> Plan? In this case that would be very difficult. Everything was all set to go until a week yesterday. Sorting all that fresh food at such short notice would be impossible. I fear that Marcus may have actually shifted blame away from the government and onto schools/suppliers. And he is technically wrong: the food is not for a family.
Why is it difficult to plan, surely contingency plans should be in place for possible out-comes.
I knew we were heading for a school closure, how come not the government?
You'll be telling us there's a pandemic on next!!
Oh ok, cool. So the problem doesn’t exist.
Funnily enough you’ll find people on the internet who say they’re a nurse and the ICU at their hospital isn’t full so there’s no such thing as the pandemic.
It’s serious enough for the DofE and Chartwell’s to be having emergency talks regarding it, so I’m thinking it’s a little more than “bollox on Twitter”.
But no, nowt going on in your part of Wigan so that’s fine. Nowt going on at all.
> This is the free and 'horrific' and 'not balanced' packed lunch which some children have to eat before the voucher system kicks in. (hopefully soon but i know they do take a while). Mr Master Chef needs to get things into perspective.
Bloody 'ell, Mick! You can't expect kids to eat that muck - where's the pie?
> I don't think he's on UKClimbing. He's busy doing something about it. Suggest you call your local food bank and see what you can do to help.
Don't worry, I speak them regularly enough - I helped them set it up way back....
I do loads about it both paid and unpaid. You?
> Bloody 'ell, Mick! You can't expect kids to eat that muck - where's the pie?
You know as well as me that to be balanced it would be a pie in each hand...
Oh, i was a volunteer and Chairperson of both Wigan CAB and Sunshine House Community Centre as well. Check if you want on companies house, all there in the open.
So what have you done/do ?
> It’s serious enough for the DofE and Chartwell’s to be having emergency talks regarding it, so I’m thinking it’s a little more than “bollox on Twitter”.
I am clearly more cynical about our government than you: they are obsessed with image and being popular and social media has created a shit storm so they need to get this apparent mess sorted.
I don't like mixing work with messing on here, but i will check the Greater Manchester scene tomorrow and report back. Like I said, its actually my job to support those in need.
> Why is it difficult to plan, surely contingency plans should be in place for possible out-comes.
> I knew we were heading for a school closure, how come not the government?
> You'll be telling us there's a pandemic on next!!
I have read the governments plan. The summary is: use your school kitchens/staff/suppliers until voucher system gets sorted but still use your kitchen staff/suppliers if possible. Sounds like a good plan to me that appears to be working on the whole.
I would have thought loads of angry parents would have been complaining but this hasn't happened.
What pandemic?
> This is the free and 'horrific' and 'not balanced' packed lunch which some children have to eat
I think the emphasis is on "some" there - here's a photo of what some other folks have to work with:
https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1348698098139328513/photo/1
> I have read the governments plan. The summary is: use your school kitchens/staff/suppliers until voucher system gets sorted but still use your kitchen staff/suppliers if possible. Sounds like a good plan to me that appears to be working on the whole.
Did you see what you did there? "until voucher system gets sorted", might it have been a good plan to have made provision for this sometime ago?
A bit like asking ex-health care workers to register to give vaccinations and then have 3 hours of forms to fill in. A little foresight, might prevent people pissing and moaning about what seems to be obvious issues.
Plus £30 for a £5 - £10 meal, WTF? They really don't care about how much money they're wasting as long as it's going to the "right"* people.
* by which I obviously mean the people who don't really need it.
The issue is that the private company who happen to be Tory donors have been provided with £30 per child per week and are providing food that could be bought at Asda for £7 with that £30. Where is the rest of the money going?
Regarding the piccie that kicked it all off, Chartwells have said:
'For clarity this shows five days of free school lunches (not ten days) and the charge for food, packing and distribution was actually £10.50 and not £30 as suggested...'
Not saying I would trust them more than I would trust an anonymous twitter person, but thought I'd include just for balance.
Then why are they giving 10.50 worth of food instead of 30?
Why are they charging 10.50 for 7.00 of food at asda prices?
> This is the free and 'horrific' and 'not balanced' packed lunch which some children have to eat before the voucher system kicks in. (hopefully soon but i know they do take a while). Mr Master Chef needs to get things into perspective.
No quinoa?
> I have read the governments plan. The summary is: use your school kitchens/staff/suppliers until voucher system gets sorted but still use your kitchen staff/suppliers if possible. Sounds like a good plan to me that appears to be working on the whole.
I realise I wasn't clear with my previous post and your reply was correct. I'm not sure how it works in all schools now, but for the last 10 years I worked for an Academy that was part of a MAT. One of the differences was things like facilities and catering were contracted out on tender, so we had to negotiate with catering if there was any change. The main example I remember was in the past if the kids left litter lying around a break, the the canteen wouldn't open at break time for a couple of days, this option wasn't open to us. Are schools that employ their kitchen staff directly able to respond to sudden changes more effectively?
The pandemic has highlighted differences people weren't aware of previously, to start with homeschooling showed the provision was varied greatly from school to school and teacher to teacher. I would also add that FSM's in school also vary greatly but this didn't get publicity.
I've got a tax bill to pay at the end of the month. I'm thinking of sending HMRC a big packet of cheese slices, half a dozen malt loaves and a note telling them that's worth three grand of anybody's money.
> Then why are they giving 10.50 worth of food instead of 30?
> Why are they charging 10.50 for 7.00 of food at asda prices?
Not a clue. But I do know what a primary school packed lunch contains and some of the complaint photos I’ve seen are not so far off the mark. Looks like the company has apologised for it being insufficient though, and the woman concerned had got it wrong (it was for 5 days, not 10 as she stated.)
> That's one option, another would have been to do it through the existing school caterers.
Who do you think are the largest school caterers in the UK? I’ll let you guess, it starts with a C and rhymes with umpass.
> Who do you think are the largest school caterers in the UK? I’ll let you guess, it starts with a C and rhymes with umpass.
Crumpets?
> Food is (too?) cheap in the UK, and most areas i know now have a vast network of food banks and 'shops' (eg places where you can get a weeks of food for £3).
If you had £3 to spend, what would your weekly shop look like? I'm genuinely curious. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong
> I see a chef (ex Master Chef contestant) has decided to join in. Two of his children are entitled and he is moaning that until the hampers are ready thy are having to put up with a ham roll, biscuit, carrot sticks and a banana which he says is not balanced. He is actually horrified !! Looks good to me dude.
Horrified, no turkey twizzler,crisps,chocolate or fizzy drink.
> Then why are they giving 10.50 worth of food instead of 30?
> Why are they charging 10.50 for 7.00 of food at asda prices?
I would imagine that the contract between the DoE and Compass states that £15 of food at supermarket prices is the same as what compass can procure for £10.50.
Compass are the largest caterer in the UK so it’s probably not too far off given they’ll have massive purchasing power.
As to the profit element most Covid contracts have been cost plus margin so far. They’ll be making somewhere between 2-7% on this (on the 10.50) - there’s nothing to be made in catering.
The "10.50 of food" was priced up at asda came to under 7.00.
Like many on this thread you have misunderstood my post. What I refer to are community based food ‘shops’ where, for £3, you can get a weeks supply of food. There’s a number of them set up in Wigan and I encourage asylum seekers to use them. Many of them have a principal of reducing food waste (not simply providing cheap food for people on low income) so are open to anyone.
> I would imagine that the contract between the DoE and Compass states that £15 of food at supermarket prices is the same as what compass can procure for £10.50.
Hmmm. The last time I worked for a public sector company we were paying the approved supplier of large quantities of stationary (rhymes with spanner) an average of 60% more than the retail price I would pay for a single item in WH Smiths.
A cynic might think that letting a private company profiteer at the expense of the tax payer was the norm.
> I don't think he's on UKClimbing. He's busy doing something about it. Suggest you call your local food bank and see what you can do to help.
Common on, still waiting. I’ve told you what I do/done so what about you? Or did you just want to have a dig
You couldn’t put that sort of mark-up on at the moment (although it’s a decent gig if you can get the work during BAU).
Deloitte are acting as gate keepers if the contract went out without a tender.
You don’t get paid of Deloitte aren’t happy and since they’re charging by the hour they’re checking everything.
> Common on, still waiting. I’ve told you what I do/done so what about you? Or did you just want to have a dig
Sorry, I was busy doing charity work. You might be surprised to learn you don't have a monopoly on it. Been a rewarding evening but I do feel especially annoyed with our governments actions on child poverty. There are a lot of people is have a go at ahead of starting a thread about Rashford. Seemed uncalled for.
I think it you reread from the top you'll find you were first with having a dig.
Just to add some factual balance. If a school child was to get a Grab Bag or similar for a primary school child they would get a packed lunch of a sandwich, fruit, healthy snack.This happened throughout lockdown one and summer holidays, no complaints. Roadside Mums photo of her delivery which she incorrectly said was for 10 days (was for 5) contains about this amount of food. As did that moaning chef bloke. Rashford tweet had lots of inaccuracies. He showed one picture which he said ‘can’t feed a family for three days on this’. He is wrong. It is neither for a family nor for three days.
Ive also been looking at the wider ‘campaign’ and sadly lots of people blaming local authorities.
Give him his due, he can get things done.
For the record I fully agree your comments about children and nutrition (you will see this from previous posts) and I have little time for the governments contracting of these services. I hope Lucas authorities stop using this supplier as they are clearly not fit for the job.
> I see a chef (ex Master Chef contestant) has decided to join in. Two of his children are entitled and he is moaning that until the hampers are ready thy are having to put up with a ham roll, biscuit, carrot sticks and a banana which he says is not balanced. He is actually horrified !! Looks good to me dude.
Yeah stick some marge on the ham roll and that's basically my kids' packed lunch.
Twitterstorm and outrage bus once again.
Edited to add, scrolled through the rest of the thread and standing by for dislikes. At least I'm in the stocks with you here Mick ; )
The list of children is required no matter where you source the food/vouchers from.
An agreement with a combination of the big supermarkets & co-ops etc would (should) require not much more than a few assertive phone calls in the right places, a bit of free publicity for the shops and probably a few days to get something up and running - shops to update their systems to accept vouchers (could even prevent alcohol/fag sales through exclusions) and distribute vouchers to schools
mmm.....I'm sure you could make a nice bunch of carrot and cheese sandwiches with that amazing smorgasbord
<Rashford has got the media and the government wrapped around his little finger - not a bad thing generally but he should give folk a bit of time>
Maybe. But a hungry kid hasn't got the benefit of adopting such a luxurious longer-term strategy. Rashford should keep at it. This latest stuff exposes further those who see a health/humanitarian crisis as an opportunity to gather personal wealth.
It’s a very complex issue that of course everyone thinks is fixed by giving poor people money and stopping the rich people having so much.
Just a few of the issues we have.
Food vouchers cause stigma.
The food parcels were put together locally by the school canteen staff, who are employed by Compass group. Some school head teachers intercepted the parcels and stopped them going out. Why didn’t this happen in these few cases?
The school canteen staff aren’t multimillionaire friends of the Tories, they’re mums too. Where was their quality control? Are they doing just what they were told to?
Giving money to people to buy food doesn’t help because many of these people are time poor and working long shifts. The children are neglected, not starved.
People don’t want nutritional good food for their children, they want rubbish. The supermarkets know this, Jamie Oliver knows this.
People have forgotten what hunger feels like, it’s normal and not something you need to satisfy every 10 minutes with a handful of crap. There’s enough food there for a week of packed lunches.
These vulnerable children don’t need crap packed lunches, they don’t need money, they need a nutritious hot meal.
Time we looked at food properly in this country. Every child should have a hot meal at lunchtime at school. Regardless of their background. You either pay or it’s free.
I’d even go as far as giving every single person in the country a weekly food allowance, that they can only spend on nutritious food in the supermarkets. Get rid of the stigma for those that can’t afford it and increase confidence for all of us that we can always eat regardless of our financial position.
There have been experiments on giving everyone a Universal Basic Income, no testing, everyone gets it CEO or unemployed, you can earn more but always guaranteed of having that minimum, psychologically it changes peoples outlook and increases their intelligence because they are no longer distracted all the time by money worries and can concentrate on other things.
We also have a situation now where it’s not just the unemployable, illiterate and innumerate who are falling victim to this kind of thing. Middle class entitled people who are used to running businesses and getting their own way are now victims. And they know how the world works and how to get things moving.
This roadsidemum knows what she’s doing with the media. Whether she is right is a different debate.
All: vouchers should be up and running next week. I have been involved in the distribution of similar vouchers during Covid and it does take longer than many folk seem to think. Two weeks is not in reasonable. The vouchers will allow parents to buy considerably more food than what they would get at school and will more than offset anything
Many children got a packed lunch during lockdown 1 and this was considered OK. Because I’m a sad fecker I actually counted the calories of Roadsides Mums food (the one she got wrong when she said it was for five days and has never admitted her mistake (she knew this, u can’t really do a food parcel for 2 weeks)) and it came in at 2,500 and the recommended amount a about 540 a day. So not that far off. Most other Twitter photos showed more food. Given there are 1.4 million on FSM I would have expected more photos. God knows what Rashford photo was, looked like a load of bags of sweets but you couldn’t see
There clearly is an issue with that supplier - I’ve never heard of them and hope LAs ditch their contract with them, plenty of other better ones out their to choose from.
Rashford sure has got the media and gov sorted. Watched bbc news at 11.30 - full of inaccuracies: quotes: ‘the picture showed what shud be £30 of food’ wrong, ‘the picture is a weeks supply of food for a child (context being 3 meals/day) wrong.
I still think children having to eat the equivalent of a packed lunch for 8 or 9 lunches ain’t a big deal and that’s were I disagree with Rashford. School staff/councils are working hard behind the scenes to get the vouchers sorted and sadly most folk won’t blame the government.
I find your posts very informative informative. Keep up with them.
As you say Rashford maybe needs just to slow down and not jump in straight away.There is alot of good stuff being done.
Feeding the world and providing an assist against Burnley last night, to put United top of the league. Top man!
Seriously though, he highlighted a number of problems with what the government is doing and forced them in to investigating. All positive from me.
I was in a Go Outdoors branch in Liverpool recently when a well dressed women approached me and asked if I would be willing to assist her with the purchase of a Men's Berghaus jacket as she didnt have the Go Outdoors discount card. I said yes, not a problem (probably I should have said no) but then she said could I purchase it with my own debit card and offered me food vouchers in return. Obviously at this point I declined and she then went on to look me up and down like I was some sort of scum bag....
Ultimately you are going to get people abuse any good will welfare system that is offered to them.
I think she'd have got a gobful off me, to be honest - "there's a reason they are food vouchers, go and spend them on food for your children, not an expensive jacket that will never go up a mountain".
I guess she was too thick to realise that the workaround to "cashing" them is to spend them on food you'd buy anyway and keep the money you would have spent on that, anyway.
I said I would keep you nformwd about what’s going on. This is direct from a staff member of a local school just now:
’Each family who's on FSM is getting a pack each week (that's both those who are entitled for to low income and those who are entitled because they're in Year R, 1 and 2. The packs are delivered to them in person. It's bread (a full loaf), cheese, meatballs (tuna for Halal families), beans, fruit, veg, yoghurt. From this week (food bank, name edited) will be topping them up for any families that need extra. It's only meant to replace the meal that they would otherwise get in school so it really is the food equivalent of that.
Some schools aren't delivering, and that is a problem I would say, but the schools that are getting them delivered are doing well, and the face to face contact means that they always say "let us know if you need more". Some families say no, or "give it to someone who really needs to" so school are able to double up the parcels to some families too.’
Right, ofski to proper work.....
She'd most likely be using the jacket to trade for drugs at some future point. Food vouchers are currency, so open to being used in an inappropriate manner. Not impressed by her choice of jacket...so she must have been on something herself
> She'd most likely be using the jacket to trade for drugs at some future point. Food vouchers are currency, so open to being used in an inappropriate manner. Not impressed by her choice of jacket...so she must have been on something herself
Quite possibly. Though Berghaus (specifically) jackets seem to be a fashion item in Liverpool, it started in the mid 1990s with practically every schoolkid having one, but hasn't really completely gone away.
The second BMC Members Open Forum webinar took place on 20 March. Recently-appointed BMC CEO Paul Ratcliffe, President Andy Syme and Chair Roger Murray shared updates on staff changes, new and ongoing initiatives, insurance policy changes and the current...