Tag Archives: Free

Violent COUNCILLORS try to stifle ‘Free Palestine’ calls in Chorley

Remember when these people flooded into London last October to demonstrate against Israel’s genocide in Gaza? If they were violent, they could have turned our capital city into a replica of that ruined Palestinian enclave. But they didn’t because they were peaceful. It is the politicians who denigrate them that are violent.

Violence is always the resort of the ruling class.

In the clip below – taken at a council meeting in Chorley, we can see and hear members of the public calling for action to support the people of Gaza, and Palestine in general. In response, one councillor shouts, “This is Chorley, not Gaza!” and tries to physically throw the (female) main speaker out of the room.

From there, the meeting descends into chaos as those present react to what has happened.

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This Writer can only agree with the observation of Another Angry Voice:

The will of the people is that the UK should do everything it can to end the Gaza genocide – but the will of the political class is that our money should be used to ensure it continues to its conclusion.

Those of us who do not accept that are also participants in the conflict, right here in the UK.

WE ARE ALL IN GAZA NOW.


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More than 100,000 eligible disabled children can’t access free school meals

Ian Byrne: he’s campaigning to ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities get the free school meals to which they are entitled.

It isn’t so long since Ian Byrne was MP of the year – and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was trying to get rid of him.

Now he’s on a new campaign – and once again he’s on the right side of history:

Thousands of children with special educational needs and disabilities are missing out on the free  school meals they are eligible for due to their disability or sensory needs. This is despite the law  being clear that most should be offered an alternative such as a supermarket food voucher.

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Disabled children and their families are already more likely to be living in poverty due to the  difficulties of juggling care and work. Research shows they have also been disproportionately affected  by cost-of-living pressures and the pandemic. Contact found that 85% of families missing out on the  free school meals entitlement reported that this has increased pressure on their weekly budgets. The  families of children with conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy and autism are all too often missing out  on the equivalent of £570 a year worth of financial help. This is causing many to fall into debt and  needing to turn to foodbanks, which is completely unacceptable and unnecessary.

Contact calculates that more than 164,000 disabled children are unable to access their free school  meals, despite meeting the Government’s eligibility requirements. This is truly shocking. Access to  food is a basic human right. I am campaigning for universal free school meals as part of the Right To  Food campaign but in the meantime we must ensure the current system is fair and equal and that it  actually delivers in practise what it claims to.

Research carried out by Contact in March 2023 with 1500 families found that there are different  reasons that disabled children cannot currently access their free lunch. These include:

– 60% can’t eat school meals due to their health condition, dietary requirements or sensory  processing difficulties

– 22% are off school due to a long-term medical condition or illness

– 18% are not in school as they have an education package provided by the council or are  waiting for a suitable school place

– 6% attend a school without a canteen

Many parents are incorrectly being refused a food voucher as a reasonable adjustment. Others are  being asked to travel miles to pick up a food parcel that doesn’t include food their child can eat. Families should never have to face this battle.

It must be made clear that schools and councils need to provide an  alternative, ideally a supermarket voucher, to disabled children who cannot access a free school meal  in the regular way.

Source: Ian Byrne MP: More than 100,000 eligible disabled children are unable to access the free school meals. The government must act. – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate


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Rishi Sunak is causing yet another conflict-of-interest – CORRUPTION – row

Akshata Murty and her husband, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak: it seems that, days after being forced to apologise for failing to declare that she (and therefore he) will benefit from one policy of the government he leads, he is trying to ensure that they will – corruptly? – benefit from another.

The UK prime minister who came into office promising “integrity, professionalism and accountability” is embroiled in yet another corruption/conflict-of-interest row involving his wife’s father’s multinational corporation, Infosys.

Rishi Sunak is trying to negotiate a free trade deal with India, where Infosys is based, and the allegation is that this will be hugely profitable for Infosys – and therefore, by proxy, for Sunak himself.

People are asking the obvious question:

Note that it is unlikely that the people of the UK will benefit from this free trade deal, according to Jemma Forte; Sunak is negotiating a deal to benefit his family – again.

Remember: Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards has only just stated that Sunak broke the Ministerial Code – “inadvertently” – by failing to declare that a childcare firm in which his wife has shares will benefit from a change in Tory government policy. In the current instance, there can be no such excuse as we have the evidence in advance of the deal.

Infosys is also a multiple offender in terms of preferential treatment from Sunak’s government. After war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, that firm was told to stop operating in Russia or face sanctions like all the other businesses then doing business with that state, but eight months later it was found still to be doing business there, with impunity against the UK’s sanctions regime.

Sunak is expected to attend a G20 summit in India in two weeks – and to discuss the trade deal at a separate, bilateral, meeting with that nation’s prime minister Narendra Modi.

But Keir Starmer’s opposition party (still currently known as Labour, for reasons unknown) has called for Sunak to make an open declaration about his wife’s financial interests in a company that could profit immensely from his involvement in these negotiations.

One expert – Professor Alan Manning of the London School of Economics, according to The Guardian, wants the prime minister to recuse himself from any negotiations.

In response, it seems the Foreign Office has warned the Labour-chaired business and trade select committee not to visit India to examine the issues around a potential deal. The government department is refusing to help committee members set up meetings with Indian officials and businesspeople.

It seems clear, then, that Sunak has something to hide once again – otherwise, why try to cover up what will happen at the negotiations?

The deal, it seems, will allow Infosys to send teams of its Indian employees to the UK to work on outsourced IT contracts for firms in this country.

Why not employ home-grown expertise and keep the contracts – and all the profits arising from them – in the UK? Or has previous Tory government policy ensured that nobody here has the required expertise any more?

Of course, the controversy will only intensify the debate over MPs having business interests outside the House of Commons, or receiving donations and/or gifts-in-kind from businesses or corporate bosses.

The question here is: who does Rishi Sunak work for – the people of the UK or his wife’s family firm?

The answer seems obvious – with the best interests of the nation he is supposed to lead coming a distant second.

Reform is urgently required – but with so many Parliamentarian snouts firmly in the trough, there seems to be no will to put a stop to the corporate influence that is staining all of us with the filth of corruption. How do we force an end to it?


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The news in tweets: Saturday, July 22, 2023

Keir Mather: is this Red just another Blue?

By-election fallout 1: new Labour MP falls at the first hurdle

Labour’s newest – and youngest – MP, Keir Mather, has made his first contributions to national politics. Here he is being introduced to the nation:

A fresh start for the people of Selby and Ainsty? It sounds good – but is it just words?

After all, the very first thing he did was endorse Keir Stürmer’s decision to continue the Conservative policy that limits child benefit to two children:

So he 100 per cent supports a Conservative policy. And this is the change we need?

This Writer doesn’t think so – and I see that many others agree with me.

Here‘s Steve Walker: “Sir Kid Starver’s clique’s stranglehold on candidate selection is why we’re getting this privileged, fresh-from-the-petri-dish vapid Stepford Wife candidate parroting this miserable shit. People with character, integrity, principles and a capacity for critical thought need not apply.”

Mrs Gee #UpTheWorkers tweeted: “This is what Unite union members’ money is helping into Government.” To Sharon Graham, the union’s general secretary, she added: “There is not a cat in hell’s chance these people can be pushed left once elected. The time is now. Make them come up with policies for trade unionists/working class people if they want our money/votes.”

Kerry-Anne Mendoza suggested: “Do they breed these creatures in a little nest of pods somewhere? They all look and sound identical to me ‘Fiscal rules…blah blah…tough choices…blah blah…forensic…'”

She added: “A privately-schooled, Oxbridge graduate whose entire career consists of a brief stint at the CBI isn’t a political breakthrough for British working class youth. Keir Mather embodies exactly the opposite. Privilege seeking power. It’s embarrassing we have to point this out.”

Phil Gould tweeted in similar vein: “This is a New New Labour Nexus 1, a first-generation AI politician, programmed by the Tony Blair Institute. Empathy free, self-destructs after one parliament. One full charge lasts two PMQs or one full QT appearance (having to repeat programmed answers requires more power).”

Chris Williamson tackled the subject matter: “The new Labour MP for Selby and Ainsty backs the 2 child benefit cap citing the “economic mess” as justification. But that logic is flawed, Keir Mather. The government issues the currency so can’t run out money and can use taxes to control inflation. So there is no justification for leaving kids in poverty.”

And let’s not forget:

But then, what can you expect from a privately-educated Oxbridge graduate whose career consists of a stint at the Confederation of British Industry and a bit of time as a researcher for Wes bloody Streeting?

It seems his “career politician” credentials are proved by the following claim:

Still, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Keir Mather has nearly a year and a half to prove his detractors wrong – or prove himself a puddinghead.

By-election fallout 2: Uxbridge and Ruislip Labour chair quits – because of Keir Starmer and not the election result

The chairman of Uxbridge and Ruislip Constituency Labour Party has quit his role and the party altogether – but he’s saying it’s not because of the party’s spectacular failure to win the constituency’s Parliamentary seat from the Tories.

David Williams said his problem is with the leadership of Keir Starmer. Here are his tweeted messages:

Fair enough – he didn’t want his resignation to have a negative impact on his (soon-to-be former) party’s performance, and rightly so because this could have been used by others to attack him.

As it was, he found himself having to re-fight an old battle with an out-of-her-depth BBC reporter.

Watch the interview and you’ll see that he made mincemeat of the false claims:

Why does this public sector worker get a 45% pay increase while the rest have to put up with real-terms cuts?

The King is getting a publicly-funded 45 per cent pay rise, it seems:

He’s a public sector worker – like doctors, nurses and teachers, and the discrepancy between what he can demand and what they are told to take has not gone unnoticed.

Fortunately, we have people who can turn it to advantage:

Yes indeed. Let’s see government pay negotiators explain this away – if they can!

Petition of the day: demand free school breakfasts for all


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The news in tweets: Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Falling energy prices are not being passed on to customers and the government is doing nothing. Why?

Tory energy security minister Grant Shapps was grilled over the government’s failure to support cash-strapped households, by Martin Lewis on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. His answers were revealing:

So: we will receive no more money to help with energy bills, even though the energy companies are charging us far more than the cost of the energy itself. The government is supporting these firms as they rip us off.

Shapps’s comments about standing charges are also useful. He said these charges are for “all of the network costs, the maintenance costs and the things which happen before you get the live supply of energy to the household”. He said these costs were “not for nothing”.

This Writer certainly hopes that is true.

But let’s have a look at another privatised utility that forces you to pay standing charges: water. If standing charges on water are said to be for the same purpose as for energy – network costs, maintenance etc – then the water companies are guilty of fraud because we have learned that none of our money is being spent on infrastructure (maintenance). The pipe system still dates back to the Victorian era and some of it is made of lead, which is poison.

The water firms also borrow heavily to cover day-to-day costs. That leaves me asking what the standing charge supports. Is it just feeding into the profits of shareholders? If so, then these firms are lying to us about its purpose and should be prosecuted, forced to return that money to us and the charge abolished.

In fairness, I have read that the charge is for the cost of reading meters and sending out bills – but with smart meters installed that tell firms what you’ve used without anyone having to come to your home, and with the facility for people to receive bills by a new-fangled device called email, those costs now must be very low compared with times in even the recent past. Why are the standing charges not being reduced, then?

Taking the subject back to energy, if standing charges on water are a rip-off, how do we know that the energy firms aren’t also charging us far more than is reasonable?

Answer: we don’t.

One rule for them: MPs get up to £16,305 per year for up to three children, but restrict your child benefit to two kids and £2,080

Yes indeed.

Current salary for a backbench MP is around £84-5,000. They get expenses to pay for food, rent and bills (on the second homes they need in London, if I recall correctly), and they also receive £5,435 per year to pay bills related to their children, for a maximum of three children. That’s around £104.23 per week, per child, up to £312.69 – let’s round it up to £312.70.

If you have three children, you won’t receive any child benefit for one of them. You then get £24 per week for the eldest and £15.90 for the second child: £39.90 per week or around £2,080 per year.

Your MP thinks this is fair – even those in the Labour Party who should be demanding equality for everybody (possibly with a few exceptions).

This is why we need to think very carefully about who we allow into Parliament and what they should be elected to do.

Meanwhile, Substitute Tory (formerly Labour) Rachel Reeves can’t see how a UK government can fund free school meals for children who need them, so members of the public have been offering helpful suggestions:

Howard Beckett pointed out: “In Norway the sovereign fund stands at over $1.3trillion. Norway tax[es] fossil fuel Corporate giants at 78 per cent.”

She could also reverse some of the massive tax cuts that the Tories have handed to the richest members of UK society since 2010. There are plenty of ways to fund a better future.

One can only conclude that Pamela Fitzpatrick is right: “Reeves really cannot see where the moneys going to come from because she simply does not have the skills, talent or vision for the role she is in.”

There is a lighter side to this – if you have a certain sense of humour:

Keir Starmer was ‘consciously dishonest’ when he campaigned for the Labour leadership. Shouldn’t he be given the boot?

We may conclude from the information available to us that when Keir Starmer was telling Labour Party members that he would respect and continue the policies of his immediate forerunner Jeremy Corbyn, he was actually planning to throw away all the popular policies that Mr Corbyn had formed, as soon as possible.

He lied in order to be elected.

That is not acceptable.

He should be removed.

He won’t be – because Labour disciplinary procedures are a bad joke at the expense of rank-and-file party members. But voters should – and will – remember his betrayal, and the cynical, calculated way in which he planned it.

Defence spending rises by nearly one-third of what it was in 2019 – while all other spending falls. Why?

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced that the UK government will spend £50 billion on “defence”, for the first time in its history – more than £12 billion more than in 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn asked him about his priorities:

In response, Wallace said: “I am not out looking for war. We are all out here trying to defend our nation by avoiding war, but we do not avoid war by not investing in deterrence. Sometimes we have to invest in hard power, to complement soft power. We do not want to use it and we do not go looking for it. I know the right hon. Gentleman mixes with some people who always think this is about warmongering; it is not. But if countries are not taken seriously by their adversaries, that is one of the quickest ways to provoke a war.”

So he wants to avoid wars by rattling the sabre. This Writer isn’t sure that works – and I am encouraged to doubt him by his own prediction that the UK will be at war within seven years.

Mr Corbyn’s question was an opportunity for him to explain how his spending plan would prevent the UK from being at war within seven years. He did not answer that question.

What are these Tories planning to drag the rest of us into?

£500 million public money bribe to get Jaguar Land Rover owner to build electric car battery factory in Somerset

The Tory government is paying £500 million towards the creation of a £4 billion factory by Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata, building batteries for electric cars.

Is it really great news?

As migrant-housing barge arrives in Portland: how was the contract awarded and was it carried out corruptly?

Two tweets on this:

Is the illegal Tory “VIP lane” still operating, then?

Why is the government repeating consultation on wet wipe ban? Is it looking for a different response?


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Teesside freeport corruption inquiry to happen – and the man in charge resigns. Why?

An inquiry is being launched into allegations of corruption related to a flagship Tory government project – the free port at Teesside.

Levelling-Up Secretary Michael Gove has ordered it, but turned down an offer by the National Audit Office to carry it out. Apparently it doesn’t fall within the NAO’s remit.

Instead, he said he would ask an independent panel to report on the governance arrangements, how decisions are made, and look “at the value achieved for the investment of public money on the site”.

Concerns relate to the transfer of millions of pounds worth of public assets (land in this case) to private developers.

The situation has been covered in recent issues of Private Eye, which alleges that more than £100 million worth of land was sold to a company controlled by local businessmen for £100.

Apparently a firm called Teesworks Ltd was created as a joint venture between their companies and the publicly-owned South Tees Development Corporation (STDC).

Teesworks Ltd would be able to commission income on the development, take half the proceeds of scrap sales from the abandoned steel industry in the area (in the high tens of millions of pounds so far, allegedly), and have an option to buy any land, once redeveloped – at public expense – for market value.

This deal involved no payment or investment from the private sector partners, and was made after they had made what the Eye calls a “well-timed” purchase of a separate option on a small area of land that “the official version goes”, could have stopped the compulsory purchase from a Thai steel company’s bankers of land on the South Tees.

A report on a meeting that approved a compromise deal with the Thai banks suggested to Eye reporters that the STDC board is a “rubber stamp” for privately-made decisions.

The local businessmen later increased their stake in Teesworks Ltd to 90 per cent – at a cost of £0, and the option deal was amended so the company could acquire land for just £1 per acre – leading to the purchase of land worth £100 million for just £100, stated the Eye.

Documentation stated that the extra shares were in return for Teesworks taking on the the future development of the site and liability for preparing the land for tenants, at a cost of £172 million, after public funding ran out – but nothing has so far been invested (again, according to the Eye).

Indeed, it seems that, just as public money was about to run out, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen changed the deal so that STDC will continue funding the operation – with public borrowing.

The magazine stated: “The valuation of the shares was said to have been based on the value of the option, the scrap proceeds and the (negative) land value given the work supposedly to be – but in the event not – funded by Teesworks Ltd.

“This valuation was prepared by estate agents Knight Frank, whose local partners happen to include” the sister of one of the owners of Teesworks Ltd. Both STDC and Knight Frank declined to say if this sister had been personally involved in the work.

As for the change to the option that allowed “the vast transfer of wealth from the taxpayer into private hands”, STDC’s 2021/22 accounts state that “an option exists, allowing the purchase of areas of the Teesworks site for a value which is equal to a value determined by an independent valuer”.

The Eye concluded that “since the actual price for any purchase had for some time been £1/acre and way below the true value of the land… this is either false or indicates that… Knight Frank… decided all remediated land would be worth the nominal figure anyway”. Either way, the Eye concluded that the statement in the accounts “concealed the secret squirrelling under way”.

Given these allegations – and we need to bear in mind that they are only allegations at the moment – one might wonder why the “independent” inquiry is only examining what the governance arrangements are, the way decisions are made, and the value achieved in return for public investment.

The “independent” panel isn’t being asked to examine possible corruption in those decisions.

And that’s odd, because it seems investors are becoming nervous: BP and a Norwegian firm, Equinor, have suddenly insisted on a guarantee that no assets have been subject to an “unacceptable act”, and that STDC and its partners must confirm that they have not and will not “hide or dissimulate the nature, origin, location, disposition or ownership of assets, rights or values”.

It is also curious that the man in charge of the Teesside Freeport quit his job on the day the inquiry was announced.

Nolan Gray is to take up another appointment outside Tees Valley Combined Authority. He told The Northern Echo he had achieved his main goal of setting up and launching the freeport.

That’s odd. I’ve just seen a UK government press release from 2021 saying the freeport was up and running. Presumably his goal was achieved all that time ago. I wonder why he waited so long.

Put all this together, and it seems unlikely that Gove’s inquiry will provide any answers to the questions that are being asked.

Gordon Brown is yesterday’s man – but he still has good points to make about the Budget

Gordon Brown: his heart is in the right place but his ideas are rooted in an ideology that doesn’t work.

Does anybody care that, according to Jeremy Hunt’s own projections, by 2026 his government will have made us all much worse-off than we were in 2019?

Gordon Brown does – apparently. But the reaction he received from some people when he wrote about it in The Guardian suggests that they think he’s responsible.

Maybe it’s true that his New Labour governments didn’t make the changes that were necessary after 18 years of Thatcher and Major-style neoliberalism, and paved the way for a further 15 years in which the Tories have been able to destroy what was left of the way of life that had made the United Kingdom worth inhabiting.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say.

His factual points are all worth taking in because they contribute to a State of the Nation-style snapshot of what the UK is today. And it is horrifying:

271,000 homeless people

400,000 children who sleep without a bed of their own

14 million condemned to damp or substandard housing

7.5m UK households in fuel poverty

Food prices in the shops have risen 18% in a year, with many basic items shooting up by twice as much – baked beans up 35%, ketchup up 39%, tomato soup up 73%

9.7 million adults already skipping or cutting back on meals

Six in 10 adults unable to afford other basic essentials

A record 2.1 million people are using food banks

There are 14.4 million living in poverty, including 4.2 million children, the vast majority of whom are in families where the breadwinner is on low pay

As Brown put it at the top of his piece,

Poverty will last until doomsday if this Conservative government is all that confronts it.

The so-called “budget for growth” [is] more accurately titled the “budget for growth in poverty”

The point of his piece was that cleanliness is the next thing the Tories have rationed, with hygiene poverty leading to the rise of so-called “beauty banks” to run alongside the already-infamous food banks.

He was calling on retailers and manufacturing companies to offer up surplus goods and to consider special production-line runs of unbranded toiletries to ease the crisis.

But this is just – as current Labour leader Keir Starmer would put it – “sticking-plaster politics”. It’s putting a plaster over the wound but not healing it.

Businesses can certainly do much more to ease the crisis that the Conservatives have deliberately created to distract the young and the poor from their strategy to divert public funds into the hands of the old and the rich.

They can provide better pay and conditions, and opportunities for career growth that make it worthwhile. These tactics will reap huge rewards for them as, freed from the stress of poor health due to bad nutrition and harmful work practices, and unburdened by the mental ill-health caused by continually having to find ways to make ends meet, employees’ productivity will soar.

That is the best way out of the hole Hunt has dug for us. Indeed, it is the only way, as his government is absolutely determined not to help.

Source: Jeremy Hunt has left the UK to rot in poverty. So we must take matters into our own hands | Gordon Brown | The Guardian


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Lineker off MOTD because of “migrant” tweet; co-presenters join him. What will the show look like?

Empty chairs: is this how Match of the Day will look tomorrow?

The BBC has dug a hole for itself after dropping Gary Lineker from its flagship football show, Match of the Day, over his tweet linking government rhetoric on Channel migrants with that of Germany in the 1930s.

Mr Lineker will not be presenting Match of the Day this week – but the reason is not clear. The BBC is saying he’s “stepping back” until an agreement is reached on how he should use the social media – but Sky News reckons he has been forced off the programme for refusing to apologise.

Now, fellow presenters are lining up to refuse to take part. So far, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright have said they will not appear, in “solidarity” with Mr Lineker.

Jermaine Jenas has said if he were asked, he would say no.

Is Saturday’s edition of the show going to be a shot of empty chairs around a desk, with some football clips interspersed intermittently?

Elsewhere in the BBC, Good Morning Britain host Richard Madeley made himself both a hero and a villain in the eyes of the public when he talked about the row surrounding Mr Lineker’s Twitter comments on the BBC’s Question Time.

First, he stood by Mr Lineker’s right to say anything he wants on his personal Twitter account – to applause from the audience.

Then he said what had actually been declared on Twitter was “preposterous” – and received a less enthusiastic reaction.

See for yourself:

What do you think? Should Gary Lineker have his right to free speech curtailed, simply because he presents a programme that is not remotely related to the subject he was discussing?


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Lee Anderson sticks his foot in his mouth yet again (Universal Credit)

Lee Anderson (right): he wants to starve the children of people on Universal Credit who can’t afford to feed them properly, it seems.

Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson has made a fool of himself yet again.

In a Westminster Hall debate on the cost of food, he claimed it is a myth that people on Universal Credit are in poverty – as an excuse not to provide free school meals to everybody on the benefit.

He said some had “household incomes of over £40,000 a year” and “loopholes” in London allowed them to “top their wages up” by a further £30,000.

Maybe it’s true – but I doubt it. Universal Credit is paid to people on low incomes. For every pound earned above a defined allowance, 55p is removed from the amount a household receives.

With UC set at £334.91 a month for single claimants aged 25 or over, or £525.72 a month for joint claimants with either aged 25 or over, it is impossible for people to bring in £40k a year and still be on the benefit.

(It is also worth noting that the DWP stuck its own departmental foot in its spokesperson’s mouth when they said benefits are designed to ensure that “working always pays more” – because government policy for the last 13 years has been to push wages below the poverty level.)

Source: Tory deputy chairman claims it is a ‘myth’ people on Universal Credit are in poverty


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London Mayor announces emergency move to give free school meals to all primary school pupils

Sadiq Khan: he’s feeding London’s school pupils. Isn’t it a shame the Conservative government can’t think up policies that would help the families of London afford to do the same?

What a sad pickle for a country as rich as the UK – that its people can’t even afford to feed their children. Who has all the money?

Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced an emergency package of free meals for all primary school pupils in London, to help poverty-stricken families through the Tory-caused cost-of-living crisis.

Here’s the Evening Standard:

210,000 primary and secondary pupils in London … live in households on universal credit but miss out on free school meals – because their household income, excluding benefits, is over the threshold of £7,400 a year.

This low threshold applies irrespective of the number of children in the family and is causing deep hardship among families struggling with the spiralling cost of living.

Some hungry children were so desperate, they were stealing food from the school canteen and supermarkets to eat.

Sadiq Khan’s £130 million scheme will fund the 270,000 state primary school children in London who do not already receive free school meals, of whom an estimated 100,000 live in poverty.

The Mayor, who has repeatedly called on Government to extend free school meals to all children in poverty, said his scheme will be funded out of higher-than-expected business rates and council tax collections and will be for the 2023/2024 academic year only.

So it isn’t permanent, and it looks like it’s only during term time – so we’ll still need the Marcus Rashfords of this world if matters get so tight that children end up starving during the holidays.

And of course it doesn’t help the 100,000 secondary pupils in London, or the 600,000 school pupils outside the capital, who are also facing poverty-triggered hunger.

And I doubt if councils in the UK’s poorer areas will have higher business rates and council tax collections on which to rely.

Interestingly – once again – we are being told that the Tory government’s failure to ensure that our school pupils are properly nourished is harmful to the economy that they still claim to be best-suited to safeguard:

Research by accounting firm PwC published by the Evening Standard has shown that investment in free school meals would yield a net economic benefit to society of £2.45 billion over 20 years.

PwC calculated that the cost would be £6.44 billion over two decades but would lead to benefits in educational attainment, mental and physical health impacts and productivity of £8.9 billion – a net benefit of £2.45bn.

So the Conservative government, once again, has been shown to be deliberately – let’s remember – harming not only our children, but our future livelihoods.

Who voted for them?

And who will ever vote for them again?

Source: Sadiq Khan announces free school meals for all primary school pupils in London | Evening Standard


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