Free School Meals

[dyna-ti]

My sister objects to this, yet was happy to eat free school meals herself back in the day.

Nobody was happy to eat those meals :shock: Forced to, would be a better descriptive.

 

[Alison]

But surely your friend, if he leaves work to look after a child would be deemed as purposefully rendering himself unemployed and will be on reduced benefits at first, regardless of child, having a child and been a single parent is no longer an excuse for not working so every fortnight, he'll have to go to the job center, to get his money and prove he has applied to X amount of jobs and then if he has no job after six months could then be sent on training courses and be forced to attend interviews for any job. I'd rather keep my job and get a few extra vouchers to put towards child care costs and tax credits.

Children should not be fought over just to have an excuse not to work.

Alison

 

[TGR]

Alison,

My two 'friends' are both planning this. I am not sure of the ins and outs but i imagine that they have looked at the realities of how it is done. What you would do is sensible, what they are doing is using their children so that they can doss about and have the government pay for their needs. I have a problem with them fighting for custody of the children as i beleive that children are usually better off with their mother - might be a sexist notion but knowing the two males, the mothers would be the best option and it will be interesting to see what the Court says.

Richard

 

[videojetman]

When i was in school, i got free school meals, and was very grateful.
If it wasn't for school dinners i probably would have been malnourished.
My parents spent a lot of their "benefits" on drinking & drug fuelled parties every week.
While myself and my 2 brothers had to survive on what meagre pickings were in the cupboard.

Take away free school meals & some of the poorest families are going to be hit hard.

And the times I have paid for my sons school dinner, i soon realise why he has to take a packed lunch.
I firmly believe if i pay my taxes i should be entitled to everything the unemployed benefit from.
Which is free dental, school meals, housing etc.
After all, isn't it the good old taxpayer who foots the bill for a lot of these services.
And if the government is going to legally take 20% of my income, surely i deserve something in return ?
But i'd rather work hard and be skint than use the benefit system to live.
It is a real achievement to actually earn your rewards.

 

[Alison]

Funnily enough when I lived in Nottingham for some years when I left home I knew several living on the dole and several that worked, in that time I never met a happy dolite at all they were all miserable even though they were choosing the life, and drank.

I think free school meals for all would be far too expensive. But for those struggling then yes. Do they still deferentiate b/w free and paid by using different coloured tickets?

Alison

 

[technodup]

I firmly believe if i pay my taxes i should be entitled to everything the unemployed benefit from.
Which is free dental, school meals, housing etc.
After all, isn't it the good old taxpayer who foots the bill for a lot of these services.
And if the government is going to legally take 20% of my income, surely i deserve something in return ?

To do that I think they'd want considerably more than 20%.

Instead we should be making welfare, or the perception of it less attractive. Vouchers instead of cash, limits on new child benefits whilst out of work, community work, anything that will put people off it as a lifestyle choice.

 

[Neil]

After all, isn't it the good old taxpayer who foots the bill for a lot of these services.
And if the government is going to legally take 20% of my income, surely i deserve something in return ?
But i'd rather work hard and be skint than use the benefit system to live.
It is a real achievement to actually earn your rewards.

Even for those on truly low incomes, not many would be paying back something as low as 20% in terms of tax - that's assuming you pay tax at the normal level, or less. Think about NI, tax on fuel for your house, car, VAT on top of that, VAT on things you buy. Additional tax on products you buy.

If you actually work out, or even just guestimate on the proportion of the money you earn, and where it goes back to, 20% is, I suspect, a rather low estimation.

As to school meals, for me personally - and this wasn't an individual thing, it was a school / time thing, school meals in infants and junior school were free (for everybody at my school, probably it was free everywhere at that time? Infants and juniors were 70s up to 1980/81 - started senior school in 81) - at senior school, school meals had to be paid for, well for me - I may have known the odd person who got them free.

 

[Alison]

After all, isn't it the good old taxpayer who foots the bill for a lot of these services.
And if the government is going to legally take 20% of my income, surely i deserve something in return ?
But i'd rather work hard and be skint than use the benefit system to live.
It is a real achievement to actually earn your rewards.

Even for those on truly low incomes, not many would be paying back something as low as 20% in terms of tax - that's assuming you pay tax at the normal level, or less. Think about NI, tax on fuel for your house, car, VAT on top of that, VAT on things you buy. Additional tax on products you buy.

If you actually work out, or even just guestimate on the proportion of the money you earn, and where it goes back to, 20% is, I suspect, a rather low estimation.

As to school meals, for me personally - and this wasn't an individual thing, it was a school / time thing, school meals in infants and junior school were free (for everybody at my school, probably it was free everywhere at that time? Infants and juniors were 70s up to 1980/81 - started senior school in 81) - at senior school, school meals had to be paid for, well for me - I may have known the odd person who got them free.

I was at school b/w 71-83, I don't know what happened b/w 5 and 9 too young to remember but b/w 9 and 16 we were paying for them, although I didn't go to a school that was split into primary and secondary but lower, middle and upper and the middle school was definitely not free, if you could pay, actually we were, because my parents ran a charity, entitled to free dinners but my brother could not cope with the humiliation of it so my folks paid for ours (he was also humiliated because our step dad drove a minibus with "Donated to The Saint Ann's Holiday Home by the SUCGB" :roll: )

Alison

 

[02gf74]

And the only thing keeping us safe from invasion is our nuclear arsenal. And of course our huge secret stock piles of chemical and biological weapons.

how can it be secret if you know about it? :?

 

[Bats]

Funny all this mention of people on the dole with big tellys.

Funny thing is, you only have to buy a big telly once. So you've got a job, you buy a big telly.

Then say you end up out of a job. Big tellys go for peanuts second hand, so you won't get much for it. And what would you do for cash once that's gone? You'd end up with no telly at all, and the kids would be piss bored and getting up to all sorts of trouble.

So rather than stave off being skint for another week, you decide to keep the thing that stops the kids driving you mental.

Rotting on the vine for £56/wk presents you with choices like this all the time. Care to switch places?

Instead we should be making welfare, or the perception of it less attractive. Vouchers instead of cash, limits on new child benefits whilst out of work, community work, anything that will put people off it as a lifestyle choice.

Well, simply put, how do you expect this to work?

"Hello, is this joe blogs the plumbers? Do you take food vouchers? No please don't hang u-"

Child benefits limits on those out of work? "Sorry kid, your mum lost her job. I know those school shoes are too small but you'll have to live with the ingrown toenails. Stop crying! Eventually the leather will burst open and your toes will dangle out."

The assumption you're making is that being on the dole is attractive or even sustainable for the majority of people on it.

The reality is you just see your life savings disappear in a poof of smoke and end up going through two winters with the gas cut off. I know, been there done that.