Well, it’s great to see the Tories return to a value that’s always been so close to their cold, lifeless hearts: starving children. The latest toxic Tory policy has been the denial of a free school meal, outside of term-time, to the poorest children in the country. Unsurprisingly there’s been some kickback to this — it’s bad when King Kipper Farage says you’ve been a bit stingy.
The reasons for the Tories voting against the Labour motion to feed the poor are dependent on who you ask. Nicky Morgan said that perhaps the Tories would have voted to feed the starving children of the country if the Labour front bench stopped calling them names. Others trotted out the tried and true Tory line of discouraging state reliance. Of course voting against feeding children is pretty scummy behaviour, so I’m not sure Angela Rayner was entirely incorrect in her assessment. It’s also peculiar timing to take a stand against state handouts, your PM and Chancellor of the Exchequer are subsidising the wages of millions to the tune of billions. Perhaps some MPs think even that is a step too far.
Some have pointed out what they consider to be parliamentary hypocrisy — those that voted against free school meals happen to take gifts from various businesses. I don’t consider that to be hypocrisy — grubby perhaps, but not hypocritical. Private enterprise is free to pass as many parcels as it wishes. However, what is hypocritical are those MPs with their snouts in the trough, greedily gobbling up £25 a day in meal allowance. £25 per person, per day, for food. After housing costs there are families left with £40 a week to feed multiple mouths. In fact, so dire are the straits that the small sum of £40 has to cover food and other expenses. Again, the real hypocrisy are crony MPs funnelling taxpayers money into their chum’s companies, or providing government grants for a mistress or two.
What all these attitudes come down to, really, is the old idea of the deserving and undeserving poor - although it’s becoming clearer that no one is of the former and everyone is the latter. They are undeserving, uneducated, feckless, congenitally lazy, work-shy scroungers. In a nutshell those against the motion have that shouldn’t-have-popped-so-many-sprogs-to-get-that-council-house thinking.
MPs have a twisted, romanticised version of poverty. It’s not poverty if you’ve got a 50” flat screen. It’s not poverty if there’s a laptop, or you can afford a beer, or an internet connection. It’s not real poverty if you’ve still got a roof over your head and a mobile phone. The Tory idea of poverty, much like the rest of their thinking, has failed to update. The fact that technology is cheap (this isn’t 2001 — you can get a 50” for £170) and essential (looking for work, the kid’s homework) doesn’t play any part in their thinking. It’s not real poverty if you still have assets to sell for food. Got a TV? Sell it. After all, that £50 has more immediate utility than as a harmless form of escapism from the grinding poverty in which you find yourself. Kids don’t need to be entertained, they should be out foraging for berries (entertaining and nutritious!) or reading by candlelight (good for you and cost-saving too!).
Once all your worldly possessions have been sold, then what? Sell a kidney? Sell yourself? How steeped in abject poverty must one be before finally ascending to the dizzying heights of deserving poor? Does the small glimmer of a normal life — a movie on a television, a mobile phone, really mean you’re unworthy of help? This cruel shower of bastards have no idea what it’s like to live on, near, or below the breadline. They think everything is as easy as finding another job or buying cheaper produce. They have no idea what life is like when your budget for the month is £60. They have no idea how life always finds a way to make sure you blow through that budget, through no fault of your own. An unexpected trip or expense will always make itself known when you can least afford it. Unexpected things happen all the time, but when you can afford the inconvenience you just don’t notice as much.
As if all that isn’t enough, these cruel and callous chinless bastards are prepared to make a point by making children pay. No child asked to be born into poverty, no parent is gleefully rubbing their hands together hoping there’s another round of free school meals so they can put that £3 towards a new tattoo, case of beer, or bag of skag. In order to preserve some grotesque ideological point and assumptions about the lowest earners in the sixth richest country, the Tories are more than willing to let children starve.
It’s 2020 and we‘ve been so busy bandying about Orwell and Huxley that we’ve overlooked Dickens.
