Should All Kids Get Free School Meals?

jam45 I know £30,000 sounds alot but after tax its closer to £23,000. If your rent is a £1,000 a month you've got £12,000 left. Add bills, water, council tax, gas ect and its not as much as you think. On universal credit families have to have a income under £7000 to receive free meals, its £16,000 on the old benefit system.

Midnightflower I may be an old fogey , but how many families that struggle consider a newish car (leased) , a top of the range phone (on contract ) . Sky , Netflix etc as "essentials " ? Ok years ago we didn't have the option (a colour TV the size of a fridge was the height of luxury ) .

Perhaps without these contracts , leases and with a 5 year old phone and car , £30k a year would be ample ?

Golfforall I'm sure there are many that waste money, we really should teach kids about money and politics in school. But I think you missed my point just working on rough figures

£30,000 before tax

£23,000 after

£12,000 after rent

£1,500 Council tax + £500 water

£5,400 for food based on £450 a month

Leaves roughly £384 a month / £96 a week.

This doesn't include travel, school uniform, shoes, cars, subscriptions or gas and electric.

We really shouldn't penalise those who are working and trying there best. We should penalise lazy benefit cheats who fake disabilities to get out of work and those who have more money than they will ever need but still choose to dodge paying tax like Jacob Rees Mogg.

Midnightflower Unfortunately you have the private school bit wrong . Private schools actually subsidise our education system by taking tens of thousands of children out of the state system thus saving the state system £billions a year . Also add to that 30 ish percent of private school pupils are on bursarys / scholarships (ie from deprived backgrounds) and your left wing logic , as always , loses merit .

Ever wondered why the Labour leadership doesn't press the private school point ? Because the private school system (at the cost of a bit of VAT exemption , is that a subsidy ) actually subsidises the state system .

Many middle class parents give up holidays , cars , booze etc and indeed struggle as they choose to send their children to a private school , as they unlike so many realise how vitally important education is to their child's prospects and future .

And of course school meals should be free for all pupils , the cost would be a tiny fraction of the education spend and probably cost little more than the admin cost of working out who is and isn't entitled .

FearLoathing That must be the most concise arguing against oneself I have ever heard . You make about 4 or 5 valid points and argue against them all in one paragraph .

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. The onus of feeding and clothing children should, in my opinion, be on the parents. Not the government, and by extension, the taxpayers. If you are unable to afford the costs incurred by having children, don't have children. I wholeheartedly advocate support systems like food banks and shelters, in fact I think its something we could afford to invest more into. But subsidised school meals for all children, across the board, regardless of circumstance - is an utterly backwards and frankly quite silly idea.

Prison system is already overcrowded and underfunded. This is already resulting in shorter sentences for dangerous offenders. Take away a prisoners right to basic leisure activities and there would be unrest, making it a dangerous work environment for the prison staff, and for other prisoners who might not even be violent offenders.

Prison has wifi anyway because the staff need it for IT and communications. The prisoners only really get to use it on a heavily moderated computer in a communal area during leisure time. They're not sat on a smartphone watching tik tok all day, in case that's what you imagine. And I'm not sure what kind of televisions you think they have in there, but I can assure you, they're not costly. Most prisons have a single TV in a communal area. The TV's in cells are given to prisoners with long sentences on the basis of good behaviour, and they are usually very old TV's that have been discarded elsewhere.

What other "luxuries" would you cut from prisons to make up to deficit required to feed 10.6 million children for 200 days of the year?