Marcus Rashford is kicking arse again. Well Tory arse. And sort of. They don’t seem to be doing as his star appeal demands which was inevitable, they couldn’t be seen to bow to him or anyone in his position too many times. While that was inevitable, it was also always going to be the case in doing so they would be shamed in the process. It isn’t even him shaming them though, he’s just making a series of valid points, it’s their reaction, they’re shaming themselves.
They’re shaming themselves because they deny children food, they let innocent children go hungry when they spend and waste not just millions but billions of pounds. The money wasted during the pandemic on them being ill prepared and then on them continuing to behave in a manner which could only be described as incompetent. The twelve billion pounds wasted on a failed test and trace system. The contracts given out to friends, associates and Tory donors, many of whom had none or little experience in what they were being paid to do. We could discuss Brexit and the utter bankrupting shambles that it has inevitably shown itself to be. We could discuss the HS2 vanity and cronyism project that does nothing to improve the infrastructure of another failed privatisation experiment. We could go on and on but this isn’t a dissertation, I haven’t enough words.
Rashford is simply stating the obvious and the Tories are doing everything else to themselves. There have been photos going around social media this week of the menu for the restaurant in The House of Commons. Whether this menu is accurate is not important, the truth is that this is a subsidised restaurant, a restaurant taken advantage of by millionaires who happily allow their lunch to be subsidised by the tax payers. This is a link to a website with a long list of the Tory MPs who voted against feeding hungry children. There are three MPs who claimed over eighty thousand pounds in expenses this last year. That is the equivalent of over four people on the minimum wage and doesn’t include the basic eighty-one thousand pound salary MPs are paid. What on earth do they need to claim that much on. Interestingly my local MP The Right Honourable John Lamont claimed seventy-six thousand pounds. He may just be due a letter from one of his constituency. I wonder why he doesn’t feel the need to feed hungry children. Interestingly Jacob Rees Mogg claimed nothing. Doesn’t change anything though, he still thinks kids should go hungry.
They say the existing benefits system is in place to compensate for and cover these costs and to feed the children. That would be fair enough if the current benefits system hadn’t been obliterated in the last ten years of Tory rule, resulting in over four million children finding themselves in poverty. That is between a quarter and a third of all British children which is just remarkable for a country that prides itself on being at the forefront the developed world. You may not see things with your own eyes but the numbers are staggering. It’s not supposed to be this way. Steaks should not be subsidised when young bellies remain empty. They certainly shouldn’t be subsidised for the ones actively keeping those bellies empty. This, this is an injustice and it’s subsidised by us.
Observations and Misunderstandings 