Seymour's school lunches are still terrible, three weeks in
Small, grey, and late
Last week I wrote about the slop our children were being served up and expected to eat:
Slop for the poors
If we (as a society) want children who are engaged in their education, who are thriving and resilient, and who go to be contributing members of society, then we (as a society) need to provide decent meals, and do so regularly and well.
I did very much appreciate Chloe Swarbrick’s approach in Parliament, asking if the opposition leaders would eat these lunches. The juxtaposition of the cheap slop being served to our kids versus the expensive, fancy, healthy, very nice lunches politicians are served is quite something.
Big Hairy News (BHN) had some great analysis:
What I didn’t fully understand until today was how SMALL these lunches are. My child came home with one today as the lunches were super late. I was genuinely shocked at just how snack-sized, rather than lunch-sized, these meals were:
No wonder some kids are coming home hungry, and schools are sending out messaging saying, send your child with extra food, this is not enough.
It is difficult to adequately express my rage that politicians with easy access to free food are being so incredibly miserly with our children.
Our nation’s children deserve decent meals and proper lunches, which support their learning, not these snack sized bites (which most certainly do not!)
Such a massive loss to community and local providers, those contracts were sustaining community led social enterprises as well as feeding children and in some cases meals for elderly people. They were mostly not for profit, so not creating private wealth from taxpayer $$ and infrastructure. Now the contracts help sustain global shareholders and their supply chains, nothing more because low paid work costs communities.
It only makes sense if you put it in the context of killing public education AND continuing to punish people for not being ‘sorted’