aledhanson

[aledhanson]

On the 15th October 2020, the Government’s former homelessness advisor Dame Louise Casey gave a harrowing interview in which she stated that the UK faces a “period of destitution” in which families “can’t put shoes on children” this winter. Millions of families who were already struggling on low wages will be plunged into a destitution never seen before in this country. It’s a really really grim point to be at as a country - but we have been through these things before. And the way we got through it - was sticking together.

The very least we can do as a country right now is provide a very simple thing to the most vulnerable families to this crisis - free school meals over the Christmas holidays. In fact, it wouldn’t even cost that much. Devolved administrations in both Scotland and Wales have already committed to this funding - and it’s costing them both a little over £10 million pounds. That is dwarfed in comparison to the £12 billion the government has frittered away on an NHS app that doesn’t even work, or the £522 million spent on Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help out Scheme.

Feeding kids over Christmas just seems like common sense right ?

Last night, Tory MPs rejected the Labour motion in support of free school meals over Christmas by 322 votes to 261. What on earth is going through their heads ?

Well let’s have a look at the social media response of some Tory MPs after the vote to find out.

Privately educated Tory MP Ben Bradley took to Twitter to say this:

“Gov has lots of responsibilities: supporting the vulnerable, helping people to help themselves, balancing the books. Not as simple as you to make out Marcus. Extending FSM to sch hols passes responsibility for feeding kids away from parents, to the State. It increases dependency.”

It’s pretty typical Tory ideology - but pretty shocking all the same. The idea that Bradley is spouting is that parents who are desperately trying to make ends meet and put food on their children’s table are just ‘dependent on the state’, and if they were just more independent and not ‘scroungers’ they would be fine. It might seem like an easy solution to the issue of child depravation and poverty to assume that all families who claim free school meals are just scroungers off the state, who should just work a little harder. Not only is this deeply deeply offensive to parents trying their hardest to feed their kids, but it’s just factually untrue. A recent study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found the majority of people living in poverty in 2018 were from a working family (56%), setting clear the real tangible effects of in-work poverty in this country. This is what happens when we live in a country where work is more insecure and poorly paid than ever.

But this is even more pertinent given Rishi Sunak’s new stripped back Furlough Scheme, which pays the wages of workers in businesses forced to close in tier 3 restricted areas. Workers in these areas get a meagre 67% of their wages paid by the government. Now given it’s more likely to be minimum wage. zero-hours workers like bus drivers, cleaners and taxi drivers who are getting their businesses shut down - they will likely have been already struggling to make ends meet. How on earth will they be expected to do so on 67% of their wages, and on top of that worry about having to feed their children ?

The Tories do not care about these families. They do not care. And it’s really important to make this very very clear. So many people are struggling right now across the country, and the Tory party would rather put their efforts into stigmatising and blaming these families than actually doing something about it.

This was made clear by a social media post by our Tory MP in Delyn, Rob Roberts. He stated:

“there is evidence from schools, supermarkets and parents who are concerned some have used the £15 a week voucher on alcohol, tobacco or on unhealthy food. So how would you ensure these vouchers are used correctly?”

I mean let me say this. I worked for a supermarket chain during lockdown and can say it is categorically untrue that free school meal vouchers can be used to purchase anything other than essential food and drink. Supermarket workers know this, and Tory MPs know this. But again - they do not care for the facts here. All they care about is the opportunity to stigmatise families on free school meals - creating a ‘bad parent’ narrative to try and turn the public mood against these families. We cannot let them do this. Not on our watch.

So if Tory MPs like Rob Roberts don’t think we should be paying for free school meals for poorer families over Christmas then what does he think is the solution ?

He goes on..

“If we extend free school meals to be all year round, we're effectively handing over responsibility for feeding our kids from parents to the Government, and that is wrong. It's a sticking plaster, not a solution to the problem....Schools play a huge role in improving social mobility. Their role is to better educate future generations so they can access higher skilled and higher wage jobs, which will have a generational impact upon families.”

So effectively the message is - if your kids work hard in school then they can grow up, get a good job, get paid and then lift themselves out of poverty. I mean - it’s so disingenuous in so many ways that it hurts. But I think it’s really really important to emphasise a really key point - hungry kids don’t learn. You cannot analyse Shakespeare, you cannot read a periodic table, nor can you use the Pythagoras Theorem, on an empty stomach.

We are in the middle of a global health emergency and economic crisis, the likes of which we have never seen before. The absolute very least we can do is ensure that every child in this country is well fed. It’s up to every single one of us to fight for it.

In June 2020, after successfully fighting the Government to provide free school meals over summer - Marcus Rashford tweeted:

“ I don’t even know what to say.

Just look at what we can do when we come together, THIS is England in 2020.”

The way the Tory Party is acting is grim. In fact, it’s almost Dickensian. I’m sure Dominic Cummings is in his lair in Durham somewhere muttering to himself “ Are there no prisons.. are there no workhouses”. And believe me - I’ve lost all hope of any of them having an Ebenezer Scrooge moment any time soon.

But whether they like it or not, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak the lot of them - they do not get to choose what this country represents. We do. We won this fight during the summer so let’s win it again over Christmas. With thousands more families being plunged into poverty ever day, it’s never been more vital that we win.

So:

Write to your MP to ask them to extend free school meals over Christmas. You can find their contact details here :

https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

Sign this petition :

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/554276/

The villanising and stigmatisation of the most hard working and vulnerable families in this country has to stop. Let’s do this. Together.

[aledhanson]

Dear Rob Roberts MP – your ‘Positive Attitude’ on Brexit won’t save my Parent’s Jobs

If you, like me, have the joy of following the social media behaviour of Delyn’s new Conservative MP Rob Roberts then you may have noticed a running theme in recent weeks. When faced with legitimate scrutiny of his party’s record he seems to have decided to go down the route of simply dismissing constituent’s concerns as nothing but ‘negativity’.

For example, on New Year’s Day, Rob shared Boris Johnson’s ‘New Year’s message on his Facebook page ‘Rob for Delyn.’ A Constituent replied with her very real concerns about climate change, homelessness and foodbank usage being on the rise, and Rob replied ‘Positive message, negative response. It doesn’t have to be this way’. It’s important to break this down. Someone with very real concerns about homelessness and food bank usage and Rob Roberts essentially tells them to just stop being negative. The homeless and those who rely on foodbanks – particularly children, are amongst the most vulnerable groups in society. And someone’s concern about them is dismissed by their elected representative as just being ‘negative’. I would like to see Rob Roberts look a homeless mother in the eye and tell her to just ‘be positive’.

 But just like his Boss’s promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’, Rob Roberts telling his constituents to adopt a ‘positive attitude’ is also a con. Because real and legitimate scrutiny is an inherent part of politics. He tweeted on New Year’s Day that he planned to spend the year ‘moving forward positively, leading negativity and divisive argument behind’. Constituents again were found replying questioning how he planned to bring a deeply divided Delyn together and he replied to them all ‘by moving forward positively and leaving negativity and divisiveness behind’. Though one constituent replied that that is seemingly a bit woolly – what will he actually do… Rob replied again predictably that he will ‘embrace positivity’.

 Now I’m not saying positivity isn’t important. You only have to visit the ‘self-help’ section of your local Waterstones to work that one out. But Rob Robert’s definition of a ‘positive attitude’ is simply an attempt to avoid scrutiny that frames any sort of criticism of his party’s record on Brexit, but also other issues such as homelessness and child poverty as ‘negativity’. It’s a very dangerous game when we start to label the facts as simply negatively. But put more simply – it’s a con.

 Of course – Rob Robert’s discomfort at being held to account by constituents comes as no surprise. We’ve always known the Conservative Party had an uneasy relationship with scrutiny, demonstrated by Boris Johnson’s failure to attend a number of vital TV leadership debates during the election, his Andrew Neil interview and of course infamously, when he hid inside a fridge to avoid being interviewed on Good morning Britain.

 That being said, maybe if we look at the facts, that will help us adopt the ‘positive attitude’ that Rob is so desperate for us to have?

 Analysis in October 2019 by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimated that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal will make Britain’s economy 3.5% smaller in 10 years’ time compared to staying in the EU. Should workers in Delyn fearing this shrink could affect their jobs simply ‘adopt a positive attitude and move on’?

 Analysis by the monitoring group ‘Tell Mama’ found that Islamophobic hate crimes rose by 375 per cent in the week after Boris Johnson compared veiled Muslim women to ‘letterboxes’. In fact, in the 3 weeks after, 42% of Islamaphobic hate crime involved the attacker ‘directly referencing Boris Johnson and/or the language he used during the attack’. Should Muslim women worried about a rise of Islamophobic hate crime under a Johnson administration simply ‘adopt a positive attitude and move on’?

 Finally, the Resolution Foundation estimated that according the Conservative party’s meagre manifesto commitments to tackling child poverty, the number of children in relative poverty under a Tory Government is predicted to rise to 34.5% in 2023-24. Should these children ‘adopt a positive attitude and move on’?

 The truth is no. Because positive attitudes can only do so much. Our elected officials are there to be scrutinised in the same way that I’m sure Rob was happy to scrutinise the previous MP in Delyn. So, I ask him – next time someone comes to you… concerned about Brexit, or poverty, or whatever other issue. They’re not being partisan. They’re not playing a game. They are genuinely worried and demand a legitimate answer from you, not just empty and meaningless rhetoric about positive attitudes.

 No one is still arguing for a ‘People’s Vote’ or to Revoke Article 50 anymore because there is a genuine understanding amongst pro-EU activists and organisations that – at least for now – the fight to remain in the European Union is over. But when someone addresses their genuine concerns about the effects that leaving the European Union under Johnson’s deal may have on Delyn and beyond – then they do not deserve to be patronised by the elected representative that they simply need to adopt a ‘positive attitude’. This isn’t about partisan divides. I’m not saying this because I am a member of the Labour Party and Rob Roberts is a Conservative MP. This is about the fundamental fact that in politics we should be able to scrutinise our elected representatives on very real facts.

 My message to Rob Roberts is that people in Delyn – thousands of people have very real concerns about a Conservative government. Under the previous Conservative government, food bank usage spiked, child poverty rose to 4 million and many people’s lives in Delyn were ruined by the agony of universal credit (you only have to check out BBC’s recent Panorama documentary on Universal Credit that was filmed in Delyn to work this out).

 Furthermore, 19,643 Delyn voters voted for pro 2nd referendum/ remain parties in the 2019 general election. That is compared to 16, 756 who voted for Rob. Now it’s important to acknowledge that many of these voters didn’t vote for Remain parties because they are ‘metropolitan elite’ trying to stand in the way of ‘getting Brexit done’. Many of these voters were not ‘sore losers’ trying to thwart Brexit, still angry that they had originally lost the ‘game’ in 2016. They were people who have lived and worked in Delyn all their lives who genuinely fear for the next five years and their security post Brexit.

 Rob Roberts needs to acknowledge that many people voted for Remain parties in 2019 because they are genuinely terrified of what Boris Johnson’s so called ‘deal’ will do to Delyn. To their jobs, to the state of the NHS, to their children’s futures and to their security. So, my message to him is next time he tells someone with legitimate concerns to ‘move on’ or ‘adopt a positive attitude’ he is failing in his job as an elected official to listen to his constituents and bring their voice with him to Parliament.

 So please Rob – if you really seriously want to make any attempt to bring a deeply divided Delyn together – listen to those voicing their concerns with respect and decency. Delyn needs healing – and the only way we can do that is to listen to each other.

 So please – listen to us.

Without being patronising, or jovial about it.

Just listen.