The media are having a field day, slamming the quality and delivery of school lunches.
I must be a genius as I’ve come up with a revolutionary solution to this problem.
How about parents providing their kids’ lunches?
Even more radical, why not do as was the norm when I was at school and we all made our own lunches. We buttered bread and spread marmite, or in some cases jam.
As I’ve written before, ask anyone over 60 and all these years later they’ll immediately belt out the name of the sole fat kid at their school, so rare were they.
Nowadays, the kid who will be remembered in half a century’s time will be the sole slim one.
That suggests merit in another option, specifically no lunches at all.
18 Comments
Bloody right on Bob a Job
👍
I admire David Seymour’s restraint in not stating the obvious to the complainers. IT’S NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO FEED SCHOOL CHILDREN! How dare the nay-sayers forget this and use it as a stick with which to beat him .
I’m 65. There were no school lunches provided when. Was at school, and lunch from home was not fancy and certainly couldn’t be heated. If you have children, it is your responsibility to provide for them.
School lunches nobody asked for !
We assume(d) social and/or child welfare would attend individual cases and at least ask the parents where their priorities were ! ( ..don’t be silly
Perhaps they were the same starving children dying in their thousands ‘Tova then Jessica’ suggested prior to the 2017 election.
Hundreds of millions wasted on a ‘look at my virtue, nice to have’.
Hard to believe, yet we continue to pay as the country struggles and thousands leave our cash-strapped circus.
Exactly right Bob, but of the course the left wing media don’t want to miss a chance to try to embarrass the government.
And, and, …work with me here…stop drinking bloody soft drinks.
It’s pathetic schools don’t insist children come with lunch. Where, pray tell, is the ethic of parental responsibility? Oh no, let’s abrogate total responsibility to the State.
There is an opportunity to teach the kids about the difference between a high carb plant-based diet and a low carb meat-based diet and the effects of the diet on their health. In a generation we might be able to eliminate a lot of NZ’s health problem and mental illness too.
NZ’s social decline was accelerated with the introduction of the DPB. Theoretically a good idea but in reality became a lifestyle choice.
Neil Young sang “welfare mothers make better lovers”
A sad state of affairs…and hard to back out of now its here…
A potentially better solution could be lunch vouchers for school age children for those families who receive some government assistance….and reduce the benefit accordingly..
These could be used at any food mart on the basis it involved a healthy choice…
The issue here is the cost of accommodation, including lack of full time jobs…
My wife doesnt need paid employment, and works casually, which alot of people do, or at least part time…its was a 20km one way trip today, and with public transport would take her more than an hour to get there, so she drives there for a 4 hour shift….so the first hour she is working to pay transport costs….there would be many in the same situation…
Rather than a full time job, its a big overseas corporate who has plenty of staff to call upon and know how to work the system…
This approach, high debt and lack of competition, has driven high fixed costs at the expense of wider society issues…privatise the profits, socialise the losses..
Crony capitalism and lobbying of government by the big boys have largely created this mess, while politicians resort to the easy option of socialism to temporarily fix the problem until they bankrupt the system….
Make it easier for small business to enter the game and compete fairly, which a big depression does, and much of the problem is solved…
Let capitalism work, rather than bail out the failing corporates…
It is not the Governments responsibly nor the schools to supply lunches. It is up to the parents.
During my school years in the 1970s my mother used to make us kids peanut butter sandwiches on white bread with lashings of butter.
Now days schools expect the government to supply restaurant quality meals.
As for the media in a frenzy over the poor quality of school lunches, well you could say the same about poor quality journalism.
Years ago when I was a baby the nanny apparently used to tease me either 5 jars of jam a honey a peanut butter and a marmite swapping them around asking me to pick one.of course is was always the marmite .forward sixty years at land owners meeting with Carter holt I was in the front row suit attire ready to speak when they ushered in these 2 ladys to the row behind me .one spotted me and goes oh look Teresa it’s marmite .
Homemade sandwiches were tradable commodities and provided a valuable early learning experience in handling negotiations.
Child welfare can’t look after children because.. ” they NEVER have enough money ”
Great 95% of free lunches weren’t needed and not asked for, now cost tens of millions !!!
Are we missing something here ?
Incredible
Sigh, at the age of 8 (sister 6) we made our lunch 5 pieces of bread, butter and vegemite, and one piece of fruit, (which ever was cheapest) and that was pretty normal. Were we poor? in cash, absolutely, mum was a cleaner in the local Masterton hospital and Dad was a crankshaft grinder, did we starve? of course not and were we happy? Yes sir we sure were. I am still teaching, aged now in my 70’s after teaching secondary schools in Southland, Canterbury, Wairarapa, Wellington, Kapiti – Horowhenua, Taranaki and Hawkes Bay, I have yet to meet the mythical starving children in any of those places.
The Pokie and Liquor industries will vehemently disagree with you. Effectively, the taxpayer is either subsidising these industries through the ‘free’ lunch put on by the Government or alternatively we are supporting the ongoing abuse of children by allowing their parent(s) to prioritise other matters over the feeding of the children which should be in the top priority for any parent.
A question arises as to what these children eat in the school holidays.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks
[…] REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS […]