kids going hungry
So, up to 80,000 kids are going hungry every morning and not eating breakfast before school, according to the Ministry of Health - and most of them are from poorer families who collect Family Support to feed their kids.
Guess what Working for Families money is paid on - its not the kids clothes and food, its the power bill, the cafe meals, the playstation and the plasma TV - and an extra bottle of booze a week.
Perhaps all the parents who are not feeding their kids can be docked some Family Support payments - a bit like a solo mum being docked some of her benefit for not naming the father.
I should note that my kids have breakfast every morning.
2 comments:
Hi dave,
Nice to see you on Thursday. But please - the research in question does not say that 80,000 children are "going hungry every morning". It just doesn't.
An estimate, obtained by matching last year's census figures against the 2002 nutritional study, suggests that that number of kids don't eat breakfast at home.
That's not the same thing as being hungry or too poor to eat. The report does not use the words "hunger" or "hungry". It has a section on food security which might have been worth quoting, but no one bothered to do that. The Herald's headline claim was nonsense.
It's all spin is it?
There are a % who go hungry, that's fact. partly socioeconomic and partly very poor social training (read selfish immature) parents.
These kids find it hard to get going at school.
and feeding them helps enormously.
A friend in South Africa was a Primary school principal who used to feed many kids breakfast out of his pocket.
(his and his staff actually).
the parents were poor but many also on drugs and gambling.
It is not societies responsibility for each child.
It is our resposibility to make sure we are all fullfilling ours to our own. as we hold accountable others to their own.
then we feed and clothe others but not to penalise people who do produce as a punishment for doin g well.
like the decile sysem which is double taxation.
MikeNZ
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