Anyone who has read my blogs will know I believe "socialism" doesn't work and worse than that - it actually hinders those it puports to help. In my view the only sustainable way to help people improve their lives is to empower them and at the same time emphasise personal responsibility. Socialisim does the opposite. Of course I believe in the "welfare state" as originally conceived in the Beveridge days - as a short term safety net for those in real need and I support that principal to my core.
However I am deeply disturbed and very worried about the increasing grip social media has over our society and the momentum that those for instance - using Marcus Rashford are able to generate.
Virtue signalling is endemic - a like or a tick or a tweet. The ludicrous diatribe against fat cat Tories who apparently don't care about starving children - is that - ludicrous. It reflects a shallow ignorance. It is conveniently disingenuous. Of course people like me care. It is just simply an issue of how best to help the needy and also an awareness/acknowledgement of the underlying economic reality and how to generate sustainable tax revenues to pay for it all. (something socialists have always failed to do.)
The big issue here and it is a recoccuring issue - is what is the impact (for instance) of parents in effect no longer being seen/required to be primarily responsible for feeding their children. Some people want it to be the governments. This is highly dangerous.
I have copied and pasted a well written article by Jill Kirby. It is a serious article and represents my real concerns.
The
conservative case against Marcus Rashford's school meals plan
JILL KIRBY
28 October 2020
Ministers
are failing to make the principled argument for individual responsibility and
self-sufficiency
Who should bear responsibility for feeding the nation’s
children: parents or the state? Facing down a Twitter storm based on the
premise that children are starving, the Government has struggled to find a
coherent answer. Yet an answer is urgently required, and it has to be more than
just another climbdown. As the economic damage wrought by lockdown claims the
livelihoods of more young families, the social media campaigns look set to
become unstoppable, with the risk of creating a damaging new culture of welfare
entitlement.
For the past decade, Conservative policies towards welfare
have been based on the sound principle that individuals should be encouraged to
achieve self-sufficiency, even if they might need temporary help during
difficult periods. This was the logic behind the introduction of Universal
Credit, “a hand up rather than a handout”, which saw different benefits merged
under one roof in order to incentivise work, and more control put into the
hands of individuals and families.
There were other changes designed to encourage individual
responsibility, too. By scrapping the old system under which housing benefit
was paid directly to landlords from the Government, tenants were instead
required to transfer the money themselves. The idea behind it was not a cruel
one, as some alleged, but that if you deny people responsibility for too long,
they will never be able to stand on their own two feet.
Yet in the midst of the pandemic, when the Government has
pledged to “put its arms around us”, there is now a danger that, in
surrendering to government intervention across all aspects of life, people will
gradually lose the ability to think and act for themselves. Ministers are also
failing to mount a principled defence against an insatiable demand for new
entitlements. Nowhere is this more true than in Marcus Rashford’s campaign to
expand the Free School Meal Voucher programme.
There is a Conservative case against Rashford’s proposals,
and it starts with a simple question: why should parents suddenly no longer be
responsible for feeding their children during the holidays? This is not a
straightforward matter of starving children too poor to afford food, as much of
social media might have it. It is a complex area that covers not only children
who are fed too little, but also the countless others eating too much of the
wrong thing. Too many parents seem to have no idea of what constitutes healthy
eating. Isn’t the danger that further stripping them of responsibility will
make that problem worse?
What’s more, many will ask why expanding food vouchers is
the answer when Rishi Sunak had already temporarily increased Universal Credit
payments at the start of the pandemic, reflecting the disproportionate impact
of lockdown on the finances of the poorest in society. The Chancellor was right
to do so, but that is money that we ought to trust parents to spend – whether
on food or on other essentials. To do anything different is again
infantilising.
Some Conservatives have shown that they understand this,
among them the backbench MP and former Downing Street adviser Danny Kruger. He
argues that turning schools into “permanent welfare providers” not only usurps
the role of parents but also the part played by local communities and voluntary
organisations. Having set up and led a charity working with prisoners and their
families, he speaks from experience in applying conservative principles to
solving social problems.
It is positive that the Government has been groping towards
the idea that businesses and the voluntary sector might combine to provide
support via holiday clubs where children would not just receive a healthy meal
but also some catch-up teaching. But such schemes should be designed to involve
parents and, if necessary, help them to budget for family meals.
“Bootstrap cook” Jack Monroe made a career by showing
parents how to feed a family on a fiver a week. There are many parents in even
the poorest families who practise such skills and who do not look to schools to
stand in their place. We need more parents like that, not fewer. The
Conservative Party shouldn’t be afraid to say so.
