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Those lunches we saw this week aren't a result of a fault in the system, they are what the system "allows" children on free school meals. And that's because we're not as good at story telling as the right are.
It's an easy story- the feckless parents who got pregnant to get a council house and sit eating free food watching flat screen TV whilst laughing at you, knackered after a day working longer for less than you did 15 years ago.
It's not true.
It's not true.
They don't think it is true in any meaningful number even as they tell it but this story being told so often so well is why that tomato is cut in half, the tuna spooned into a coin bag.
I rarely do deliveries now in the Foodbank because I am so relentlessly grand. But...
I rarely do deliveries now in the Foodbank because I am so relentlessly grand. But...
today I did the last round so people think I'm a down to earth geezer and the people I met with our parcels were extraordinary. They always are. People always are. A woman in tears who had worked all her life, in catering, missed out on furlough by 9 days...
a man with 6 kids on his own tearing his hair out and desperate for cereal; zero hour contracts useless, administrative accidents; people striving against bad luck and appalling situations; genuine gratitude for what is in reality an ordinary crate of pasta, hard veg and milk.
These people, like all people, are heroic: heroes in the hearts of their own stories.
And to give a hero half a tomato as a meal is the act of a prick.
We need to be better at telling stories than our enemies are, or start preparing to hand out tomatoes.
And to give a hero half a tomato as a meal is the act of a prick.
We need to be better at telling stories than our enemies are, or start preparing to hand out tomatoes.
