'But ask yourself this, friends: who sacrificed *your* children?'

[dolorosa_12]

I am not generally someone who finds flashy public displays of individual charity (or charity by a business) to be laudable — my opinion is that if charity is necessary, it's a sign that a government has failed in its responsibility. Failing to prevent children from going hungry to me demonstrates that a government in a comparably wealthy country has utterly failed in its most basic responsibilities.

It is not the job of a young footballer to essentially shame businesses and local councils into stepping in and providing the free meals for children that this shameless government refuses to provide — I find Marcus Rashford's campaign extremely admirable, but the fact that he needs to do such a thing is a sign of the government's moral failure, rather than being uplifting or inspiring.

That being said, Rashford's Twitter feed (MarcusRashford) is making my heart overflow with emotion today.

(Title quote comes from a moment which is probably in my top ten favourite fictional scenes ever, in Philip Pullman's The Tiger in the Well, when my favourite fictional socialist revolutionary Dan Goldberg manages to talk down a violent mob by appealling to their sense of logic and justice. Leaving aside whether such acts of persuasion are anything other than wishful thinking, I most certainly agree with the sentiment that children should never be acceptable collateral damage of decisions made by the privileged and powerful.)

Comments

[lirazel]

I had no idea who this guy was, but I looked it up and he's a baby! To be MBE at 22! All based on his efforts to help feed children! What a darling!

Agree with you re: government failure, but I am glad he's out there doing this.

[dolorosa_12]

I had no idea who he was either — I don't care about most team sports, soccer/football included! And he's amazing compared to the normal standards of your average 22-year-old professional footballer (who generally display all the characteristics you'd expect of being massively talented in this one specific area, being handed a monumental amount of wealth and fame in their teens/early twenties, and being given absolutely no support in dealing with all that).

I'm glad he's out there doing this too, but it's the situation with the elderly Captain Tom Moore all over again: I pay my taxes so that the NHS can be properly funded, not so that a centenarian war veteran can do shuffled laps around his garden using a walking frame to fund the NHS as if it were a charity! These things are grimly necessary, but they're also a distraction: now that Rashford has inspired/shamed struggling pubs, restaurants and local councils to foot the bill, the government has wriggled out of needing to do a thing to alleviate child poverty without suffering any more than an angry telling off on Twitter.

[lirazel]

now that Rashford has inspired/shamed struggling pubs, restaurants and local councils to foot the bill, the government has wriggled out of needing to do a thing to alleviate child poverty without suffering any more than an angry telling off on Twitter.

That is truly terrible. But it does seem impossible to shame y'all's government or ours right now, doesn't it?

[lilysea]

I most certainly agree with the sentiment that children should never be acceptable collateral damage of decisions made by the privileged and powerful.

I don't think ANYONE, of ANY AGE, should ever be acceptable collateral damage of decisions made by the privileged and powerful.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, I agree with you completely, although since food insecure children were the subject of this post I mentioned children specifically. That the idea of 'collateral damage' is categorically unacceptable goes without question.

[wheatear]

Agree. The increase in the number of food banks is not a good thing at all: it's a sign that government policies are failing to prevent poverty. Good on Marcus Rashford for continuing to pressure the government on this.

[dolorosa_12]

The increase in the number of food banks is not a good thing at all: it's a sign that government policies are failing to prevent poverty.

Absolutely. I didn't live in the UK during the Blair years (I arrived in the dying days of the Brown government), and I can't stand the man himself, but my understanding is that the last Labour government did at least make a substantial, material difference in terms of alleviating food insecurity and childhood poverty. It's absolutely morallly reprehensible that the subsequent Tory governments have basically eroded all those achievements until things are in a worse position than they were to begin with.

I completely applaud everything that Rashford is doing, while deploring the fact that it's necessary.

[wheatear]

I grew up during the Blair years and looking back I don't think I realized how good we had it, at least compared to now. I benefited from financial support through sixth form and university (mind you, I was also among the first to pay tuition fees) and I know there were other initiatives like Sure Start that made a difference to early childhood years.

[dolorosa_12]

Exactly so. This is why I get really frustrated with supposed allies on the left of politics who whinge about 'Blairites' or 'centrist' Labour leadership and claim that there's no difference between it, and Conservative government. Do any of those people seriously think we'd be having this conversation about children going hungry if there was a Labour government, even a 'centrist' one, in power right now? That's not to say that people should accept everything a more centrist Labour government does without complaint: but get them in power, and then start fighting to change them. Waiting for perfection is just a recipe for disaster.

[regshoe]

I completely agree—whenever I see someone doing this sort of big philanthropic effort my reaction is a conflict between admiration and horror that it was ever necessary.

...and also, hey, Dan Goldberg and that scene in particular are also amongst my all-time fictional faves! That's one of the books I'm really glad to have read when I did—it was a great influence on my thinking as a teenager.

[dolorosa_12]

I first read that book as a teenager as well, and it was hugely formative. I'm always so happy to find out that it's the same for other people!

The less said about the moral failings of our current government, the better.

[trepkos]

Exactly! But if anyone is thinking they can shame this government, they will have a long wait.

[dolorosa_12]

Indeed. The whole point of Tories is that they have no sense of shame.