Nick Bourne: cereal killer

Join Labour for a healthy free breakfast

LABOUR has challenged the Welsh Tory leader to sample what he and his party are committed to scrapping - a healthy free breakfast.

Labour Children's Minister and Vale of Glamorgan AM Jane Hutt and Cardiff North candidate Sophie Howe set up camp at Tory HQ and challenged Nick Bourne to sample a free breakfast with them.  They challenged the Tories to sign a petition committing to the future of free breakfasts.

Labour Children's Minister JANE HUTT said:

"People say there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that may be true.  But in Wales primary school children are entitled to a free breakfast - unless the Tories get into power and scrap the programme."

"There are now 790 schools across Wales either running the scheme or signed up to it.  We hope this figure will increase even more over the coming months.  This is a direct challenge to the Tories to drop their opposition to free breakfasts and sign up to our petition to keep the scheme after May 3."

SOPHIE HOWE said:

"Labour's free breakfast's scheme is a brilliant way of ensuring that all children are able to have a healthy start to the day.  It has been proven that a decent breakfast improves concentration in the classroom, pupil behaviour and attendance.  It is typical of the Tories to want to scrap a scheme that largely disadvantaged families.  Only Labour can be trusted to stick up for the hardworking families of Wales."

Comments

[Adam Johns]

We always knew Welsh Labour was clunking and old school and dated but on the evidence of this you're positively triassic. You're nationalising mealtimes. Charge everybody less council tax and they might actually be able to buy breakfast themselves, but seeing as you can get a half tonne of knock-off Weetabix at ASDA for about 40p I doubt any body is unable to already. Do post more cheap gimmicks on here though, they're great fun.

[Rob]

You call Welsh Labour triassic but it's obvious you're the dinosaur, Adam. This isn't about the cost of Weetabix, for heaven's sake; it's about striking a work-life balance, kids being able to get a meal in the morning when their parents don't necessarily have the time, never mind the cost. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day when it comes to kids' education — if you're interested in raising standards and improving concentration, this is an important measure. It's deeply regressive to try and abolish it — but not surprising that the Tories don't understand why it's important for families in which there are two earners.

[Adam Johns]

If Welsh Labour really cared about children's education then they would spend less time furiously destroying it. This is about Labour's desire to spread the influence of the state as far into our lives as possible. How many families have had their mornings revolutionised by this gimmick? Mum can start work a full five minutes earlier because Labour have decided they need to look child friendly. This policy encourages and glorifies reliance on the state. Where has this love of working families come from anyway? People can see Labour's policies have bred an underclass of people with no need or desire to do a job and with nobody pressing them to get one. Labour's families have no earners, not two.

[Rob]

So Labour's families have no earners ... how many earners were there under the Tories, when there were 3 million people unemployed?

[Lee]

Wow I haven't head the underclass argument for a while. Maybe you haven't seen much of the news recently but there are a whole series of welfare reforms being discussed which will actually change the way in which people can get back in to work (which also has incentives to get people back in to work) and it was actually Thatcher's policy of moving as many people off of unemployment benefit onto disability benefit which, to use your terms (although not ones I would personally choose), has led people to have no desire to do a job. Of course that is nonsense and if you talk to people who are unemployed and the people who work with them to help them back into employment you will actually find they do want a job.

[Adam Johns]

Christ lads, what have we been saying about harking back to Thatcher? 3 million unemployed was a momentary correction because the state employed too many people to be sustainable and the economy was going through rough times. The Blair years fall in unemployment has been directly accounted for by the number of people the state has taken on and we're all taxed to death to pay for it. Britain is booming and employment is high because of the world economy and inevitably stable inflation. Britain's current success is despite the government, not because of it. Trust Labour to see the state as the beginning and the end of the economy. Welfare needs tightening up, not enlarging.

[Lee]

The reason people keep "harcking back to Thatcher" is due to the Thatcher/Major governments being the previous government and so being the government to which Labour compares its time in Government. It is also because people right across Wales still haven't forgiven the Tories for what they did to Wales, and I suspect it will still be some time before they have forgotten the effect of a Tory government on Wales. If the roles were reversed and the Tories were in Westminster after 18 years of Labour rule, they would be doing exactly the same. It is the way in which Governments try to show how things have changed.

[Rob]

There we have it. 3 million people unemployed was a "momentary correction". That sounds suspiciously like the Tory view of the time that unemployment was "a price worth paying".

Unfortunately the facts don't bear out your comments, Adam. The private sector has actually grown at a faster rate than the public sector when it comes to people in work - particularly in Wales. Economic stability in Britain has not been because of the global economy's success; quite the opposite - when the rest of the G7 went through a recession a couple of years ago, the only country to continue to grow in successive quarters was Britain. The fact is that it is Labour's economic competence which has guaranteed Britain's continued success - and the Tories' mismanagement which condemned us to boom and bust economics and millions on the dole queue. But then, why let the facts get in the way of a good right wing rant about people on welfare and the state?

[Adam]

You talk about economics like, unsurprisingly enough, a New Labourite. Governments can do very little with an economy. Economies do as they do. Mrs Thatcher laid off people who cost more than they benefited because she refused to use the state as charity for workers who believed that their jobs would outlive them and who were holding up the rest of the country. It's hard to swallow but the facts bear it out. The only Brown economic policy that people have genuinely felt is stealth tax. The rest is all guff from New Labour's spin machine. In actual fact under Labour we have been hindered by an unduly high tax burden that stunts the progress that non-political inflation management and the marvels of China have brought us. It's true that we've never had it so good, but without Brown's stealth taxes and Labour's enormous government we could have had it so much better.