The issue about free nutritional school meals is about have better socialised attitudes to food, to ensure all children are treated as children. Most children do not have incomes it is their parents income that decides what benefits they will have. “Middle class” children are not asked to bring tables and chairs to school because their mum and dad can afford it – children should be fed good quality meals because they need them. I think Jamie Oliver has done a great job around school dinners however they also need to be free, just part of the school curriculum.

Bring on the Free School Meals and the SSP should not be written out of history in delivering this very small gain.

Well no they don’t Shuggy, unless the 80% of PRIMARY schools in Glasgow which didn’t have the swipe card system in 2007 (the last time figures were published) have subsequently introduced it. You may be getting mixed up with the situation in Glasgow’s secondary schools where 100% do have swipe cards.

When I said “Scottish Government figures” I didn’t go on to say as supplied by the local authorities themselves but if you want to look it up go here -

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/06/04134749/0

So unless a council official completely ballsed up the statistical return to the Scottish Government then it’s correct and you’re wrong.

And it’s not an implicit suggestion on my part that anyone “gives a shit” about stigma it’s an explicit one based on the views of the kids themselves.

Again look it up if you want but instead of relying on our own opinions – as you do – we referenced research by Save the Children (Breadline Britain) which asked children for THEIR views (i.e. not adults substituting their views for the children’s) – 90% of the children interviewed by the researchers said they did not take school meals because of the shame involved in other kids knowing that they/their parents were poor.

We got exactly the same results from our own consultation exercise prior to the Bill being introduced – 450 individual responses (over 100 of them from schoolchildren themselves) and 70 group responses – with 9 out of 10 of them identifying stigma as the main reason for failure to take up entitlement.

However I’ve also already stated that stigma is least where the vast majority of other kids are entitled – 90% take-up in schools where 90% are entitled. So in one sense you are also correct that in some Glasgow schools (wherever deprivation is highest) stigma isn’t a big issue.

But poor kids attending schools in more affluent areas are subjected to the most peer bullying and the majority of poor children do not live in areas of multiple deprivation and it’s also there that take up is lowest. Please provide an evidence based explanation for that correlation if it’s not related to stigma.

If you do work in the schools system then I pity the kids. It is people like you who are failing to recognise and protect the children in their care from insidious bullying. This undermines their self-esteem and, if they succumb to it, prevents them from obtaining at least one decent meal a day which in turn may affect their educational attainment, life chances and health including life expectancy.

That cruelty and blow to poorer children’s self esteem and life chances is something I care deeply about even if you don’t. Maybe you should read the research and come to conclusions based on actual evidence rather than your own pre-conceived,

or “observation”- the least reliable of research methods because of its subjectivity – based beliefs.

But as a socialist living in Wales I have to say there is a problem with the Nationalists and much of the centre-left being hugely parochial. The Nationalist Left want to use the small reforms they have gained to push a “break-up of Britain” line (despite the majority of Welsh workers opposing independence) rather than using this as a base to fight for socialist politics across Britain and to rally working class people to struggle at the base of society.

One has to say that the GLC and even Sheffield Council when led by David Blunkett (who was on the Labour Left in the 80s) were far more combative in fighting for (reformist) socialist politics and taking on Westminster than the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament.

As to whether it’s a “great victory”?

Well only in the context of the absurdly reactionary and miserly post-Thatcherite era in which any talk of free health care or nutrition for children immediately provokes a host of stingy reactionaries to froth at the mouth and utter strangled cries of “tax benefits”, “vouchers”, “entitlement”, “cheat”, “scrounger” etc… etc….

When I was at school, we all got free school dinners, right up to secondary age. We all got 1/3rd of a pint of milk a day and infants got vitamin C in the form of Rose Hip Syrup!

So it’s a very, very limited victory indeed.

A bit like someone relearning how to walk after a nasty accident. Let’s hope it spreads to England and Wales soon, along with abolition of student loans.

If the price of one of our necessities of life falls, this will be reflected by a decrease in the upwards pressure on wages. Without a corresponding relenting in the downward forces on wages, our real wages would begin to dwindle towards a new level (either through direct wage cuts, or by allowing inflation – that is a decrease in the value of money – to eat away at our spending power). Free school dinners would be an example of this process in action.

I live in Glasgow and work in the Council’s schools. All of them use the ‘Fuel Zone’ system along with the swipe cards. Your assertion that it is obvious who is receiving free school meals and who isn’t is simply incorrect. Even if this were not so, I don’t see any grounds for your implicit suggestion that anyone gives a shit. Don’t waste my time quoting Scottish Government information – as if they had even a crepuscular idea about what goes on in our schools. I repeat, I think the idea of universal school meals is a reasonable idea but this stigma idea isn’t one of them.

I don’t know how often this happens, but there was sufficient worry to deter some claimants.

There is also a problem that if you cannot finf a job employing you for 16 hours you can’t qualify, and how does it make sense to force parents to go to work who would rather be looking after their children and pay starngers ot look after their kids instead

The Scottish Government’s own figures show that in 2007 less than half (48%) of Scottish primary schools had an anonymised system for the receipt of free school meals.

In Glasgow, Scotland’s largest authority with the highest prortion of children living in poverty only 20% of primary schools had an anonymised system. So when you say “we don’t do this any more” you’re well wrong.

Even where there are so-called anonymised systems it’s still easy to identify the kids receiving free meals because swipe cards are used which more affluent kids can top up hereas the poorer ones can’t afford to.

Oh yeah and to get back to an earlier point. As well as the hundreds of thousands of kids not claiming because of stigma – and it’s those kids Save the Children asked when they researched this – there are hundreds of thousands of kids from low wage households whose parents receive WFTC who aren’t entitled at all.

Any “socialist” who opposes free school meals for all children is condemning millions of kids from low income working class homes to the misery of stigma, the household to extra costs of about a tenner a week per child and/or losing out on at least one decent meal a day. You may think you’re tough but why call yourselves socialist? Obviously being well hard is great for the workers’ health which is why they drop down dead about 20 years before their affluent peers in Glasgow.

Universal provision is the only way to ensure maximum take-up, no stigma whatsoever and a healthier future for our kids. Which is why we won the argument. No thanks to the faux or idiotic proles on the far left who as Dave rightly says DID and continue to sneer at the idea. If they’d had their way we’d never have had an NHS as we’d still be waiting for the glorious day.