Thursday, June 23, 2016

No free lunches in Upper Hutt

A social entrepreneur has contacted 300 Upper Hutt businesses to pay for school lunches for children who turn up without. He's had no takers.

Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce CE says,

"I'm genuinely surprised to be perfectly honest . . . the feedback that's been given to me is that there's been a genuine lack of interest and in most cases a non-reply which absolutely astounds me for a business community that we have in the valley that do like to normally support community projects."

The social entrepreneur says,

"I'm not trying to sound harsh but if there are businesses that are making money off our community then I'm sort of garnering towards making them socially responsible to give back to the community that it makes money from."
But they do give back. As the first comment records. And they give back in taxes that run the welfare system that distributes income for the very purposes of feeding children.

So I am not surprised that there is little interest in this project. Businesses will also have figured out that once 'free lunches' are on offer the need will mysteriously grow.

These schools need to talk to the parents. Or send them a letter saying that if their children continue to come to school with no food CYF or Work and Income will be contacted. That will result in the parent either having to do budgeting course or have their income managed by a third party.

A couple of slices of bread, apple, and biscuit. How hard can it be for god's sake? And if the school can prepare and freeze sandwiches in advance why can't the parents?

All this guy is doing is encouraging absolutely slack parenting (if indeed children are genuinely without lunch. I bet some are given money to buy food but spend it on whatever it is kids buy these days.)

It is disgraceful that he is trying to shame businesses when it is the parents who should be shamed.

15 comments:

Kiwiwit said...

This is the classic 'you didn't build that' argument that Elizabeth Warren and Obama were making in the US last year. As you rightly point out, businesses in Upper Hutt do 'give back' in the taxes, rates and other government charges that they have to pay - often amounting to more than half their profits. But that is just the start of what they 'give back'. They also employ most people who work in their communities, paying their wages, their PAYE, their ACC, their holiday and sick pay, and their on-the-job training. Add to that the fact that many businesses sponsor local sports teams and cultural events, and that many business people are prominent in community service organisations, and you start to see why such claims that business people should 'give back' make me sick.

Mark Hubbard said...

Yep. I noticed that piece and know exactly why business is fed up with the campaign. The word 'responsibility' is the foundation stone of a free society, but progressives have long buried it, and seek to censor anybody audacious enough to weld it publicly(noting the idiot petition to ban Mike Hosking - started by a lawyer - is now over 16,000 signatures).

It's all the time this rot. Last night about ten minutes into an item on TV1 news, don't even know what on exactly, all I was aware of was the presenter saying 'solo mother of six ...' and I clicked telly off. Over it.

Then unfortunately clicked back on and we watched last night's recording of the Dunedin Experiment. Some of that doco (two parts) is interesting, but this one on the long term medical implications of growing up in poverty was a set-piece in how liberal academia is sadly blinkered (in the form of PC self-censoring). It became glaringly obvious all the researchers were using the right buzz words around poverty, other than welfare (never mentioned once although that was so integral part of the community being described), then broken families, bad parenting, shit diets (too lazy or too stupid to cook wholesome, cheap meals) etc ... again, all 'there' you only had to look, and Mrs H and I knew what they were talking about, but they couldn't actually mention those important words and attribute cause and effect to the decisions the people were making and being incentivised to make because the taxpayer will be made to fill the breach of their irresponsibility (and thus, with that refusal to name causes, the real issues will never be fixed by the papers coming from that study.)

Anonymous said...

I was re-reading the OIA release of the Treasury briefing on this issue as I thought there were some salient points.

1. It doesn't work...or in the language of the briefing, all with nice references,

"...a 2012 Auckland University study found a New Zealand breakfast programme had no statistically significant effect on attendance and no effect on academic achievement or student conduct. These findings on academic achievement and student conduct are consistent with the findings of well-designed international studies on school breakfasts in first world countries. Internationally the majority of studies found that even where breakfast was offered at school, there was no increase in the probability of a child actually eating breakfast."

2. Most kids who go without breakfast are teenagers in high school - which is why all these programmes feed primary school kids ... that's getting to the heart of the issue !!!

3. It is expensive - they cited 10 to 25% of the cost of the education - I presume they are trying to indicate is that if you wanted to fit it within the current education budget then it would mean something like increasing class sizes by something like that 10 to 25%. Good idea?

Jigsaw said...

I have become increasingly curious as to why people who are so concerned about this sort of thing don't investigate the concept of a co-operative. If there were so many people living in the same area having a common interest why don't they join together to get certain goods and services at a cheaper price. The same applies to Maori-you would expect that in areas like the Far North or the East Coast there would be a tribal co-op to provide groceries - as an example. I belong to a rural co-op that
saves us a considerable sum of money on all sorts of goods and services. When I explain it to people they think its a great idea-and it is but so few people seem aware. Maybe its just like feeding their kids - they really can't be bothered making the effort.

Mark Hubbard said...

A question:

What is a social entrepreneur?

Brendan McNeill said...

These businesses also give back by risking their capital to create employment opportunities for those living in their communities.

There is nothing wrong with asking, but equally there is nothing wrong with these businesses saying no, or ignoring the unsolicited request.

Mark Hubbard said...

Small correction to my first post.

Progressives have not 'buried' the word responsibility. They've done the post modern thing of reversing it's meaning and bending it to their anti-capitalist ends; thus it's now business's responsibility to feed these kids, not their parents (responsibility); the petition against Mike Hosking is because his commentary is not 'socially' responsible FFS.

They sacked the language, so they could perform the mind-wipe in the state schools.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

My term. I first wrote 'do-gooder' but thought that was inaccurate. He described himself as having a "philanthropic drive" but 'philanthropist' doesn't work because he wants to 'give away' other people's money - not his own. So I called him a social entrepreneur - someone who uses business/private sector to provide a particular social good. Usually I would support such an approach but only if it replaces state involvement - not augments it.

Brendan McNeill said...

You might describe Fred Hollows who performed eye cataract surgery for the poor as a ‘social entrepreneur’ from the secular world, although I know nothing about his motivations, and equally Mother Teresa’s care for the destitute and dying of India, a woman who was motivated by her Christian faith.

These people have both left legacies behind them (as have countless others) who continue on the work they began. They help to make the world a better place.

To my knowledge neither of these social entrepreneurs expected local businesses to fund their activities yet they were successful by any measure.

Brendan McNeill said...

Ok.. I have performed some research on 'social entrepreneur' Fred Hollows. You can read his background on their website here:

https://www.hollows.org.nz/Fred-Hollows/young-fred-hollows

“Church was an important part of life, and Fred described the family atmosphere as respectable and teetotal, but not pious or judgemental. Fred's biggest influence during his younger years was his father who was a Christian Marxist, a pacifist and an anti-nuclear campaigner.”

A ‘Christian Marxist’ is an oxymoron if ever there was one, so poor old Fred had a few contradictions to work through growing up. Still, it was either his faith or perhaps his father’s example of Marxism that motivated his charitable work. We will never know.

JC said...

Here's the problem.. unemployment is down, wages are exceeding inflation by many orders of magnitude, benefits are tracking or exceeding inflation, confidence is high, most metrics measuring our progress are positive to extremely positive and media and lefty heads are exploding with frustration at the good news.

So what can lefties and media (but I repeat myself) do?.. they can make shit up.

The head of the school of 400+ students mentioned in the article said "a handful" of students came to school hungry. if we assume she was being massively conservative and there weren't just 5 kids but say 20 who were hungry that is 5% and I would have thought that was a minor problem.. after all we are regularly told that 30% of *all* such children are in poverty.

The cost to the school of feeding these kids would be say $5each or maybe $20,000 a year or less than 0.02% of the total school budget, ie, there is no systemic problem and no threat to the school budget. The Charter schools would laugh at this so called problem and presumably so did the businesses being dunned for money.

Of course the school's fear is if it is seen to pay fer 20 kids there will be a demand for 200 within 2 months and they would rather someone else pay for that.. thats human nature. The vast majority of the newly hungry will of course refuse to eat this largess and the local piggeries will be the beneficiaries.. such is life.

JC

Anonymous said...

Social entrepreneur = a social justice warrior, who thinks guilt should be used to force productive people to support dead weight, unproductive types.

I recall being stopped in Lambton Sq one day by a woman collecting for Women's Refuge (a charity I used to donate to). She asked me "Make a donation, to show you are against violence to women".

Implying of course, that if I didn't donate then I was in favour of violence to women! I decided that her approach was itself abusive in nature and resolved immediately never to give once cent to that organisation ever again.

Guilt as a form of bullying - Cunliffe's "we are better than this" line at the last election didn't work. As we all learned in the playground - we must stand up to bulllies to prevent their cancer spreading. Hats off to the Hutt business who ignored this bully.

Anonymous said...

Social entrepreneur = a social justice warrior == BLUDGER

plain and simple. And let's remember the most important thing:

social entrepreneur - someone who uses business/private sector to provide a particular social good

welfare, and giving bludgers something for nothing is not a social good.
it is the worst social evil

Eric said...

".. after all we are regularly told that 30% of *all* such children are in poverty."

This is espoused by teachers as a means of explaining poor educational outcomes. It is also a mantra of Green Party people.

Not all voices on the left concur.

Josie Pagani has written for UK think-tank Policy Network, which invited her to the 2016 Progressive Governance Conference in Stockholm this month.

She said of the invitation:
"I was invited after writing an article that said progressive parties lose when their message to voters is: "Your life is miserable, your country is going to the dogs, the world is scary, and by the way you're fat - Vote for us!"

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I like her. It was Jose who pointed out the hostility to Labour's policy of extending the In Work Tax Credit to beneficiaries when she was campaigning in 2008. She knew that Labour couldn't keep the working class vote by treating them the same as beneficiaries. She's smart - for a lefty:-)