“However there is plenty of good subsidised food on the tables in the Tynwald canteen!”
Manx Radio reports that a Tynwald committee will be considering evidence about poverty news that leaves me is despair that government and politicians will ever tackle the issue and not simply just talk!
https://www.manxradio.com/…/free-school-meals-figures-reve…/
How much ‘considering’ should it need? It’s now almost a decade since child poverty on the Island was in focus and at that time (2011) there were no such things as ‘food banks’ so plainly the situation has gotten worse.
Another indicator is that in 2011 Chris Robertshaw MHK then Minister for Social Care indicated that one in nine of school children receive free school meals now on the basis of figures last week the number is almost one in five.
In the same year (2011) a conference attended by amongst others the then President of Tynwald and various charities and government spokespersons focused on the issue and set out steps that should be taken.
However even three years before that speaking to the BBC I had called for the government to tackle poverty and expressed dismay at the paucity of data:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/…/world/europe/isle_of_man/7227461.stm
Just a year ago the Islands food poverty issue even surfaced in a UK (Guardian) newspaper article which was focused on our notoriety as an offshore centre (see link below).
A decade on things it seems are worse not better. Meanwhile the deliberations of the Tynwald Committee will not put one extra scrap of food on the tables of the needy.
However there is plenty of good subsidised food on the tables in the Tynwald canteen!
Related links:
http://www.isleofman.com/…/does-the-isle-of-man-have-a-prob…
https://www.manx.net/…/poverty-and-neglect-conference-raise…
https://www.theguardian.com/…/after-successive-offshore-sca…
Bernard Moffatt
Assistant General Secretary
Celtic League
