[lbo-talk] KVH hearts Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems (but I don't)

[James Heartfield]

My local council (ie municipal authority) Islington is held by the Liberal Democrats with a slim majority. The Labour group pushed a proposal for free school dinners (as a pro-health measure) which seemed like a pretty good idea to me: the borough's school children are mostly poor and would gain by it. The Lib. Dems. fought a long rear-guard action against the popular measure, though they quickly dropped the slogan 'there's no such thing as a free lunch' for its connotations. At the last minute they did manage to delay it for a year while the policy was road-tested in a some sample schools.

So I turned up to my daughters' school, Hargrave Park, whose parents are mostly poor, only to be told that the scheme would not be operating there, until next year. 'Where is it operating?' I asked. Oh, they are trying it out at Yerbury School, I was told. Yerbury School has the wealthiest catchment area in the north of the borough, so much so that house prices nearby are raised by around £30 000 as parents secure a place through proximity. Coincidentally, it is also the school that those local councillors making the decision have secured for their own children, so that the richest children in the borough got their school dinners free, while the poorest paid.