LOST your job in the pandemic?

A whole array of highly complex financial support schemes seem to be available but don’t cover loss of your job two months back.

Single parent with two youngsters? Your income is Universal Credit, for which you had to wait five weeks.

You now get £96 a week. Child allowance for each child is £14 a week. You get £480 a month towards £580 rent.

Debts are mounting.

Short term “pay-day-loan” operators, running “500 per cent” interest loans, as endorsed by UK government, wait in the wings.

Children home for half term? Check out the cupboards. Potatoes, porridge, eggs, milk, beans, cheap sausages, bread, jam, and not much more.

The stress is written on your face.

Then check out these daily menus. Bellamy’s, Cafe 14, Courtyard Cafe, and Churchill’s:

Corn fed chicken terrine and celery. Venison Carpaccio with picked blackberries. Traditional smoked salmon with horseradish.

These then the “starters”. For main courses: Chargrilled rib-eye or sirloin steak with hand-cut chips. Mini beef sirloin with beef dripping. Slow-cooked pork belly with Chinese spices

And so it goes on. A dozen menus, with wine lists – champagne, Bordeaux, rare Mosel wines – in a dozen highly subsidised restaurants through the Palace of Westminster.

One thing we can then be sure with no hesitations: no-one – MP or Lord – goes hungry in the Houses of Parliament.

And that is far more than we can say for millions of youngsters throughout the UK.

The Tory ranks to near a man and woman saying “No” to help with school meals in the holidays.

And this including all eight Dorset MPs voting no. Then off to the dining rooms for venison or steak, swilled down with a decent Bordeaux.

And so it is this world pandemic could not more vividly illuminate the terrible poverty and injustices that have become so embedded in this country, over so many centuries.

The most elevated in the land dining out in unfettered luxury, subsidised by British tax-payers, whilst millions of families with children are in the direst need.

And this in our own BCP towns with food banks throughout the conurbation. Greatest credit to all who are keeping these going. The greatest shame on Dorset Tory MPs refusing to face up to such crying need.

We never hear then speaking up for full priced Parliament restaurants do we? Clearly all too happy with the status quo. Quail for me – pass the Mosel – the rest of you, good luck.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Jubilee Road, Parkstone