Catkins wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:13 am
Minister for Children weighs in.
I very much doubt that vouchers can be used for alcohol, and non-food products could be other essentials like shampoo, toothpaste etc.
This is particularly infuriating because it's all a variant of the usual "flat screen TVs" line - Tory thinking goes if you let poor people just have the money, they will inevitably make bad decisions and blow the money on non-essentials because that's why they're poor in the first place, and so it must be restricted to only "worthy" things, like basic vegetables or tins of soup (preferably labelled in some way to show they are being bought using special vouchers, so as to further increase the shame of the recipient).
As well as keeping costs down and making ot possible to funnel money to chosen retailers by enforcing what is purchased, it plays perfectly into the Tory misery narrative - that if you have no money you should have no luxuries and no relief from your poverty until such time as you can pay for them yourself with no state help. Doesn't matter if you've got plenty of food that month - you can't spend OUR money on anything else because then you might momentarily forget to be miserable about being poor, which is the only way you will learn the value of not being poor. Now get back to your unheated, single-room flat with no television and eat your cold tesco value beans and be grateful, you fucking peasant etc.
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- By youngian