Footballer Marcus Rashford criticises Conservative MP for comments on child hunger


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Footballer Marcus Rashford has criticised a Conservative MP for his comments on child hunger.

Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, was praising the government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme when he replied to a comment, saying:

Where they can, it’s a parents’ job to feed their children.

Read on...

“Talk to families before tweeting”

Rashford explained that the comment could prevent families from asking for help. He said:

I would urge you to talk to families before tweeting. To this day I haven’t met one parent who hasn’t wanted or felt the responsibility to feed their children…

Put to the side that this comment came from an MP. It’s comments like this that prevent people from speaking their truth and asking for help. We need to start uplifting each other.

Hollinrake does not appear to have publicly replied to Rashford’s comment as yet.

Rashford’s campaigning

The Manchester United and England striker was successful in campaigning for free school meal vouchers to be provided to pupils over the summer period.

He has now teamed up with Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Deliveroo, FareShare, Food Foundation, Iceland, Kellogg’s, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose to form the Child Food Poverty Task Force, which is endorsing three national policy recommendations.

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    1. Remember Gordon Brown’s commitment to ending child poverty by 2020? We got the Iraq War instead. Such are the priorities of the Labour Party. Blair feels the hand of destiny on his shoulder and kids feel the pang of hunger in their stomachs. Marcus Rashford puts them to shame. He thinks beyond the doctrinal system. He has had the experience and he knows the excuses are vacuous. A pity there is no one in Labour speaking in the clear and direct terms Rashford uses so well. We should all get behind his effort and drive it to the end Brown offered and failed to deliver. Children deserve not just emergency measures to make sure they get fed properly, but to be lifted definitively out of poverty. We are a rich nation. We can afford to pay footballers like Rashford fabulous salaries and we can afford to see all our children growing free of the blight of poverty. If only there were a political party with the will to make it a reality.

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