“I do not agree with nationalising children,” said the MP who had a nice bowl of fresh homemade soup and walnut bread in the member’s lounge at lunchtime for just £2.71. Nationalising MPs is fine. It is the weirdest thing for him to say too because the nation’s children are, to a certain extent nationalised. We decided that looking after all the children of our nation was important. Children are not a private commodity. We can’t buy and sell them. We all contribute to make sure they are educated. They get free healthcare. We look after their teeth and their eyes and we have whole teams of people dedicated to making sure their parents can give them what they need to grow into healthy fully functioning members of society. The same MP also announced that to give into this request to make sure children didn’t go hungry in the holidays during a pandemic was virtue signalling by a celebrity on Twitter.
Virtue signalling is quite a new insult that people who are proud of their iniquity use to imply that anyone who has good thoughts and expresses them is irresponsible. The implication is that they are not really kind (because altruism is a concept that people who use this insult don’t understand) but are just saying these things to make themselves look better.
Marcus Rashford is, apparently, a footballer. I’m late to the MR fan club because I don’t understand football and the hero worship of skinny boys who chase a round thing around a field with no trees, kick each other in the shins and spit a lot. I didn’t know that he was already beloved for his football skills at Manchester United and only came to my attention when he started talking about how hungry children, whose parents rely on the free school meals, can be during the holidays. It wasn’t something I’d thought about before because I hadn’t needed to but he had. He could talk about the experience personally and he managed to persuade the government to change its mind during lockdown. He also seems nice.
It goes without saying that I think it’s a good idea to make sure children are well nourished. I also think it makes economic sense. Just think of the amount of money we could save on healthcare for those children when they grow up? Just imagine. Less heart disease. Less diabetes. Less female cancers. We might even have a heath system that could cope with a novel virus.
So, Marcus Rashford has become public enemy number one, as far as conservative MPs who don’t want to spend a little more to feed poor children in the school holidays. Unfortunately for those MPs the public disagree. They disagree quite strongly and swearily and so the government officials have been told to turn all their replies off. This is a shame because then they will never know just how the public feel but I can see why you wouldn’t want to wake up to a million profanity laden death threats.
I am currently reading a book called The Legacy of the Rural Guardians for my work on the local history project I’m involved with. The Guardians kept coming up in the court documents and I wanted to know more. Being a Guardian in Victorian England was a job that no one really wanted but was considered the duty of the ruling wealthy classes. The guardians were responsible for overseeing the workhouses. Trust me, this is not something we want to go back to but we have always looked after the poor and those who can’t fend for themselves, we’ve just got better at it and have been able to help more people earlier. It seems as though the Guardians were the original virtue signallers. They didn’t really want to help the poor but they had to do it to justify their own worth and wealth.
Marcus Rashford doesn’t strike me as a virtue signaller. I’m sure he earns a lot of money. I believe footballers at Manchester United do. I thought a look at his Twitter feed would give me a clue. Was he someone who was saying, “Look at me! Aren’t I amazing? Telling you all bout this to make myself look good. I’m quite good at football too. Love me because I’m amazing.”
What I saw surprised me. It’s worth a look if you want to have your faith restored in human kindness. I’m not going to say anymore. Take a look for yourself.
Read the pinned tweet and then scroll down. Just be warned that if, like me, you couldn’t sleep and are feeling a bit fragile then you might need tissues.
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