After last year’s challenge, I’ve struggled to come up with something to top it. With the public sector spending cuts already kicking in, and rapidly deepening I had no shortage of ideas – but had difficulty coming up with something that worked. Sure, I’d be happy to spend 6 weeks with no contact with the police, but that’s not really the point… In the end, one of the first things to bite the dust under the coalition last summer was my inspiration for this year.
Back in June, less than a month after being set up, the new Department for Education announced it was scrapping plans to extend free school meals to primary school children from low income working families. As a result, almost a million children living in poverty will miss out on a healthy hot meal during the school day. In their families, parents will somehow have to find, from tight budgets, the money to pay for some kind of lunch. So for the next six weeks, I’ll be eating my lunches from Monday to Friday on £1 a week, or 20p a day.
