One of three

Another late afternoon walk, and failed to adjust the ISO. Fortunately, I was able to use the iPhoto editing and bring out the red beak, red eye, and red legs. Seeing it in full screen on the MacBook is so much better than normal photo size.

Was Trump told by Putin to halt the support being given to Ukraine? He is a man who likes to grandstand, but when asked what he would say to Zelensky, he said that he was going to have a meeting in the Oval Office and he would tell them after that. I wonder whether he was getting his instructions (couched as encouragement) from Putin. Especially as an un-named aide made the announcement.

Closer to home, more drama over the free school lunches. Children and their parents are able to opt for a school lunch or come with a home provided lunch. This was introduced by the previous (Labour Party) government, and was an attempt to alleviate one of the ill-effects on children living in poverty. Providing lunch for only those whose parents are too poor to provide lunch singles out those children as different. 

One of the policies of the ACT Party was to stop the free lunches, and as an alternative Seymour cancelled all the local contracts, and gave the contract to a foreign-owned company which has already had problems in  Aotearoa/ NZ over the poor quality of the food provided to hospital inpatients. Today I heard that one school had been provided with meals that had been burned and there was burnt plastic in the food. Other problems include being unappetising, tasteless, late and more. 

Prime Minister Luxon was being questioned yesterday about this and then again today after Caucus. He was obviously annoyed about this as he has tried very hard to make it all the responsibility of David Seymour. He clearly thinks that being PM just means he gets to travel to everywhere else rather than stay in the country. His response to being asked what is being done to improve the quality of school lunches is to direct the reporters to David Seymour. 

They kept asking him and he snapped out that if the parents don't like the school lunches they can send the children to school with a marmite sandwich and an apple like he had. He seems to have no idea that over 20% of children in Aotearoa/NZ have parents who do not have enough money to give their children lunch.