Discussions over pizza/random ramblings

It's always amusing to see what kind of hair-brained scheme the clowns in power will come up with to lure in votes come election time. One scheme for this year seems to covet the most innocent of voters - the infringed and impoverished minority susceptible to the meagre promises made by politicians. Parents of school children who are on the RMT will be called to school for a special ceremony to recieve certificates (of achievement?) in recognition of their child being in the program. FYI the RMT stands for Rancangan Makanan Tambahan - a supplementary food program to provide kids from impoverished families with a stable and healthy diet. (What kind of food these children are getting through the program - now that's a whole different can of worms!) But this is not going to be just a simple ceremony for according certificates. How can it be, when the local politician (or whoever holds the most clout in the area) will be invited, speeches given, food catered and served, buntings hung and loads of kow-tow given, all at the expence of the innocent John. Q. Taxpayer. What it will hopefully do is boost the image of the powers-that-be in the eleventh hour of campaigning.

Let's consider for a second the ingenuity of this magnanimous gesture of pseudo-recognition. If my child were on the program, yes, I would very much like to be invited to the school to be recognized. I would very much like to recieve a certificate that would remind me of my daily struggle to simply feed my children. I would really love to go up on stage and have a hundred people applaude me for unwillingly depriving my child of his or her most basic need. People like me, whose children are 'previliged' enough to be on the program, are majority working on a daily wage. If I miss a day of work, I'd miss out on the day's wages. But hey, this ceremony is such a big honour that I wouldn't mind leaving work for one day.

Really, I don't mind depriving my child of another day's meal because the powers-that-be are generous enough to put up a ceremony for me. The rest of my children will go hungry too because only one child per family is allowed on the program. But hey, the powers-that-be have a budget to work with just like me. They can't afford to feed all of my children through RMT, although they all go to school equally hungry. If they do that, then there'd be no money left to spend on the more important things. You know, things like the chauffer driven luxury car to transport the bigwig from his mansion to the ceremony. Or for tipping the local press so they'd make this event their cover story for tomorrow's print. Or the colourful buntings and decorations that someone will take home as theirs at the end of the day. Or the votes that this glorious occasion will garner for the-powers-that-be. Or the heavy, embossed, signed, and sealed certificate that I'll take home and...serve to my children for dinner, perhaps?