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The tweet from the Bath conservatives caused a stir in the world of Twitter when they called families who couldn’t feed their families for a tenner a week “indolent or disfunctional [sic]”. Considering they will most likely never have to even spend less than a tenner on a single meal let alone seven days’ worth of them this tweet has, of course, outraged many and brought to light some of their very controversial opinions. The tweet signposted followers to Jack Monroe, a political activist who wrote a book on feeding your family on a budget, causing her to reply to express her disappointment at being used to demonstrate that it’s possible to eat on such little income. Afterall, it was Conservative government policy that led to her having to feed her and her son on such little weekly income.

Although conservatives are not known to hold back their opinions you’d think they wouldn’t insult a large proportion of their electorate. You’d also think what with all the controversy over Donald Trump’s tweeting habits they’d learn not to publish controversial opinions and insults on the social media platform. As someone who regularly sees posts on Facebook on how to feed four for under a tenner, only for one meal, I struggle to see how feeding a family on that budget for a whole week would work. This tweet, although not published by a member of parliament, still goes to show how the conservative party are out of touch with real people and represent the rich.

The Bath Conservative Twitter swiftly apologised in another tweet saying how this “single tweet” doesn’t reflect their views and was a mistake. However, Jack Monroe criticised them yet again by reposting and highlighting one of their previous tweets again saying that families who can’t feed their children are not the fault of government but the parents themselves.

Blaming parents for not feeding their families properly when it is the conservative government policies that have put them in a position where they have to scrimp and save for dinner is rich (as are they).

According to the Bath Chronicle, the association has now put in place stricter methods to doctor their tweets, and they said that their tweets are mostly sent from volunteers: this is all well and good to use as a scapegoat for this situation. However, surely the fact that this tweet slipped through the gaps of the many who run the Bath Conservatives Twitter account shows that it is a shared and even welcome view amongst party members.

So, as once again the Conservatives are thrown into the middle of controversy we should yet again question whether their government truly does represent us?

Freya Hillyer

(Image courtesy of BBC News)

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