Argyll & Bute Council have banned nine year old Martha Payne from taking pictures of her school dinners and posting them on her blog. Without the photographs, the blog is pretty meaningless, so she's closed it.

rlStoryrl

Well done to those responsible, who also don't have the balls to speak to the press about their decision. One big fat own-goal Argyll & Bute, I hope you're proud.

Just listend to this story on the news whilst driving home.Very petty by the council and fair play to the girl doing the blog as the meal you can actually see looks bloody revolting...2 croutons,a bit of cucumber and a very dodgey looking burger with a ice lolly?.

The food that she photographed and wrote about looks, frankly, revolting.

Makes my remembered school dinners of such things as finnan haddie with mash sound absolutely brilliant by comparison. And they were freshly made, on the premises.

It's a massive own goal by the council, though.

We used to have green,red and chocolate custard......bloody lovely.

I don't remember custard – semolina, sago, rice pudding: and all with a dollop of strawberry jam in the middle. Whcih for some unexplained reason, you weren't supposed to twirl into patterns.

rlInteresting and considered blog on the subjectrl.

I would hope not because the teacher was a fooking idiot. The salts lost through sweating are rather more complex than iodised sodium chloride, too much of which can actually cause more problems than it could cure.

It was the 70s. Well done, we know the harms of salt. That was the point of the comment.

So council workers should have to put up with headlines like "Time to sack the dinnerlady"?

Any worker should be able to go about their job without the fear of ridicule and persecution when a very narrow view of the facts is reported.

Mind it was a but heavy handed from A&B but they do have a duty to protect their employees.

That wasn't the blog that did that.



And they should also not have to face stupid stories that blame them for something that is not beyond their control – the menus etc. So the main problem is stupid, OTT headlines and 'reports'.



Some of the rhetoric has been utterly ridiculous, but who are the council protecting their employees from? Themselves? If the staff are directly employed, then the only people that could discipline them in any way would be the council itself.

As only a slight aside, what happened to there being no rafts of choices, and children eating what they were given (which happened to be freshly cooked on the premises)?

Do parents these days ask the little mites what they want on the menu each night – and then do what the aforementioned mites tell them?

Nope, but it did cause it, easy way to stop it is prevent the taking of the photographs, their school, their rules.



They have plenty of choices, I've witnessed first hand an A&B lunch service and the blog was in no way a reflection on what they do.



Sadly, yes they do. And more fool the parents that pander to them.

Who'd have thought it - members of a local authority, those bastions of public service, acting like that?

Look at the photo that's ridicule enough. At the end of the day, people in government and local aithorities are responsible for making decisions that allow that to be served up. They should ALL be ridiculed and hounded out of office. It's disgusting and those same people will be wasting money on nonsense like awarding schools (probably including that one! a "healthy eating award" and also hectoring the public about their poor eating habits that costs the NHS billions....

What all these idiots lack is an ounce of decency and common-sense.

Quote: Big Graeme "... They have plenty of choices, I've witnessed first hand an A&B lunch service and the blog was in no way a reflection on what they do.'" I was meaning more the question of when was it decided that children should have a vast range of choices. We didn't. And it is hardly a universal. www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-sch ... tries-arou karenlebillon.com/2012/05/04/lee ... f-annonay/ idlewords.com/2003/03/french_wee ... unches.htm grist.org/article/food-2010-10-1 ... as.twitter www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... d=tweetbut Vast amounts of choice is not necessarily a good thing. I suspect that the entire marketisation of everything in the UK, and the idea of pupils as 'customers', has meant that councils now believe that they have to offer loads of different food – and certainly what the blog did show was hardly what you'd call appetising, never mind particularly healthy.

Quote: Big Graeme "... They have plenty of choices, I've witnessed first hand an A&B lunch service and the blog was in no way a reflection on what they do.'" I was meaning more the question of when was it decided that children should have a vast range of choices. We didn't. And it is hardly a universal. www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-sch ... tries-arou karenlebillon.com/2012/05/04/lee ... f-annonay/ idlewords.com/2003/03/french_wee ... unches.htm grist.org/article/food-2010-10-1 ... as.twitter www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... d=tweetbut Vast amounts of choice is not necessarily a good thing. I suspect that the entire marketisation of everything in the UK, and the idea of pupils as 'customers', has meant that councils now believe that they have to offer loads of different food – and certainly what the blog did show was hardly what you'd call appetising, never mind particularly healthy.