Monday 15 September 2014

Legends in their own lunchtime

I've started doing a spot of blogging at the Telegraph. Today, it's about a school banning packed lunches...

A new academic year at Milefield Primary School in Grimethorpe, South Yorkshire, gave authorities a fresh opportunity to override the will of parents in the name of heath. As reported in the Telegraph, a ban on packed lunches has so far led to six children being removed from the school by their parents, but the governing body remains unrepentant.

Justifying the new diktat, head teacher Paula Murray applied the newspeak of the public sector, saying that she was "taking a holistic approach to school meals". On the basis that what is not compulsory must be banned, she noted that there is "no requirement for the school to provide an area for children to consume packed lunches" and that the new policy would (in so many words) be based on the pretence that such facilities do not exist. Plenty of seats will be available for those who are prepared to eat school dinners, but they miraculously vanish when a child wants to eat a sandwich.


Do read the whole thing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice article, but pity about the typo in the first line:

"to override the will of parents in the name of heath."

Curmudgeon said...

Could be a deliberate mistake ;-)

David Moss said...

Douglas Jay
The Socialist Case
1937

"Housewives as a whole cannot be trusted to buy all the right things, where nutrition and health are concerned. This is really no more than an extension of the principle according to which the housewife herself would not trust a child of four to select the week’s purchases. For in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves".