You're getting awful technical here to put her down.
"Last year my friends and I started a club, which the school let us run, called Charity Children. We raised money for Mary's Meals. In our first sale we raised £70 in three hours which is enough to feed 7 children school lunches for a WHOLE YEAR! A lot of kids go to school everyday just for the food. Each lunch costs 6p to make."
So she started a club to raise money for a charity well before she even started blogging, and then funneled the publicity from the blog into raising a not-insignificant amount of money for the same charity.
I'm really not sure why you're so dismissive of this.
Read ixta....
where was I dismissive. I stated, she raised a significant amount of money, got some publicity out of it, everyone wins...read.
I know a lot of people working very hard to raise money for charity, she got lucky and gained a lot of praise for the amount she's raised when she put very little effort into it. All this attention is undeserved yet she gets the credit. Plus, from what I'm reading, a lot of it appears to be written by her father as there is terms she would have no knowledge of as a 9 year old, also we know the entire blog is under her father's control (for obvious reasons), all she does is take a few photos.
No doubt it makes for fascinating reading, but I just feel that its been blown way out of proportion to the extent that working individuals had their jobs and privacy put at risk as the press and netizens ravaged over the local authorities, cooks, council, teachers.
I think that post just emphasizes the dismissive tone I mentioned, and it's not like you should or do have any problem admitting that you are, considering the "it's just luck comment". And yes the dad is very involved in the blog (obvious reasons, as stated), but I honestly don't think he is sitting there using her perspective to fake the entire narration, although there's no real way to prove that. However, I don't recall seeing any words I wouldn't have known at 9. Even if he does edit for her, it still wouldn't invalidate the story as an interest piece for me, I'll just say A++ dad for proactive parenting, and I wish more dads were like him.
What do people have to do to "deserve" attention? Sure, luck plays a big role, but it always has in history. Do you even want me to start listing how many major scientific discoveries were due to accidents and luck? Being in the right place at the right time does not make someone undeserving of respect.
Luck or not, the objective fact of the matter is that she (and her father) DID attract this much attention, and used it to do a little good in the world. Doesn't that deserve a little credit?
You are reading the same thing I am, right? How was it sensationalist at all?
The article, if you can even call 5 sentences an article, literally is as follows:
SCHOOL meals critic Martha Payne showed she was hot stuff in the kitchen with chef Nick Nairn yesterday. Martha, nine, cooked up a storm with the celebrity chef during a think-tank on school meals at his Lake of Menteith Cook School. Nick decided to hold the summit, involving council and government officials, after seeing the pictures Martha posted of the food at Lochgilphead Primary in Argyll. She has become an internet sensation with more than two million views of her postings, including sorry looking pieces of pizza and potato croquettes. Yesterday, she and Nick prepared a dish together costing £1.05 – half the price of a school meal – and made up of healthy, fresh ingredients.
Chef teaches 9 yr old how to cook a healthy meal for half the price of the school meal, after seeing the pictures of said school meals. Pictures being these following.
I'm not sure what counts as "sensationalist" for you, but this isn't it.
The language is loaded. You can describe the food by sensory or grounded terminology, but saying things look "sorry" (unless it's a person literally apologizing) is purely editorial journalism.
It's a decent light article sprinkled with a little opinion, but I would hope it would do more to elucidate how simple the solution is rather than to exaggerate how great the problem is. To be honest I've eaten dozens of slices of pizza like that in high school and I live in New York. I wish I didn't, but it didn't really fuck my life up in any measurable way.
The language is loaded. You can describe the food by sensory or grounded terminology, but saying things look "sorry" (unless it's a person literally apologizing) is purely editorial journalism.
It's a decent light article sprinkled with a little opinion, but I would hope it would do more to elucidate how simple the solution is rather than to exaggerate how great the problem is. To be honest I've eaten dozens of slices of pizza like that in high school and I live in New York. I wish I didn't, but it didn't really fuck my life up in any measurable way.
Thank you.
You are reading the same thing I am, right? How was it sensationalist at all?
The article, if you can even call 5 sentences an article, literally is as follows:
SCHOOL meals critic Martha Payne showed she was hot stuff in the kitchen with chef Nick Nairn yesterday. Martha, nine, cooked up a storm with the celebrity chef during a think-tank on school meals at his Lake of Menteith Cook School. Nick decided to hold the summit, involving council and government officials, after seeing the pictures Martha posted of the food at Lochgilphead Primary in Argyll. She has become an internet sensation with more than two million views of her postings, including sorry looking pieces of pizza and potato croquettes. Yesterday, she and Nick prepared a dish together costing £1.05 – half the price of a school meal – and made up of healthy, fresh ingredients.
Chef teaches 9 yr old how to cook a healthy meal for half the price of the school meal, after seeing the pictures of said school meals. Pictures being these following.
I'm not sure what counts as "sensationalist" for you, but this isn't it.
Are you not even reading what you are writing yourself?
Can you honestly look at those pictures and tell me that "sorry-looking" is not a justified description of the meal? The point is that there could be great improvement at very little cost. The chef is sitting there trying to tell them there's a simple solution, and I'm not seeing a single word that's "exaggerating how great the problem is." I can think of a lot worse things to say if I were a journalist looking at that sorry little scattering of corn. Let's start with pathetically inadequate and miserably meager. Or how about, distressingly deplorable. I like the alliteration, so let's try this one:
That puny portion is poignantly piteous
Saying it's sorry looking is the ONLY criticism in that article, and that's mild. There's no attack at all, no bitter vitriol directed towards the school or the council, just a few sentences about a chef who invited members of the gov't and council to come see how they could do better meals for less money.
(Oh yes, the horror!)
Instead of taking this advice to heart, they flip out about the 'attack' and DID ban the girl from taking pictures. That's not an overreaction?
Here's sensationalism for you. That council was stupid. Instead of taking this as constructive criticism, they turned to censorship to avoid embarrassment. What they SHOULD have done is to parade this in front of the media themselves and ridden the wave of the publicity. They could have laid out the school's meal budget for all to see, said, look, here's where the money goes, here's what the required servings are as laid out by the government, etc. Then, while everyone is paying attention and actually caring for once, they could have run a campaign to raise taxes a few cents, with the increase to go directly to the school's meal system throughout the entire area, and asked that chef to help revamp the menu with some of his cheaper-but-healthier options. They could have turned themselves into a flagship for school nutrition.
Or maybe you could say that's a bit too optimistic, but it's definitely well within their power to have said, "we follow all national nutrition guidelines, but the budget is limited" and then still at least TRIED to use the popular movement to get people to contribute a bit more money to school meals or something.
Or maybe this is mindless drivel too, hmm?
Point being, they had an entire range of options, and their choice was to shut down a creative 9 yr old who started this blog as a school approved project.
I'm glad you're passionate about the subject matter. Really, I am. You seem to have read the articles thoroughly. I'm only pointing out the one italicized paragraph that you posted (I haven't read the blog nor the initial article about photography being banned thoroughly). Calling the food "sorry looking" is both too vague and non-descriptive for an opinion/editorial and too loaded for an article.
It is direct criticism of the food - but rather than explain how the food "looks sorry" by either sensory-given details or an official quotation from the blog that's tracking it, the writer stuck with that line. And the editor let it go - which is ok when you're doing a quick follow up on a website. It's NOT ok if it goes into large circulation print.
Disagree that "sorry-looking" is loaded. Difference of opinion I guess, in my mind, that's about the mildest thing it'd be possible to say about it. And it's not like this was a major article here. Like I said, it was literally those 5 lines, and a couple pictures of the girl and the chef cooking. They weren't exactly doing a 10 page write up here. Asking for sensory details about how the school gave the girl only one croquette and 28 little kernels of corn in order to justify the term "sorry looking" is kind of silly imo.
Why is it bad for a journalist/newspaper to express an opinion anyway? News media is FULL of opinions, it practically drives the entire industry. There's really no such thing as truly objective reporting these days (or ever probably), and if they tried to do it, they'd all go bankrupt. And there's no reason they shouldn't have an opinion. Sure we want a good presentation of the facts still, but news people have as much right to free speech as anyone else.
I don't see anything wrong with putting a direct criticism of the food into print at all. Would you object to a restaurant critic publishing a bad review? This newspaper just called it like it is, why try to censor that too? or can you tell me, with 100% honesty, that you don't think the pizza meal looked rather sorry?
Heck, if the council objects to the meal being called sorry looking, then they should sue the paper for libel and misrepresentation instead of shutting down a kid's blog.
Ive read the blog entirely and I have to say theres very little criticisms, it seems the press has jumped the gun in assuming its horrid. So what a kid gets given 1 potato croquette? That only happened in the first post, yet all the pictures and quotes by the media is of that 1 potato croquette...it doesn't look at any of the more recent pictures nor does it credit the council for improving food quality as the blog progressed.
I'm glad you're passionate about the subject matter. Really, I am. You seem to have read the articles thoroughly. I'm only pointing out the one italicized paragraph that you posted (I haven't read the blog nor the initial article about photography being banned thoroughly). Calling the food "sorry looking" is both too vague and non-descriptive for an opinion/editorial and too loaded for an article.
It is direct criticism of the food - but rather than explain how the food "looks sorry" by either sensory-given details or an official quotation from the blog that's tracking it, the writer stuck with that line. And the editor let it go - which is ok when you're doing a quick follow up on a website. It's NOT ok if it goes into large circulation print.
And yes it was printed. But the daily record is not a well respected newspaper. It is pretty much the scottish version of the late news of the world, a trashy gossip newspaper with a lot of patriotic propaganda.
Disagree that "sorry-looking" is loaded. Difference of opinion I guess, in my mind, that's about the mildest thing it'd be possible to say about it. And it's not like this was a major article here. Like I said, it was literally those 5 lines, and a couple pictures of the girl and the chef cooking. They weren't exactly doing a 10 page write up here. Asking for sensory details about how the school gave the girl only one croquette and 28 little kernels of corn in order to justify the term "sorry looking" is kind of silly imo.
Why is it bad for a journalist/newspaper to express an opinion anyway? News media is FULL of opinions, it practically drives the entire industry. There's really no such thing as truly objective reporting these days (or ever probably), and if they tried to do it, they'd all go bankrupt. And there's no reason they shouldn't have an opinion. Sure we want a good presentation of the facts still, but news people have as much right to free speech as anyone else.
I don't see anything wrong with putting a direct criticism of the food into print at all. Would you object to a restaurant critic publishing a bad review? This newspaper just called it like it is, why try to censor that too? or can you tell me, with 100% honesty, that you don't think the pizza meal looked rather sorry?
Heck, if the council objects to the meal being called sorry looking, then they should sue the paper for libel and misrepresentation instead of shutting down a kid's blog.
A restaurant critic publishing a bad review is fine, as it is their job to critique restaurants and also for restaurants to be judged on the product they provide.
Would you then logically say that all school meals need to be reviewed like a restaurant? Thats just retarded, you can't subject it under the same pretenses. A school lunch is a school lunch, don't expect michelin stars if you're not willing to pay for them. Overhead costs and other financial restrictions means that it is most likely the best stuff they can churn out, and I trust its all be inspected so that it meets required intake.
Plus the kid shouldnt have brought a camera/phone to school anyways, she's only in year 4...my sister is in year 5 and her school does not permit such things like bringing in electronic equipment unless it is a special occasion (then again her school still havent got a kitchen serving food yet and has to bring packed lunch).
Hrm, Lews, I think you missed something. The blog was part of a school project, she had school approval to bring her camera and review her meals. It wasn't the school that made her stop either, it was the council that passed down that order.
As for this: "it doesn't look at any of the more recent pictures nor does it credit the council for improving food quality as the blog progressed. "
This is BS Lews. Of COURSE it doesn't look that bad anymore. You said that you read the blog, and as you just pointed out, they started making some changes so that the kids were getting more. So yes, the pictures look better now, that's because the kids are finally getting the meal they were supposed to be getting all along. The entire point was that they were not getting the meals that looked better until the blog brought the bad meals into the limelight. I think I mentioned this before as something I really enjoyed, seeing a progression in the quality/quantity of the meals as more and more notice was taken. But the kids were SUPPOSED to be getting as much fruit and veggies as they wanted all along. They weren't getting it, and it's obvious that it was a policy for them to not get it, due to the fact that the lunch ladies had to check with the authorities before giving the kid fruit even after there was an official announcement saying they could, and should have been all along.
You don't get credit for doing things the way you're supposed to do them.
The kids only nine. They only have to restrain their lust for power and dominance a bit longer and the brain washing will take. I'm afraid they have lost this one due to their over reach. Now the kid knows the grown ups are a bunch of idiots and the crap they're teaching isn't much better. I hope in the future it goes much more smoothly.
Oh thank goodness it isn't just me then. I do find it funny that the smilie that shows in Lews quote is this one: >:p so it looks like he's spewing the letters down the page XD
Hrm, Lews, I think you missed something. The blog was part of a school project, she had school approval to bring her camera and review her meals. It wasn't the school that made her stop either, it was the council that passed down that order.
As for this: "it doesn't look at any of the more recent pictures nor does it credit the council for improving food quality as the blog progressed. "
This is BS Lews. Of COURSE it doesn't look that bad anymore. You said that you read the blog, and as you just pointed out, they started making some changes so that the kids were getting more. So yes, the pictures look better now, that's because the kids are finally getting the meal they were supposed to be getting all along. The entire point was that they were not getting the meals that looked better until the blog brought the bad meals into the limelight. I think I mentioned this before as something I really enjoyed, seeing a progression in the quality/quantity of the meals as more and more notice was taken. But the kids were SUPPOSED to be getting as much fruit and veggies as they wanted all along. They weren't getting it, and it's obvious that it was a policy for them to not get it, due to the fact that the lunch ladies had to check with the authorities before giving the kid fruit even after there was an official announcement saying they could, and should have been all along.
You don't get credit for doing things the way you're supposed to do them.
I dont see anywhere that says it was a school project. Point me in the right direction ixta....cos she started this because her father was 'concerned' with why she was always hungry.....
And there is more official routes to take than parade around the internet hoping to go viral, its people fooled by all this controversy who take to watching reality TV and its sob story complexes...sad that intelligent individuals think this is the correct manner to get your points across.
She should have sent the school and council letters, when my sister had issues with the school not having a hot kitchen to cook food, we took it up with the council and the local MP who replied and subsequently, 6 months later they're now building a kitchen in her school (not operational yet....still...)
I think we should focus more on this awesome show instead of global crisis's...crisises....crisis'.... crisi? god damn now the word just doesn't look right -.-
Disagree that "sorry-looking" is loaded. Difference of opinion I guess, in my mind, that's about the mildest thing it'd be possible to say about it. And it's not like this was a major article here. Like I said, it was literally those 5 lines, and a couple pictures of the girl and the chef cooking. They weren't exactly doing a 10 page write up here. Asking for sensory details about how the school gave the girl only one croquette and 28 little kernels of corn in order to justify the term "sorry looking" is kind of silly imo.
Can you delete the quote lews? Might help. I'll try to find where it talked about it being a school project. It was mentioned in several articles I read, but I didn't save all the links.
Also, starting a blog is not "parading around the internet." You can't just make yourself go viral, it's something that happens because you actually catch people's attention and interest for one reason or another. Not always good reasons, granted, but in this case, it really only went viral when the council decided to ban her, so they brought their problems down on themselves.
Writing letters and that kind of stuff is great, sure, but it doesn't always get a great response, or sometimes, any response at all. Government people aren't always the responsible, efficient, beneficent people we'd like them to be, and corruption is not exactly an unknown. My old high school had a problem with this recently actually. The principle of the school got drunk one night, and apparently had taken a bunch of antidepressants too, and admitted to a school board member who was a friend of his that he had been embezzling money from the school. He had stolen something like $45,000 over the past few years. And of course, the school had been so short of funds, that they kept jacking up the taxes, along with the price of school meals, what you pay for athletics, etc.
How much do you think he cared about everyone else's concerns about the school? it's not like he didn't hear them.
I'm not saying this council was like that, since it's a more extreme case, but I did find things in that blog that I believe were evidence of deception, and that's not exactly reassuring. We also don't know if there may or may not have been complaints aired in a more private manner. Considering this council's penchant for censorship, I doubt they'd admit if this or other families had brought up concerns before.
Also though, I don't believe there's anything wrong with taking problems straight to the public sphere for discussion. Why is this such a bad way to get a point across? If the council really had been doing everything 100% correctly, then why should they be afraid of public opinion? It certainly was the more effective way to cause changes to happen; within the span of a couple weeks, there's noticeable improvement.
Can you delete the quote lews? Might help. I'll try to find where it talked about it being a school project. It was mentioned in several articles I read, but I didn't save all the links.
Also, starting a blog is not "parading around the internet." You can't just make yourself go viral, it's something that happens because you actually catch people's attention and interest for one reason or another. Not always good reasons, granted, but in this case, it really only went viral when the council decided to ban her, so they brought their problems down on themselves.
Writing letters and that kind of stuff is great, sure, but it doesn't always get a great response, or sometimes, any response at all. Government people aren't always the responsible, efficient, beneficent people we'd like them to be, and corruption is not exactly an unknown. My old high school had a problem with this recently actually. The principle of the school got drunk one night, and apparently had taken a bunch of antidepressants too, and admitted to a school board member who was a friend of his that he had been embezzling money from the school. He had stolen something like $45,000 over the past few years. And of course, the school had been so short of funds, that they kept jacking up the taxes, along with the price of school meals, what you pay for athletics, etc.
How much do you think he cared about everyone else's concerns about the school? it's not like he didn't hear them.
I'm not saying this council was like that, since it's a more extreme case, but I did find things in that blog that I believe were evidence of deception, and that's not exactly reassuring. We also don't know if there may or may not have been complaints aired in a more private manner. Considering this council's penchant for censorship, I doubt they'd admit if this or other families had brought up concerns before.
Also though, I don't believe there's anything wrong with taking problems straight to the public sphere for discussion. Why is this such a bad way to get a point across? If the council really had been doing everything 100% correctly, then why should they be afraid of public opinion? It certainly was the more effective way to cause changes to happen; within the span of a couple weeks, there's noticeable improvement.
Dont get me wrong, I dislike the local council as much as the next person. However, what displeased me was what appeared like an overly pushy father who is exploiting his daughter for a bit of controversy. I doubt they went about the proper manner because they would have written about any preceding letters/correspondence to the council which they didn't.
There is an official means to every end, if that doesn't work, look for other methods, this is why authoritative systems exist, if you see a bank robber, you don't utilize civilian vigilantism, you call the police, what you do publicly may make situations worse. I am more concerned for the school staff than I am at the kid, that's been my underlying point. Due to the consequences of her actions, the staff at her school and also nearby schools within the district would have a lot of questions to answer and also the media hype around this has caused every other schoolchildren and parent in the UK to be more protective of what food is being served at their schools, this in turn creates situations which may put kids at risk as more kids find reasons and excuses to bring electronic devices to school for their 'project'.
I don't see any problem with kids having cameras at school. If the governments want to put videos on every corner and a microphone in every house let's start with their offices and their houses.
Comments
where was I dismissive. I stated, she raised a significant amount of money, got some publicity out of it, everyone wins...read.
I know a lot of people working very hard to raise money for charity, she got lucky and gained a lot of praise for the amount she's raised when she put very little effort into it. All this attention is undeserved yet she gets the credit. Plus, from what I'm reading, a lot of it appears to be written by her father as there is terms she would have no knowledge of as a 9 year old, also we know the entire blog is under her father's control (for obvious reasons), all she does is take a few photos.
No doubt it makes for fascinating reading, but I just feel that its been blown way out of proportion to the extent that working individuals had their jobs and privacy put at risk as the press and netizens ravaged over the local authorities, cooks, council, teachers.
What do people have to do to "deserve" attention? Sure, luck plays a big role, but it always has in history. Do you even want me to start listing how many major scientific discoveries were due to accidents and luck? Being in the right place at the right time does not make someone undeserving of respect.
Luck or not, the objective fact of the matter is that she (and her father) DID attract this much attention, and used it to do a little good in the world. Doesn't that deserve a little credit?
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2012/06/15/read-the-martha-payne-article-that-made-council-bosses-overreact-and-ban-her-blog-photos-86908-23896447/
Yes, just awful, I can see why adult women would break down in tears after seeing this. We'd all be trembling in our boots for sure.
Forgive the sarcasm, but your choice of words was far more sensationalist than that article.
and how was their article not sensationalist...even the title itself jumps to conclusions...
'council bosses overreact', uh its a newspaper, dont pass judgement.
The article, if you can even call 5 sentences an article, literally is as follows:
SCHOOL meals critic Martha Payne showed she was hot stuff in the kitchen with chef Nick Nairn yesterday. Martha, nine, cooked up a storm with the celebrity chef during a think-tank on school meals at his Lake of Menteith Cook School. Nick decided to hold the summit, involving council and government officials, after seeing the pictures Martha posted of the food at Lochgilphead Primary in Argyll. She has become an internet sensation with more than two million views of her postings, including sorry looking pieces of pizza and potato croquettes. Yesterday, she and Nick prepared a dish together costing £1.05 – half the price of a school meal – and made up of healthy, fresh ingredients.
Chef teaches 9 yr old how to cook a healthy meal for half the price of the school meal, after seeing the pictures of said school meals. Pictures being these following.
I'm not sure what counts as "sensationalist" for you, but this isn't it.
It's a decent light article sprinkled with a little opinion, but I would hope it would do more to elucidate how simple the solution is rather than to exaggerate how great the problem is. To be honest I've eaten dozens of slices of pizza like that in high school and I live in New York. I wish I didn't, but it didn't really fuck my life up in any measurable way.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2012/06/15/read-the-martha-payne-article-that-made-council-bosses-overreact-and-ban-her-blog-photos-86908-23896447/
If it gets into print burn the building down. And then let me write up an article about that "overreaction."
That puny portion is poignantly piteous
Saying it's sorry looking is the ONLY criticism in that article, and that's mild. There's no attack at all, no bitter vitriol directed towards the school or the council, just a few sentences about a chef who invited members of the gov't and council to come see how they could do better meals for less money.
(Oh yes, the horror!)
Instead of taking this advice to heart, they flip out about the 'attack' and DID ban the girl from taking pictures. That's not an overreaction?
Here's sensationalism for you. That council was stupid. Instead of taking this as constructive criticism, they turned to censorship to avoid embarrassment. What they SHOULD have done is to parade this in front of the media themselves and ridden the wave of the publicity. They could have laid out the school's meal budget for all to see, said, look, here's where the money goes, here's what the required servings are as laid out by the government, etc. Then, while everyone is paying attention and actually caring for once, they could have run a campaign to raise taxes a few cents, with the increase to go directly to the school's meal system throughout the entire area, and asked that chef to help revamp the menu with some of his cheaper-but-healthier options. They could have turned themselves into a flagship for school nutrition.
Or maybe you could say that's a bit too optimistic, but it's definitely well within their power to have said, "we follow all national nutrition guidelines, but the budget is limited" and then still at least TRIED to use the popular movement to get people to contribute a bit more money to school meals or something.
Or maybe this is mindless drivel too, hmm?
Point being, they had an entire range of options, and their choice was to shut down a creative 9 yr old who started this blog as a school approved project.
It is direct criticism of the food - but rather than explain how the food "looks sorry" by either sensory-given details or an official quotation from the blog that's tracking it, the writer stuck with that line. And the editor let it go - which is ok when you're doing a quick follow up on a website. It's NOT ok if it goes into large circulation print.
Disagree that "sorry-looking" is loaded. Difference of opinion I guess, in my mind, that's about the mildest thing it'd be possible to say about it. And it's not like this was a major article here. Like I said, it was literally those 5 lines, and a couple pictures of the girl and the chef cooking. They weren't exactly doing a 10 page write up here. Asking for sensory details about how the school gave the girl only one croquette and 28 little kernels of corn in order to justify the term "sorry looking" is kind of silly imo.
Why is it bad for a journalist/newspaper to express an opinion anyway? News media is FULL of opinions, it practically drives the entire industry. There's really no such thing as truly objective reporting these days (or ever probably), and if they tried to do it, they'd all go bankrupt. And there's no reason they shouldn't have an opinion. Sure we want a good presentation of the facts still, but news people have as much right to free speech as anyone else.
I don't see anything wrong with putting a direct criticism of the food into print at all. Would you object to a restaurant critic publishing a bad review? This newspaper just called it like it is, why try to censor that too? or can you tell me, with 100% honesty, that you don't think the pizza meal looked rather sorry?
Heck, if the council objects to the meal being called sorry looking, then they should sue the paper for libel and misrepresentation instead of shutting down a kid's blog.
Would you then logically say that all school meals need to be reviewed like a restaurant? Thats just retarded, you can't subject it under the same pretenses. A school lunch is a school lunch, don't expect michelin stars if you're not willing to pay for them. Overhead costs and other financial restrictions means that it is most likely the best stuff they can churn out, and I trust its all be inspected so that it meets required intake.
Plus the kid shouldnt have brought a camera/phone to school anyways, she's only in year 4...my sister is in year 5 and her school does not permit such things like bringing in electronic equipment unless it is a special occasion (then again her school still havent got a kitchen serving food yet and has to bring packed lunch).
As for this: "it doesn't look at any of the more recent pictures nor does it credit the council for improving food quality as the blog progressed. "
This is BS Lews. Of COURSE it doesn't look that bad anymore. You said that you read the blog, and as you just pointed out, they started making some changes so that the kids were getting more. So yes, the pictures look better now, that's because the kids are finally getting the meal they were supposed to be getting all along. The entire point was that they were not getting the meals that looked better until the blog brought the bad meals into the limelight. I think I mentioned this before as something I really enjoyed, seeing a progression in the quality/quantity of the meals as more and more notice was taken. But the kids were SUPPOSED to be getting as much fruit and veggies as they wanted all along. They weren't getting it, and it's obvious that it was a policy for them to not get it, due to the fact that the lunch ladies had to check with the authorities before giving the kid fruit even after there was an official announcement saying they could, and should have been all along.
You don't get credit for doing things the way you're supposed to do them.
And there is more official routes to take than parade around the internet hoping to go viral, its people fooled by all this controversy who take to watching reality TV and its sob story complexes...sad that intelligent individuals think this is the correct manner to get your points across.
She should have sent the school and council letters, when my sister had issues with the school not having a hot kitchen to cook food, we took it up with the council and the local MP who replied and subsequently, 6 months later they're now building a kitchen in her school (not operational yet....still...)
lol anyone seen the stupid feminists at euro 2012?
Femen? (sounds so close to semen....oh well)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/the-best-of-femen-nsfw
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/12416311/content/93216486-topless-femen-protests-at-swedish-fan-zone
Though most of these chicks are goddamn hawt.
That is what was said lol
I'll try to find where it talked about it being a school project. It was mentioned in several articles I read, but I didn't save all the links.
Also, starting a blog is not "parading around the internet." You can't just make yourself go viral, it's something that happens because you actually catch people's attention and interest for one reason or another. Not always good reasons, granted, but in this case, it really only went viral when the council decided to ban her, so they brought their problems down on themselves.
Writing letters and that kind of stuff is great, sure, but it doesn't always get a great response, or sometimes, any response at all. Government people aren't always the responsible, efficient, beneficent people we'd like them to be, and corruption is not exactly an unknown. My old high school had a problem with this recently actually. The principle of the school got drunk one night, and apparently had taken a bunch of antidepressants too, and admitted to a school board member who was a friend of his that he had been embezzling money from the school. He had stolen something like $45,000 over the past few years. And of course, the school had been so short of funds, that they kept jacking up the taxes, along with the price of school meals, what you pay for athletics, etc.
How much do you think he cared about everyone else's concerns about the school? it's not like he didn't hear them.
I'm not saying this council was like that, since it's a more extreme case, but I did find things in that blog that I believe were evidence of deception, and that's not exactly reassuring. We also don't know if there may or may not have been complaints aired in a more private manner. Considering this council's penchant for censorship, I doubt they'd admit if this or other families had brought up concerns before.
Also though, I don't believe there's anything wrong with taking problems straight to the public sphere for discussion. Why is this such a bad way to get a point across? If the council really had been doing everything 100% correctly, then why should they be afraid of public opinion? It certainly was the more effective way to cause changes to happen; within the span of a couple weeks, there's noticeable improvement.
There is an official means to every end, if that doesn't work, look for other methods, this is why authoritative systems exist, if you see a bank robber, you don't utilize civilian vigilantism, you call the police, what you do publicly may make situations worse. I am more concerned for the school staff than I am at the kid, that's been my underlying point. Due to the consequences of her actions, the staff at her school and also nearby schools within the district would have a lot of questions to answer and also the media hype around this has caused every other schoolchildren and parent in the UK to be more protective of what food is being served at their schools, this in turn creates situations which may put kids at risk as more kids find reasons and excuses to bring electronic devices to school for their 'project'.