Making a meal of things...
Recently, the venerable if not oafishly irritating Jamie Oliver (by the way: watch the video clip, it’s quite amusing) has set out to revitalize school dinners by applying his curiously and nauseously boundless enthusiasm to the problem.
Personally, I think the guy has bitten off more than he can chew (sorry!) and if he's any hope of affecting real change, this recent undertaking will either be his greatest success or a career-ending event.
He's a new dad, so with all of that floating around his head, he probably thinks he's the Dr. Doolittle of children.
While in reality, children beyond the age of three are not quite the bundle of fun they were, and are more like a series of car accidents, burglaries and verbal & physical assaults, all rolled into one .. spread liberally over a period of eighteen or so years.
Anyway, enough of my cynical despondency towards kids, this really isn't the problem that's bothering me.
At the same time, it emerged that the typical cost of a school meal was between £0.35p - £0.45p
So the tax payer might either be thinking someone is doing a really good job of keeping the costs down, or someone is feeding the kids a load of discoloured shit.
Add to this one other morsel (I really am sorry!) of knowledge: the typical cost of a meal for prisoners is four times that which is spent on school kids.
Now, factoring in your average inmate, being somewhat larger than your average school kid, and the fact that the prison service probably doesn't have the same bulk purchasing power as the people behind the provision of school dinners, this still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth (that's the last one, honest!)
And I'm not alone on this, in the last couple of weeks, over one hundred ministers have signed a commons motion -- which is basically a petition -- to have something done about this and to get the situation rectified.
So I'm guessing old Jamie is enjoying all of the positive publicity recently. And I'm sure that him being a new dad won't harm matters, either.
Which ever ay you look at this, this is definitely food for thought...
(OK, so I lied! What you going to do, send me to prison?)
posted by Wayne Smallman at Monday, March 14, 2005
15 Comments:
"the typical cost of a meal for prisoners is four times that which is spent on school kids."
The prisoners are fed at least 3-4 times a day. On the other hand, kids at school get the lunch only (I think?). If you factor that, then I think the "four times" is acceptable.
There's clearly more to it than that, or there wouldn't have been the parliamentary motion commotion there has been...
Well, dont trust the politicians. They will make a mountain out of a molehill. This is a perfect opportunity for them to a) show they love/care about kids, b) they are tough on criminals/crime.
But perhaps there is something in that. But I remain skeptical :-).
Now who's being cynical!
;-)
yesterday I heard a v gruesome tale. Apparently there's a very deprived part of Solihull where kids are eating this frozen pizza shit for lunch at school, then coming home and getting a bag of crisps and a chocolate bar for dinner.
As you'd expect. none of this is doing anything for their digestive systems and they all suffer really badly with constipation.... to the extent that they've now begun to vomit up faeces because their bodies are too weak for them to excrete it in the usual way. I am massively disturbed by this. How on earth can this be happening?? Yet again I feel ashamed to be British.
That's bad.
Proper diet for kids is so essential.
The kid next door is this skinny little half boy half wit thing.
All he eats is junk and frozen mush.
Most parents don't realize that the brain is affected by poor diet as much as the body...
it's just pitiful. When the government announced that parents were going to be offered parenting skills classes I thought it was ridiculous... now i think it should be compulsory :(
As a working parent it's tricky sometimes, juggling what the kids want with time and money.
We give our kids sandwiches for school lunch whether they like it or not (because we know from experience they'll spend their lunch money on fatty/sugary/processed crap), but also because we try to have a home cooked meal together at home in the evening. The benefits of a proper meal together in the evening are proper food, spending time together as a family, and learning social skills and manners, oh and we get to find out what the kids are up to and interested in.
Some parents don't do that because they can't/won't 'make' time to do it and/or because it's easier sitting the kids down in front of the telly with processed crap.
It's not just lack of good food that harms kids, it's lack of good parenting too.
Oh, and I'm pretty horrified by that Solihull story. Do you have a link to it, I couldn't find it on a web search.
oh, I don't I'm afraid - one of my friends is a journalist and dug it up from somewhere. Sorry!
Having no less than 10 nephews and nieces, ranging from 3 to 20 in age, I know kids.
Trust me, I know kids.
If anyone asks me the best way to get a kid to do as they're told, the answer is quite simple.
And the fun thing is, it's an insidious ploy that works with greater effect as they get older.
And the solution? Shame the little bleeders into doing as they're told.
One example that springs to mind was with one of my elder nephews, which took place in a supermarket, of all places.
He was being particularly defiant and belligerent. His mother (my eldest sister) looks to me to instill discipline.
Sister: "Tell him, Wayne!"
My tactic went something like this:
I gently took him by his arm and softly whispered into his ear: "See that chest freezer over there?"
Said irksome nephew: "Yeah!"
He answers petulantly.
Said irksome nephew: "You're not puttin' me in it!"
Me: "Oh no! If you don't buck your ideas up, I'm going to sit on top of it, take you across my lap and smack your arse for you."
Said irksome nephew: "Ye not!"
He squeaks as he shrugs off my grip of his arm.
I grab him firmly once more and smile menacingly.
Me: "Watch me."
Given that he was about fourteen years old at the time, the prospect of public humiliation was much more than he could bare.
A word of warning: this tactic is failure with children under the age of five.
They have no perception of shame or humiliation...
hahaha
try it and you'll have the political correctness police after you!
I can see it now:
[Man assaults child in supermarket]
[Blogging linked to increasing violence against children]
etc. etc....
(actually there is a headline like that last one on the BBC news website where several ahem research bodies are attributing blogging to a rise in child abuse!)
Ah well, I've touched on political correctness before, should you be interested...
Read your article on Political Correctness - good stuff (or scary stuff more like).
Read this article about "gender based pricing", and thank your lucky stars that you're a man!
That's both funny and sad.
I can feel the bloke inside of me rising up to belch out a guffaw of derision .. but I will resist.
When you think about it, the whole thing is a shambles.
My last ex-girlfriend got charged £30 for a trim .. a fuckin' trim, I ask you?!
Even worse, I didn't notice.
There she was, flouncing her neatly-trimmed brunette locks around and I didn't notice a bloody thing.
Oh, the regret...
Anyway, back on-topic: Jamie Oliver has been criticized for peppering (I make no apologies this time) his new aforementioned series with expletives.
Hi detractors believe his colouring of the program will prevent the inevitable DVD of the series making it into people's living rooms where it's likely to do the most good, so they say.
The prospect of actually putting my hand in my pocket and laying down good money for anything with the lisp-some mockney-boy in it is quite bewildering to me...
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