Ye cannae take pictures of yur dinner

[Rolfe]

What was supposed to be wrong with it? Nice kid, and most of what I read about the school meals was positive. I'd happily eat the stuff and I think Martha was too.

Rolfe.

 

[Duffy Moon]

One positive - her just giving page had raised £2,000 for starving children when she was told to stop, way short of the £7,000 target.

Thanks to the publicity, it's now at nearly £16,000.

 

[DragonLady]

I've now read through the blog and I'm stuck by how well she writes for a 9 year old and how broad her vocabulary is. The purpose of the blog was to improve her writing, seems like it has done its job.

Yes!

 

[The Don]

I agree - the school system should be ashamed of these meals. But they claim not to be. I say they should put that to the test and be open about them. If their criticism of veg's blog is that she doesn't show enough photos of school dinners to enable us to make a fair judgment of them, then the solution is obvious: they should upload photographs themselves.

I know. My experience of primary school dinners (lunches) was very different. I went to a tiny primary school in the North East of England in the 1970s. Somehow we had an Indian school cook so in addition to the tasty and nutritious soups, stews and pies (and accompanying stodgy puddings with lashings of custard) we'd also get delicious authentic curries.

Back then every school had their own kitchen (as opposed to today where I understand that food is often cooked centrally and reheated in the schools) and was in control of their own menu.

I thoroughly enjoyed primary school dinners, especially the curries

 

[Rolfe]

Mary's Meals. The choir I sing with often donates the proceeds of concerts to that charity. It's very appropriate - the charity provides school meals to children in very poor areas of Africa, who otherwise wouldn't get a square meal in the day. I've seen lots of their educational material.

Let's hope she raises tens of thousands. And I still don't see what's wrong with the food, or where she actually criticises it. Of course I haven't read the entire blog.

Rolfe.

 

[Aepervius]

I don't remember my school food looking that good.

You are lucky, I don't remember my meal at the work cantine yesterday (and the days before) looking that good, like, *ever*.

 

[DC]

my experiance from the swiss schools that also gave me food are very different, in one school we together with a preofesional cooked for us self, so we also learned how to cook, and one school was not comparable as it was a private luxury school with a staff of very good kooks. But in Belgium, the school i went to had similarly disgusting meals.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Ban withdrawn! Just announced on Radio 4.

Whether this is a good idea is yet to be established. What it will do for Scotland's international reputation if it becomes widely known that Scots children eat fruit and vegetables, well, I just don't know.

 

[Rolfe]

It's on BBC Scotland right now, and they have pointed out that most of Martha's ratings to her meals were quite high marks. She wasn't in the business of having a go at the food at all. She was writing a light-hearted blog to raise money for a school meals charity.

What actually happened was that the Daily Rectum published an article about it headlined "Time to sack the dinner ladies". They showed the front page of the paper on the TV, but I can't find it online. The DR is a shocker of a tabloid, with barely the most passing resemblance to the truth, and it seems they hitched a completely false story to the little girl's blog.

Nice to see that someone has injected some common sense into the proceedings.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I see the Rectum has an article about the current stushie up on its web site.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/2012/0...-taking-pictures-of-her-meals-86908-23896283/

Not a single word of acknowledgement about their own central role in the affair.

Rolfe.

 

[The Don]

Not a single word of acknowledgement about their own central role in the affair.

Rolfe.

I can't easily find the original article.

 

[commandlinegamer]

It's on BBC Scotland right now, and they have pointed out that most of Martha's ratings to her meals were quite high marks. She wasn't in the business of having a go at the food at all. She was writing a light-hearted blog to raise money for a school meals charity.

What actually happened was that the Daily Rectum published an article about it headlined "Time to sack the dinner ladies". They showed the front page of the paper on the TV, but I can't find it online. The DR is a shocker of a tabloid, with barely the most passing resemblance to the truth, and it seems they hitched a completely false story to the little girl's blog.

Nice to see that someone has injected some common sense into the proceedings.

Rolfe.

One of the council executives claimed school staff were in tears over the adverse coverage. If true I don't think Argyll & Bute could really stand back and do nothing, but their response was pretty ham-fisted.

 

[Skepticemea]

One of the council executives claimed school staff were in tears over the adverse coverage. If true I don't think Argyll & Bute could really stand back and do nothing, but their response was pretty ham-fisted.

So why not remonstrate with the paper involved? The blog has been misrepresented, poor wee kid.

 

[The Don]

Glad the ban has been withdrawn....

.....even more glad that fundraising has gone through the roof.

 

[Rolfe]

The coverage is constantly portraying the blog as being set up to expose poor school food. This seems to be entirely untrue. Jamie Oliver has some responsibility too, because he seems to have been saying things like "shocking", when the food isn't shocking at all. Some days are better than others, but the lowest rating BBC Scotland could find was a 4/10, and she gave the most recent meal 10/10.

She seems to have set the blog up for fun, and to raise some money for Mary's Meals. Which is a local Scottish charity set up to provide free school meals to children in third world countries. I've donated to it and raised money for it myself in the past. Thoroughly worthy cause.

It's had publicity previously, and I remember reading the blog some months ago. Everyone seems hell-bent on portraying Martha as some sort of crusading complainer, when she simply isn't. She just likes writing restaurant-style reviews of her school dinners. Then the Rectum decided to run it as a "shock, horror" anti-school-dinners piece, and the catering staff were understandably upset. Someone Has To Do Something, and again the action is taken on the assumption that the blog is criticising the food.

The food looks fine to me, and I don't see Martha saying it isn't.

Rolfe.

 

[jasonpatterson]

I'm completely baffled by this whole thing. There are a few meals there that look like a school lunch, but most of it is closer to what I'd be happy to buy in a restaurant. Heck, look at the pictures she posts that were sent to her of American lunches for comparison. Do Scottish kids really eat this well at school in general?

you have not seen the picture of the "cheese burger" it seems. would i serve such crap to kids, i would also not want photopgraphic evidence going around on the net.

I only went 4 or 5 pages in, but the only cheeseburger I found was not great looking, but far from crap. It just didn't have much cheese on it, from what I could see. There were plenty of lunches that were substantially more dodgy that have been sent to her from kids in other countries.

 

[Aepervius]

It's on BBC Scotland right now, and they have pointed out that most of Martha's ratings to her meals were quite high marks. She wasn't in the business of having a go at the food at all. She was writing a light-hearted blog to raise money for a school meals charity.

What actually happened was that the Daily Rectum published an article about it headlined "Time to sack the dinner ladies". They showed the front page of the paper on the TV, but I can't find it online. The DR is a shocker of a tabloid, with barely the most passing resemblance to the truth, and it seems they hitched a completely false story to the little girl's blog.

Nice to see that someone has injected some common sense into the proceedings.

Rolfe.

Maybe, but even in such case the council should not have forbidden the girl to take photo, they are after all presumably intelligent adult and would know the DR for the hideout of vileness it is. And still that is what they did, and even if they retracted later, it was a douche move.

 

[Rolfe]

So why not remonstrate with the paper involved? The blog has been misrepresented, poor wee kid.

Remonstrate? With that rag? You have got to be joking.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Maybe, but even in such case the council should not have forbidden the girl to take photo, they are after all presumably intelligent adult and would know the DR for the hideout of vileness it is. And still that is what they did, and even if they retracted later, it was a douche move.

Completely agree. Council official reacts with knee-jerk inappropriateness. In other news, water is still wet.

Rolfe.

 

[The Don]

The food looks fine to me, and I don't see Martha saying it isn't.

Rolfe.

The only direct complaint I can remember was a lack of quantity.

A lot of the food looks rather dry and bland but she seemed to like it.