Ye cannae take pictures of yur dinner

[Andrew Wiggin]

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.

Another positive is that the initial publicity caused the school to improve their lunch menu and their policies. She mentions them deciding that students were allowed to have unlimited salads, tomatos, and watercress, in addition to their entrees, and that they updated the policy to allow students to return for fruit (a dessert item apparently) even if they didn't finish their entree.

On the downside, the school got some rather strange ideas of how to deal with this non-issue, and it sounds like they were gathering information to make sure they could smear her reputation if they needed to. She talks about them instituting a program where she had to wear a color-coded wristband and preselect what she wanted to eat, and talks about them hireing someone to stand by the line, watch what she took, watch her eat it, and record what she ate and what she threw away. They mentioned in one of their statements that they thought she was taking a non-representative sample of what was available, and misrepresenting it as inedible. A lot of effort for one little girl with a blog.

 

[Alareth]

Near as I can tell, the original issue was that she was only showing a small portion of the food offered and it was implied that what she pictured was the only things students could eat.

In reading a portion of the blog she does mention other food items she chose not to put on her plate on a given day.

It's a matter of perception where people might come away with the wrong idea of the total nutritional offerings the students can obtain.

 

[The Don]

On the downside, the school got some rather strange ideas of how to deal with this non-issue.....

Not sure whether the school or the council made decisions. She and her father have commented that the school was always supportive.

 

[Duffy Moon]

£60K.

 

[ddt]

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.

And the DR article that was the real culprit was being described as "tongue in cheek".

Yeah right.

Rolfe.

They "reproduced" the article here. Headline "Time to fire the dinner ladies" tongue-in-cheek? My ass. No apology whatsoever for their role in the affair. And they pulled the original article - why? Too scared for the critical comments?

At least the whole affair turned out for the best.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...On the downside, the school got some rather strange ideas of how to deal with this non-issue, and it sounds like they were gathering information to make sure they could smear her reputation if they needed to. She talks about them instituting a program where she had to wear a color-coded wristband and preselect what she wanted to eat, and talks about them hireing someone to stand by the line, watch what she took, watch her eat it, and record what she ate and what she threw away.

No, they weren't singling her out. The children pre-order their lunches and are given a colour-coded wristband to show what they chose. It just means they can't change their minds and eat someone else's lunch if they think it looks nicer. So everyone gets their choice, the school doesn't need to over-cater and less food is wasted.

 

[Rolfe]

They "reproduced" the article here. Headline "Time to fire the dinner ladies" tongue-in-cheek? My ass. No apology whatsoever for their role in the affair. And they pulled the original article - why? Too scared for the critical comments?

At least the whole affair turned out for the best.

To be fair, now I've seen the lot, I agree it was meant to be light-hearted. There was a big flame in the picture, "time to FIRE the dinner ladies...." And the implication that the nine-year-old was capable of doing the job, in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

As they said, it was a sub-editor who wrote the headline, and he was having fun with the pun on "fire". It's possible the original article was never online, if it was just a short fun piece.

I don't often cut the Rectum any slack, but that piece is right there in the usual knuckle-dragging house style and I now believe it wasn't meant to be serious. I don't suppose anyone even considered the actual dinner ladies might see it as threatening.

Talk about a storm in a lunch-box! Still, if Mary's Meals has done well out of it, it's all for the best.

Rolfe.

 

[Nessie]

BBC Scotland's news at 1830 on 15th June was a more even piece which showed the council reacted to the newspaper reports rather than the blog, but went for the easy target of stopping the blog. They now admit they made a mistake.

 

[ddt]

To be fair, now I've seen the lot, I agree it was meant to be light-hearted. There was a big flame in the picture, "time to FIRE the dinner ladies...." And the implication that the nine-year-old was capable of doing the job, in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

As they said, it was a sub-editor who wrote the headline, and he was having fun with the pun on "fire". It's possible the original article was never online, if it was just a short fun piece.

I don't often cut the Rectum any slack, but that piece is right there in the usual knuckle-dragging house style and I now believe it wasn't meant to be serious. I don't suppose anyone even considered the actual dinner ladies might see it as threatening.

Talk about a storm in a lunch-box! Still, if Mary's Meals has done well out of it, it's all for the best.

Rolfe.

Fair enough about the pun, I agree with your point there.

I still think it's puzzling why they pulled it from the site. One of the comments on this reproduction says there were 30 comments to the original article.

 

[Rolfe]

Probably the exact same knee-jerk response as shown by the council when they banned the kid from taking photos of her lunch.

Rolfe.

 

[Duffy Moon]

Ok, definitely the last update on her charity donations, as they appear to be slowing down now anyway.

She wanted to raise £7,000 for a kitchen, she's just passed the £70,000 mark:

Nice going girl.

 

[Rolfe]

Fantastic. Which occurs to me, I haven't donated yet - or not through her blog anyway, Mary's Meals is a regular charity call round here. Must do so.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

If that's "slowing down" I dread to think what it was doing before. By the time I'd gone back to the start page to check my message had got through, there were three more names after mine!

Rolfe.

 

[Duffy Moon]

It was turbo-charged yesterday afternoon.

 

[Rolfe]

I see she's got another £1,000 since you posted that image, and my message is already off the front page.

I'm so happy about this, it couldn't have gone to a better cause.

Rolfe.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Ok, definitely the last update on her charity donations, as they appear to be slowing down now anyway.

She wanted to raise £7,000 for a kitchen, she's just passed the £70,000 mark:

[qimg]http://i49.tinypic.com/2nkiczs.png[/qimg]

Nice going girl.

If that's "slowing down" I dread to think what it was doing before. By the time I'd gone back to the start page to check my message had got through, there were three more names after mine!

Rolfe.

It was turbo-charged yesterday afternoon.

Well, you have to note the clock. She was at 65,000 six hours before you posted the 70,000 mark, and that was the middle of the night in the UK. I'm sure you're right that there was a big spurt Friday/Saturday (she posted Friday her time that they'd hit 45,000, so 20K in about 30 hours is pretty "hot", but that was during the time period when this was getting massive TV and Radio play in the UK.

But at roughly mid-day on Sunday in the UK, while it's "down to" about 1100 pounds an hour, if I've calculated correctly, that's still a healthy number. It goes down in the overnight period, but has gone up again, considerably in the past couple of hours.

Plus, I'm sure they don't realize it, but the software of the site give us furriners fits. It won't accept my address here or in Hong Kong or in New York. (No, I don't have homes in all, but I have "addresses of convenience" available.) I cannot donate.

I see she's got another £1,000 since you posted that image, and my message is already off the front page.

I'm so happy about this, it couldn't have gone to a better cause.

Rolfe.

As of right now, she's raised over 75,000 pounds. And her blog which broke three million less than 48 hours ago, now has almost 5.5 million hits! Apparently she's raised an additional 40,000 pounds and has had an added 3 million blog hits since these bureaucratic gits started on her last week, late Thursday/early Friday.

And check out their figures. At 10.70 pounds per child per year, they support 600,000 kids. That's an annual budget of under 7 million pounds. This little girl has raised about 1.25% of that for them and I'm betting it will go over 100,000 pounds. It's the weekend and internet activity goes way down on weekends.

If I was Mary's Meals, I'd raise a few thousand pounds to give this girl a trip to Malawi. She's mentioned Malawi a few times, so would probably love to see the country first hand, deserves the honor, and let's be mercenary here... the publicity about them honoring her fundraising activities would probably raise another few hundred thou!! Make her some sort of honorary ambassador to school kids everywhere.

What I find really touching is the number of ten pound donations. This is a lot of small donors.

 

[The Man]

Used to get milk at school and then "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher" happened

Snatching ain’t the worst thing that can happen with milk.

http://www.gocomics.com/soup-to-nutz/2012/05/28

 

[Rolfe]

£81,301.70 now.

Rolfe.

 

[jasonpatterson]

Plus, I'm sure they don't realize it, but the software of the site give us furriners fits. It won't accept my address here or in Hong Kong or in New York. (No, I don't have homes in all, but I have "addresses of convenience" available.) I cannot donate.

If you would like to donate but could not, you could try another method altogether. Send her an email thanking her for her work, explain that you wished you could donate to her cause but the website wouldn't allow it, and let her know that you've given money to a similar cause in your own country. Give whatever you feel is appropriate to a local food bank. I'm sure that would make her more happy than the alternative of no donation, and perhaps it would spur them to fix the site for foreign donations.

(Unless she's actually Veruca Salt in real life and she's stamping around when she's out of the public eye screaming that her site isn't getting enough donations and she wants more NOW! )

 

[Hershele Ostropoler]

Some party-pooper thoughts:

My usual reaction to this sort of thing is that if you don't like what you're doing being reported, then don't do it.

My general nature tells me there have to be exceptions to this (military strategy, especially specific battle plans? But only until the battle happens, right? After that the lid's off).

If they really want to, they could always post photos themselves of the other meal!

The "more speech" approach.

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 [over £80,000].

Hmm.

Are we sure (and does it matter) this isn't partly manufactured?

IIRC Jamie Oliver got Charles Clarke (then Education sec) to eat a B. Matthews turkey twizzler on TV and say "Mmm, that's fine, can I have another?"

I'm used to "Twizzler" being a type of candy. Which manages to be even ickier than what they actually are (since I have a huge package of the American gastrocultural equivalent of what they actually are in my freezer right now)