Primary School Girl Told To Stop Photographing and Blogging School Meals

JamieKitson writes "British primary school (elementary to those of you in the U.S.) pupil Martha/'Veg' has been taking photographs of her school dinners and writing about them at her blog Never Seconds since April. The blog has become popular, and Martha decided to do something with the popularity: namely, raising money for an international school dinners charity. Unfortunately, the local council, Argyll and Bute, having apparently not heard of the Streisand effect, didn't like the publicity that her blog was generating and have shut her down. They said the blog made the catering staff fear for their jobs. There is a happy ending though: donations have gone through the roof and she has already passed her target."

Comments

U turn

[shortscruffydave]

Just heard an interview with the council on BBC Radio 4, and it sounds like they've reversed the decision.

Re:U turn

[tsa]

That's good news. I wondered why they told this girl to stop in the first place because the food she photographed actually looks both healthy and tasty, so what was the problem?

Re:U turn

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you think this looks healthy and tasty? Uh huh...

Re:U turn

[Darkness404]

Exactly. I mean how is it so terrible that the cooks "fear for their job" of course they should fear for their job! Everyone "fears for their job" if they don't do well at their job. Perhaps incompetent IT guys should call up Oracle and tell them never to post any bug reports and sue any security blogs that post bug reports and security flaws, after all, if they installed an insecure program on a critical computer that can be exploited they'd fear for their job.

More transparency is always a good thing.

Re:U turn

[tbird81]

It doesn't, by any means, excuse them from the original decision to force someone to take down their website.

Their back-pedalling now the case has publicity only shows how out-of-touch they are with the world. I'd love to know who was personally responsibly for this decision.

We're all used to national governments trying to get their greasy control-freak hands on our internet, but now councils are doing it! Stick to water supply, sewerage and rates - keep away from the internet. It's none of your business, and you don't understand it. Controlling the internet is controlling our speech.

UK numbers for the council:
Phone: 01546 602127
Text: 07624808798
Complaints: http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/council-and-government/complaints

Re:U turn

[Blahah]

That's not what happened at all. They didn't force her to take down her website, they just told her she couldn't bring her camera to school. Still a stupid move, but not the same as what you are alleging.

Re:U turn

[TarpaKungs]

Some of it looks OK. Some of it looks utterly dire, even compared to what I was being forced to eat 35 years ago! It's not a patch on what my local school serves my kids (I've eaten 3 meals with them, paid for I should add!) and down in East Sussex, £2 consistently buys a good healthy and tasty meal. I was so impressed I actually emailed the catering company's Regional Manager (Chartwells who are contracted to provide our school dinners) and East Sussex CC (school meals division) and said I thought it was an apt time to praise there efforts - the email was received with some excitement judging by the reply I just got back :) It's very easy to criticise, sometimes the opportunity to praise is overlooked. Back on topic - full marks to Martha aka VEG - trended on Twitter worldwide today, 1000+ comments on the BBC News story, front page on BBC News and Independent news (web editions). And as someone said, it looks like Argyll and Bute Council have reversed their decision - probably because her MSP (Member of Scottish Parliament) who also happens to be the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning told them to! This sort of story warms my heart - thanks to the Internet, a minor coverup of a small time incident[1] that would have never made it past the local paper now becomes a national and international story. [1] This is a fairly minor event in the grand scheme of things, but is rather symptomatic of the "brush under the carpet" attitude of the authorities in the UK - hopefully this particular event will make other authorities sit up and listen.

Re:U turn

[AngryDeuce]

They get fucking popsicles in the UK?! Christ, even way back when I was in school, decades ago, the best we could hope for was "nature's candy", raisins, which nobody ever, ever ate, and instead lobbed at each other across the lunch room.

Re:U turn

[jythie]

It was probably less about the actual content being shared, and more about the lack of editorial control they had over it. For better or worse, knowing everything you do is going to be posted for the public to see has a bit of a 'looking over your shoulder' effect on people since you never know what might go wrong, what could be taken out of context, or what could haunt you if people are unsympathetic to the tradeoffs involved in whatever it is you do.

Re:U turn

[AngryDeuce]

Well, I would probably be pretty pissed off if I was catching all the heat for the school district's poor meal choices. It's not like the lunchroom workers get to choose what the kids are served, they just prepare it. At least, that's how it is here in the US in my own experiences, maybe in the UK it's different and the individual schools have more autonomy?

Growing up in Philly, we ate what was called "satellite lunches", which were nothing more than prepackaged meals made by some private company. They literally served us a white box with "food" in it on a tray. Our school didn't even have a proper kitchen, just some ovens to heat them up. They were fucking nasty as shit, too...I bet prisoners ate better then we were. The fried chicken was especially gross, because we could smell it throughout the school in the period just before lunch, so as soon as someone caught a whiff and said "Aw, man, friend chicken again?" a collective groan went through the entire building.

I would have brown-bagged it but we were poor so I was on reduced lunch and thus forced to eat the crap by my mother.

Re:U turn

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Often the actual "staff" in the cafeteria have no control over how much money gets allocated to them or the mandates being forced on them like "use less empty calories and have more wholesome foods" or "encourage kids to develop healthy eating habits". In these days of budget cuts, I would not blame the kitchen staff alone for poor fare in school cafeteria.

Re:U turn

[PopeRatzo]

They get fucking popsicles in the UK?! Christ, even way back when I was in school, decades ago, the best we could hope for was "nature's candy", raisins

You got raisins? When I was in school, "nature's candy" meant moose droppings. They'd just give us a dull knife and tell us to go out and kill something for lunch. And if you weren't fast enough to catch a squirrel or a vole, you starved to death. Once there was this kid who twisted his leg trying to catch a rabbit and we ended up tearing him to bits and eating him.

I'm telling you, we had it tough back in those days.

Re:U turn

[CastrTroy]

I live in Ontario, so all this seems weird to me. We don't have school lunches in grade schools. Parents pack a lunch for the kids. I've always thought it was odd that kids got cafeteria meals in grade school. Even in highschool, we had a cafeteria, but still most kids brought their own lunch anyway. Most people's lunches consisted of a sandwich, some fruit, a juice box, and many of us even had some kind of snack like fruit roll-ups (always hated these) or something like a twinkie. Still it seemed like we were much better fed than the fries burgers and pizza that kids get in their cafeteria lunches. Now that my kids are at school, they still bring in their own lunches, but the school frowns upon bringing things like twinkies. Although to tell the truth, most granola bars aren't much healthier anyway. It seems counter productive to have the schools serve lunches if they aren't going to be healthy. Let the parents decide what the kids are going to eat. It only takes 5 minutes to make a lunch for your kids in the morning, and by the time they are 8, they can do it themselves.

Re:U turn

[hoggoth]

Yeah, the British authorities shouldn't be forced to work with a "looking over your shoulder" effect on them. That situation is very stressful and will make you paranoid. I'm glad the British authorities understand the awful stress of constantly being monitored and surveilled.

Re:U turn

[MickyTheIdiot]

What a coincidence! American schools love to serve salmonella.

Re:U turn

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on growing up middle class. Many kids, especially inner city kids, don't have responsible parents to pack their lunch for them, let alone the money to buy twinkies or fruit-roll-ups. Many schools in the US also serve breakfast, and many kids qualify to receive both for free.

Re:U turn

[AngryDeuce]

I've always thought it was odd that kids got cafeteria meals in grade school.

It obviously depends a lot on where you live and go to school. I grew up in one of the poorer areas of Philadelphia and the vast majority of the kids I went to school with were latchkey kids in single-parent households (many of whom had younger siblings to care for when they got home, myself included, even in grade school), and I'm betting many of them ate even worse at home, as horrifying as that thought is to me.

I was in the reduced lunch program so my cafeteria meal only cost my mother $0.40 a day each for me and my younger brother, which even brown-bagging it couldn't really compete with cost-wise...

Later, when I was in high school (by that point my mother had married my stepfather who was in the U.S. Army and we were stationed in GA) the lunches were much higher quality than the Philly ones (but my God in heaven did they love their fucking chicken-fried steak, that was served at least once a week, if not more), but the rules on what you could bring were much, much more restrictive. So help you if they caught you drinking a can of soda, even the juices that come in cans like soda would be confiscated. They'd take candy from you if they caught you eating it, which was doubly ridiculous when you consider the fact that they sold candy at the fucking school store. You had to take it directly to your locker after purchase and leave it there or else they would take it. This is high school students we're talking about here, mind you, 18-year-old's getting hassled over Now-and-Laters, it was unreal.

Re:U turn

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I thought that the UK had banned all metallic objects longer than they are wide by now, to tackle the knife-crime menace...

Re:U turn

[mekkab]

Yes; as a corollary to this, DC public schools are loathe to close on snow days because for some children, that's the only food they get all day.

Re:U turn

[milkmage]

you must be from Winnipeg.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/06/07/Teachers-let-kids-eat-moose-droppings/UPI-41501339102360/

One 13-year-old boy ate one and then rushed to a river to rinse his mouth, while the second, a girl with braces, threw up, the report said.

Re:U turn

[AlecC]

School lunches are a surprisingly powerful tool against malnourished kids in deprived areas. Getting a decent meal into deprived children is both good for their general health and for their ability to absorb the education the school is offering. Therefore it is a policy aim that all schools be able to offer a quality meal to any deprived children in the area (since deprivation occurs in wealthy areas as well as poor). In fact, the percentage of children entitled to such meals for free is used as a metric of the school's intake, those with a higher level of free lunches being assumed to have a less well supported intake. Given that such a meal must be offered to those entitled to it free, it makes economic sense to offer it to all children. It doesn't stop children bringing their own lunches to school as you describe, and many do. In my experience in comfortably off areas, about half of all children bring their own lunches and half have school lunches.

Re:U turn

[MightyYar]

In NYC they shift the school subsidized lunch programs to the city pools in the summer. It's the closest thing to a healthy meal those kids will get.

Re:U turn

[Electrawn]

The Turkey Sandwich story is a bunch of hysterical bunk that was rapidly picked up by Fox News and Huffington Post. It was a bunch of poorly worded reporting by the original source, Carolina Journal.

Please read: http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=8780 for the real deal.

Re:U turn

[canajin56]

In the original outraged story, poor innocent child comes with a healthy meal of chips, a banana, a sandwich, and extra sugary apple juice (less healthy that pop). She tries so hard to eat her healthy meal but the nazis throw it in the garbage. She gets chicken nuggets only. No fruit, no vegetables, nothing to drink. Then she is sent home with a bill for the food. This is the story in the local paper. Then Fox CNN NBC ABC HuffPo Slashdot Reditt etc all link to the local paper without any followups of their own, and it makes national news. The school is confused because their inspectors don't confiscate anything except peanuts, and they never sent home a bill. This is taken by Slashdot etc as a sign of coverup. Then the woman posts a picture of the bill. The "bill" is a note. This note is dated. The date is NOT the day this happened, but the week prior. The "bill" says that in future, they may begin charging children who are not enrolled in the lunch program, but who need supplementary food because, for example, they were sent with a lunch with no fruit or vegetables. Oops, nothing that could have been done to avoid that mistake except hiring reporters who know how to read. So all you're left with is a mom angry that her child ate junk food like chicken nuggets instead of healthy potato chips, a crying child who says that they made her eat the delicious chicken nuggets and she really tried to eat mom's sandwich but they threw it out, and a school that says they supplement unhealthy lunches, but never replace them. Obviously children never lie to get out of trouble, but schools will always lie about following their documented procedure to get out of trouble.

Re:U turn

[CanHasDIY]

Not saying banning the girl's camera was a good move or that something productive could not come from scrutiny, just saying I could see why they would be worried even if they had done nothing wrong/bad/poor.

Protip - If you have a problem with the general public scrutinizing your every action at work, don't work for the general public.

Re:U turn

[AngryDeuce]

Given the way that some high schools treat their students [like little children] it's no wonder that so many young people today have such a hard time taking care of themselves after they graduate.

If you want to see something truly disturbing, check out the documentary The War on Kids . It is currently available on Netflix; I just watched it a few days ago and was totally disgusted. The section on the over-medication of our children is especially troubling, and the coverage of the full SWAT raid at a South Carolina High School at the behest of the administration (which turned up absolutely no drugs at all) is both infuriating and chilling at the same time.

Much of the documentary focuses on the testimony of kids dealing with the rise in police involvement in our schools, not to mention the ineffectiveness (and outright insanity) of zero-tolerance policies. The kid's themselves know it's a complete joke, all the anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E., plus the teachers talking about kids looking like fucking lobotomy patients after a change in meds, literally drooling...

I can tell you emphatically, there is no way in hell I'm going to allow my child to go to a school that even kids themselves cannot differentiate from a prison (they actually do an experiment with children in the documentary examining just that). I will be home-schooling my children, no matter what it takes. My kids will not be drones. They may not be able to diagram a sentence, but they'll damn sure know their rights.

Re:U turn

[Hyperhaplo]

Same. Although, I soon found out how to make a very very small amount of money stretch really far.

I used to catch the bus. Instead of buying bus tickets I would ride my bike to school and spend 30c? something like that at a fish&chips shop on the way which would usually get me one big or two or three small potato cakes. I realise now that the shop guy was being very nice.

This went on for some time. I never did find out if my mother knew I was riding my bike to school.. in any case, for three years (most of the time) I collected the bus money, caught the bus sometimes, always had a spare book of tickets, and rode or walked whenever I could.

I applaud the girl in TFA. always good to shine a light on the parts of our society the rest of us don't see. Am sure Jamie Oliver is loving this.

Re:When will they learn

[hey]

Well yes and no. How much do we hear about people in prison in China for political "crimes".

summary error...

[Anonymous Coward]

the blog didn't make catering staff fear for their jobs.

the press reaction in the UK has made catering staff fear for their jobs

Martha was blogging what she had for dinner NOT what the full menu was.

the press ommited this detail and pitchforks started being sharpened as it appears Martha wasn't picking the best of what was on offer (health wise)

all that said, i think it's a bloody shame the council have stopped given that the school actually encourages children to talk about their diet and this girl's only taken that training to the next logical conclusion of sharing with the internet.

Re:summary error...

[jamesh]

Nobody else reads the articles, why would you expect the person who wrote the summary to have read it??

there is very little meat in these gym mats

[Joe_Dragon]

there is very little meat in these gym mats

Re:there is very little meat in these gym mats

[gregg]

but they go so well will a tall glass of malk.

Bad publicity?

[Darkness404]

To be honest, all the British (and the foreign food) all looked fairly decent. Really the only terrible looking food was the "foreign" (being as she is from the UK) US meals. If anything it is a good showcase of what school lunches are from around the world and honestly I'd say it puts the British in more favorable light than the US.

The public have a fundamental right to see what their tax dollars (or pounds in this case) are doing, whether that is detailed information about Afghanistan and Iraq or school lunches.

Re:Free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

That was not school who banned her but the council. The school supported it, but the council was embarrassed when it was revealed how crappy food the pupils are eating, so they tried to gag her.

Yum

[zenyu]

The food she photographed looks pretty amazing compared with what I recall eating in primary school.

Re:Free speech

[Rogerborg]

There is a limit to free speech though. And apparently that bar has been lowered to shouting "Eww!" in a crowded cafeteria.

NeverSeconds

[eternaldoctorwho]

I think it's awesome she named her blog "NeverSeconds". I always remember being left hungry in middle/high school by the paltry lunches we got, to the point where I started bringing in my own every day. The worst was pizza day - you got the equivalent of one piece of pizza, a drink, and a "salad" (actually a couple pieces of lettuce and some shredded carrot). That was it. I guess it all worked out, because after the long lines, including many line-cutters, you only got about 10 minutes to eat anyhow.

My point is: school lunches suck! I fully support this girl in her efforts.

Re:Free speech

[AngryDeuce]

Not sure about the UK, but the U.S. courts have repeatedly upheld that students do not have free speech. The case Morse v. Frederick comes to mind, otherwise known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case.

Long story short, the students were released from school early so they could watch the torch pass from the 2002 Winter Olympics, and Joseph Fredrick, a student at the school, along with friends, held up a banner they'd made earlier that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". He was suspended for 5 days (later increased to the maximum 10 days after quoting Thomas Jefferson, which is hysterical), sued, and lost several times. School speech can be regulated both on and off campus; Frederick was not technically in school at the time of his banner (as they'd been dismissed) and he was also standing across the street from the school, thus not technically on campus, but in view of those that were.

Then, of course, are the myriad cases cropping up over the last few years where student's Facebook posts are getting them suspended Just a few months ago a 12-year-old girl was interrogated at length by the administration at her school, with police officers present (but not her parents, of course), and ultimately forced to give up her Facebook password.

If this girl had been here in the U.S., she'd probably already be charged with some form of terrorism by DHS and thrown in a cell with murderers, rapists, and people that upload HD rips of hit movies to the internet.

Links to blog and stories

[TarpaKungs]

This may be helpful:

The blog: http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800

Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/school-dinner-blogger-martha-payne-photo-ban-overturned-7854487.html

Council rebuttal: http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals-argyll-and-bute-council

Re:Free speech

[slimjim8094]

If this girl had been here in the U.S., she'd probably already be charged with some form of terrorism by DHS and thrown in a cell with murderers, rapists, and people that upload HD rips of hit movies to the internet.

C'mon dude, you made a lot of good points, why did you have to spoil it with outrageous hyperbole? It's one of the most obvious rules of trying to prove a point - people judge your argument as a whole, so if you throw in a crapton of obvious nonsense, people don't take the good parts seriously.

Re:Calling for roadside assistance

[Ranger96]

Do the same thing I did in the days before ubiquitous mobile devices: walk.

The charity

[nozzo]

The best bit about all this is that Martha has raised around 4 times her £7,000 target for the charity she supports. The proudest 9-year-old ever when she comes home from school and finds out!

Yorkshire school dinners

[Roger W Moore]

Well I am a Yorkshireman and after school dinners we sometimes had "secs" (meaning second helpings). However it you think about the pronunciation of that word you may understand what caused considerable confusion for me as a 7 year old when I came out of school and announced to my dad that "after dinner we had secs" and got into a lot of trouble...at least until he understood what I meant. Fortunately he did not "thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle" though so by Four Yorkshiremen standards I was very, very lucky!

Re:Oblig...

[jkiller]

Lisa Simpson: Isn't there anything here that doesn't have meat in it?
Lunch Lady Doris: Possibly the meat loaf.

Re:incompetent or poor ingredients / equipment / t

[Compaqt]

>which means that somebody needs to be fired.

Why is it that the answer to everything seems to be to fire someone?

If the cafeteria equipment is sub-par, why can't the person in charge simply be told to get better equipment instead of being fired?

Is this a common approach to problem solving in most companies?

Bug tracker not easy to use? Fire someone.
Windows has an occasional crash? Fire somebody.
There was a brownout and you didn't have enough diesel for the backup generators? Fire the whole IT dept.