Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Let a posh chef with a false mockney accent into the heady mix of school life and what do you get...upset, thats what! In a kind of big brother horror interfering scenario, the guy tells kids where they are going wrong on food and whats more gets backing from the dithery government. "Eat more Carrots" sez the mockney geezer in the white smock, and kids everywhere squirm in mock vomit. No more alphabeti spaghetti...no more chips. "Its all gone to hell in a handcart" says little Jack from Middlesack while hiding a Mars Bar in his rucksack.
Latest figures show that one quarter of a million more secondary school pupils have opted out of school dinners this year. And this follows on from a huge 5% fall on those taking school dinners the previous year too. The initiative if you can call it that, is failing.
What are all those kids who have opted out...huge numbers...eating today. Burgers and Chips perhaps, but will they really be worse off...No.
In an ideal world kids would eat their greens and their carrots but since when was it an ideal world?
Let them eat cake!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
I am not in favour of nanny state intervention in what parents feed their children but schools should have a duty to provide healthy meals and not to stuff the kids with chips and burgers.
The fact that many parents seem to hate their children so much they want to condemn them to an early grave through obesity and/or heart failure, by feeding them a constant diet of junk food, is a matter for their own conciences. At the end of the day if the children have not been educated into eating decent food then that is firmly the fault of the parents.
So, well done Jamie Oliver and shame on the irresponsible idiots who provided chips through the school fence.
Guest 677- Registered: 8 Jul 2008
- Posts: 150
I think alot of problems could be helped with more food education in schools rather than just a couple of sound bites for tv. Flora for example have started a campaign to get more cookery equipment in schools to teach children to cook.
I disagree with a nanny state too so lets educate and let the children decide. I know this sounds as if I'm advocating that parent defer responsibility but I'm not really it's just that I think it should be a partnership between schools and parents. I have real trouble providing my children with healthy meals but it's not because I don't want to it's because I'm not a very good cook, I haven't much imagination when it comes to food and as I don't get home until half five at night I haven't the time to delve into the cook books as much as I'd like to. This is where schools can help. I wish I'd had better home economic lessons when I was at school.
It's not the man in my life, its the life in my man!!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
You have hit a nail on the head. The education system has indeed failed many young families so they know no different.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
There was a very interesting food advert from Morrisons shown on TV a few times last night and no doubt will be on again so watch for that.
It was a whole brace of food on offer and all for £4. It looks very good value to me and will be welcomed by struggling families everywhere.I might be naive here but it almost looks like this Supermarket is rallying around to help us all in the current financial gloom we are all experiencing.
However the food on offer in this £4 deal probably would not be approved by 'stuffed aubergine' Jaime Oliver. It has for example...
peppered grillsteaks
beefburgers
sausages
and so on..
Morrisons have done their homework here and are in touch with real people and real dietary habits. Not much of a demand right now in the gritty homes of Dover for the stuffed aubergine menu.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
It does need to be by persuasion, and education, not telling parents you are no good.
For some younger parents this is difficult, and it will take a time to get the message across, it will take a lot of hard work to change the mind set.
It can be done, but it won't change overnight.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
This from the Time On-Line....
""""With 50,000 extra pupils per day eating school lunches compared to last year, the figures suggest that the huge effort that schools and caterers have put in might just be beginning to succeed in changing the tastes and habits of a new generation of children. """"""
Not all then is gloom and doom at least some children are discovering their taste buds...
DT1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 15 Apr 2008
- Posts: 1,116
This is not about being a nanny state at all, it is about educating young people about healthy eating. Removing junk food, with little or no nutritional value, is an attempt to aid their learning as well as equip them to be healthy adults. Having a "What right do they have to tell us what our kids are eating" is just as mad as saying "what right do they have teaching our kids algebra" or "what right do they have telling us we have to send our kids to school"
Schools working in loco parentis have every right to inform young people what to eat as given the choice many children would just eat burgers everyday, in just the same way they would only do the subjects they liked given the choice. Pedagogy extends to the overall well being of children and for many kids this is the only proper meal of the day and so should be nutritious.
The main problem with school meals is that many schools have very little control over the menus because once again someone thought that it would be a good idea to hand this important task over to private contractors profiting from something that should be as public as the institute in which it is set. To really have a chance of changing the junk food culture these companies, making money from a captive customer, need to be removed to give the schools flexibility to feed children with good food.
As for Morrisons, as with all the supermarkets, they are not worried about the consumer; they are just worried about their profit. What you get for £4, that worries me too!
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
There is no problem getting private contractors to provide the food DT. What is important are the terms of the contract itself, how it is monitored and contract penalties for failing to deliver the right specification. Healthy food and private contractors are quite compatible if the contract specification document is well drawn.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
bAZ;
Unlike you I have a life and cant afford the time to sit on the computer all day and night(see political comment attack on me)
But to todays post by BAZ;
Yes there is a problem with private contactors, they cut corners, have the least motivated staff cos they pay poor wages and have no way of improving there lot.
A good example of this is the present bin collections, and recycling, complete mess, and yes its private.
They collect bins, leaving bits of rubbish all down the road every week im having to phone the council about the poor job. then the recycling boxes.
Having encouraged residents in my road to take part, first the letter came out to say boxes to be delivered on a certain day(yep you guessed it they never arrived)
then the boxes did arrive and the starting date was given(you guessed it lorry didnt get here)
Then some boxes were emptied and others were not.
then carrier bags were left in the boxes, thus with those at work the carrier bags blew everywhere causing the bags to fl everywhere and locals had to clean up
Total disaster.
but thats privatisation for you
they only do the job on paper, usually very cheaply, but at a poor standard
Guest 661- Registered: 16 Mar 2008
- Posts: 241
The trouble with today's young parents is, they cant cook real food to start with,as they were not taught to, so the kids are brought up on a diet of turkey twizzlers etc anyway. My mum was a good cook and I was taught to cook by her and school, my girls were brought up on a diet of real food. No packets of baby food, they had what we had, blitzed in the blender for small babies, and less so as they got older, until a few years ago when the youngest went silly and veggie on us they were always given to choices at a meal time eat it or go with out, fresh food is cheaper than convenience food. If you cook a whole joint of beef you can get several meals from that joint. not just one like you do from a packet. I was behind a Young lady in F*** f***s the other Sunday and she bought 8 birds eye Sunday roast beef dinners at a cost of £16.00plus.A joint of Beef to feed the same amount of people from the Charlton centre butcher would have cost a lot less. Add on the cost of a bag of spuds £2.00, which would keep you going all week, plus other veg and presto a lot cheaper, and any left overs can be used the next day. Also a lot of people just can not afford the cost of school dinners these days, unless they are claiming benifits,especialy if you have several kid's at school, it is a huge chunk out of your week's money. so maybe that's another reason for the low up take of school dinners.
A dog is just not for christmas save some for boxing day
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Keith - attack on you, never....
Contracting Keith, is as old as the hills in all walks of life. It is very successful as any businesses whether client, contractor or sub-contractor will tell you. If it wasn't it would not be happening and we would have a lot less private businesses. In the very early 1970's I was working for a company contracting to the Post Office......
Council's contracting out of services really only took off about 25 odd years ago in a big way, though there were many small examples. Once again it works very well if the contract is right and if the contract supervision is right. There is absolutely nothing new about that.
Trying to say contracting does not work is a bit like saying cars don't work due to a bad experience with an old Brabant.... Daft thing to say really.
As an old fashioned left wing socialist you of course would be happy for everyone to be working for the dead hand of the State. That is how you really get third rate services at high cost. History and experience tells is that but socialists prefer to place dogma in the way of efficiency.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
BAZ my old mucker
My posting had nowt to do with left wing socialist views(although i'm proud to be one) more about does it work?
I highlighted cases where it doesn't work and noticed you didn''t comment on tha at all.
On top of this I could tell you of many other private contracts with same results
Your right its how you tie up the contracts but it happening, and everyone suffers, nowt to do with iff your left/right
more to do with, how cheap can job be done, screw the worker doing paying him/her poverty wage and so on
If it were a good service I wouldn't have been able to quote it.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
I see in one of the local papers that that nice Tory man about town Charlie Elphicke, economics adviser to the stars, is telling us we are all going to have a black christmas due to rising prices ( Dont cheer us all up Charlie!!
). Could well be true though...the way things are going. Therefore very apt in what HUMPHY says above about affordability. Affordability is going to play a huge part in the way we eat in future. Experts are telling us that food costs will skyrocket, that the days of cheap food are gone forever, so a huge tightening of the belt is about to happen or indeed is already happening. The families Charlie refers to in this article..."the low earning folk of Buckland and St Rads" and so on will have trouble making ends meet. Their efforts may well be about filling their families up rather than any other nicety.(Page 30 Dover Express article by Laura Smith, one time Dover scribe but now in the higher echelons of Folkestone central)
That oh so nice middle class habit of paying extra for your nice organic spud may well be the first for major rethink, as we have been told often enough there is no difference between organic and ordinary, except for a 30-40% added diffference in cost. Isnt all this organic stuff a conscience soothing exercise that makes those that can afford it feel good about themselves? You bet!
So that £4 Morrison option will be very welcome and no doubt Charlie will be welcoming it too. It may not furnish us with the high levels of vitamins and minerals as required by the idealists but will fill up yer empty stomach. A first priority in hard times.
DT1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 15 Apr 2008
- Posts: 1,116
But it does work and is far more benificial for everyone, except for shareholders making cash from the essential provision of young people. If these facilities (and I extend that to other public services) can be run efficiently by a private contractor making a profit, then they can be run efficiently by the school (or state in the broader sense)
My mum is a dinner lady at a large school in Dover. The school went through a number of contracts with many external companies. However it was apparent that these contractors where always cutting corners (quality of produce etc) also opening of the canteen or catering facilites for development days or special events had to be nogotiated, as many things in schools (not always foreseen) did not fall within the terms. Everyone, except 2, who worked for the contractors (prodominently young mothers getting back to work) were on minimum wage.
The school realised that they had very little control over any of the contractors, the last one being 'Initial Catering' or as you may know them, as their parent company 'Rentokil' (I'm not quite sure where rentokil stand on the welfare of our young people) So the school decided to get rid of the Contractors being run by fat-rats....oh I mean Cats.
The result; the food is cheaper, much of the produce is from local suppliers, The staff are paid a little more. The school can cater for unforseen events or close the kitchen all together for the day. The school has complete control of menu and produce. The dinner ladies can even join the KCC pension scheme if they like (far better than the rip-off offered by rentokil) The staff feel safer and happier.
Now I don't believe that they have cured the cultural food problem that we are faced with. But surely this model is far more equiped to do so than a contractor?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
The big problem DT1 are costs. Governmental and Local Authority bodies have far higher on-costs than private companies. A council is incapable of making money from the sale of beer!!!
The competition of contracting for specified levels of service is highly cost effective and in these times of rising costs the last thing the public would want are 20% hikes in Council Tax on top of the increases already being instigated.
The 'client' body that awards the contract also has an ultimate weapon to use against any contractor that does not fulfill the contract, it can take it away, re-tendering and whats more fine them for failing to achieve standards. Where you are employing staff yourself, as a local authority, you are tied in with complex HR issues and if your managers/staff are no good it is not so easy to just get rid of them.
PaulB - check out the ingredients in those sausages and burgers...........absolutely agree there has to be a market for inexpensive food, but that isn't the same as cheap food!!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
getting back to keith's comments, certain services are not meant to be privatised.
a good example is hospital cleaning, the agency staff nowadays are given a time to to the job and get out.
before privatisation, the cleaners were employed by the hospital and their instructions were to leave their area clean.
because they were part of the team there, they took more pride in their job.
sometimes things are not always about costs and bottom lines.
I could not agree more Howard - I witnessed the loss of the domestics to ward teams in the eighties and it has been downhill ever since. It has been a tragic cost to patients and a very stupid management error.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
Although a little off the original subject, let me tell you another horror story
when i visited a dieing relative of mine, I witnesssed the private contractor coming around with the food,
te lady ran out of knives, the meal had meat on it, and when the person asked so how do i cut it, the reply was sorry i dont have any more cutlery!!!! thats not an isolated incident, and it wasnt a local hospital, but it shows tha corners are cut, jobs done as cheaply as poss, staff poorly paid so not motivated, and so it goes on
