Who Is The Customer?

It's not you or your child, is it?

Bean Primary School has banned packed lunches for children in Year 1 and Reception due to the need to guarantee a certain number of cooked dinners from the meal provider. But parents are outraged by the implementation of the policy which they say strips their children of their choice between a packed lunch or a hot dinner.

Why would a school ever sign such a contract? You never agree to something that's not in your control, or you have to then attempt to control it... 

Some also bemoan the quality of the cooked lunches - citing meals such as 'onion bhaji and chips'.

Surely a carb-heavy meal is the worst thing for promoting attentiveness in an after-lunch lesson? 

However, the headteacher of the school in the village of Bean, Kent, insists the lunches are of excellent quality and include alternatives for children with special dietary requirements.

I wonder if she - and the rest of the staff - are forced to eat them too? I can bet what the answer is... 

Fay Armitage, whose lactose intolerant daughter Bonnie is in Reception at the school, is vehemently opposed to the new policy. She says four-year-old Bonnie regularly comes home with tummy aches from school as she's no longer able to control how much dairy she has in her diet. Mrs Armitage was hoping to send Bonnie to school each day with a packed lunch so she would know exactly what she'd eaten throughout the day. But parents have now been forbidden to do so, as all children in Reception and Year 1 must partake in school dinners.

It should never, ever be the case that a school tries to dictate what children must eat. Haven't they learned that lesson in the past? 

The new policy currently only applies to children in Reception and Year 1. But under the government's universal infant free school meals (UIFSM) policy, the same scheme will gradually be rolled out to each new academic year group until it covers the entire school, and there are three choices to order from. Parents are now arguing that under the new policy, Unicef children's rights, which the school is signed up to, have been breached.

Is popcorn allowed, because I need to go get some! 

Imagine Letting A 'Guardian' Sourpuss Tell You What To Spend Your Money On...

So says Hannah Fearn, according to her 'Guardian' bio, a freelancer writer and reporter specialising in social affairs. And doesn't her picture do her column justice?

Fifteen years ago, it was the wood burner: an unnecessary middle-class indulgence that, despite causing untold environmental damage, started popping up in homes across the country. They became symbolic of a certain affluence that allows a privileged few to live in optimum comfort at all times. Now there’s a new kid on the block: the portable air-conditioning unit.

Oh, horrors! People might be able to keep cool! This will never do! 

At between £300 and £1,000 a pop, they’re not cheap – but they certainly make three or four weeks of good UK weather each year easier to handle.

Great! Right? No. Of course not. 

At what cost?

You just told us, love. Between £300-1000.  

This week National Grid readied another coal-fired power station to cope with the extra demand placed on the energy networks by offices and homes switching on air-conditioning units.

Well, maybe it's me, but isn't that a good thing? A company reacting to demand from its customers? Planning ahead? 

Well, Reader, not in Ms PursedLips' world, it's not...  

Just as wood burners are being phased out by law as we start to fully understand the damage they do to climate and also lung health, we now need to consider a ban on some air-conditioning units – particularly when used at the mildest of warm temperatures.

Yes, of course, a ban is the first - and often only - thing these NuPuritans reach for.  

When it’s 26C outside, the average British home simply doesn’t need air-conditioning. It might feel nicer, but making you a little more comfortable isn’t the government’s job.

Really? So we can start dismantling the panoply of 'hate crime' legislation then? And all those proposals for limiting freedom of speech on the Web?

Oh, that wasn't what you meant? *shrugs* Can't put that genie back in the bottle, can we? 

Maybe They Are All In A River Somewhere..?

It'd explain their failure to find them, wouldn't it?

It has emerged that senior officers believe there are still “many” firearms in the hands of people who should not have them, despite the former home secretary Priti Patel ordering them to look again at cases where they returned firearms to people after confiscation.

If I disobeyed my boss I'd expect to have a very uncomfortable conversation. Why is that never the case for failing police farces? 

Alarm bells have also been rung because the number of shotgun certificate applications Devon and Cornwall are rejecting has doubled since the Plymouth shootings but the rate in the rest of England and Wales has remained at just 3%, suggesting some forces may still be looking too leniently on applications.

Maybe. Or maybe Devon & Cornwell, realising they had not just dropped the ball but then drop-kicked it into their own goal, were overzealous? 

The new chief constable of Devon and Cornwall, Will Kerr, who came into the post the year after Davison’s attacks, is among those calling for fundamental change.

He said the firearms legislation, introduced in 1968, was “no longer suitable”, arguing that the emphasis was on “permitting rather than preventing gun ownership”.

As indeed it should be. In a modern capitalist democracy, that should always be the default, shouldn't it? Whether we are talking about cars, second homes or guns... 

Did You Really Think It Would Stop At Bread?

Folic acid should be added to rice as well as flour to prevent hundreds of cases of 'tragic' birth defects every year, experts have said today.

And it's not just expanding the range. It's upping the dose too! 

Up to 800 cases could be avoided every year if the nutrient was also added to rice and doses were quadrupled, they claimed.

Why are they dragging their heels? Why aren't they rolling over for these 'experts' like they usually do? 

Ministers are thought to have stalled because they feared being accused of 'mass medication' and acting like a 'nanny state'.

Oh, I think that ship done sailed... 

Professor Dame Lesley Regan, a gynaecologist at Imperial College's St Mary's Hospital Campus, said there are scientific, medical, ethical and economic reasons for administering the 'correct dose' of folic acid for 'maximum protection'.

It's amazing how easy it is to ensure that these all combine to match your own personal 'ethics', isn't it?  

Professor Neena Modi, an expert in neonatal medicine at Imperial College London, said ... Women who avoid gluten or whose main source of carbohydrate is rice will be disadvantaged, Sir Nicholas warned. And mothers from ethnic minority backgrounds, 'who predominantly eat rice, not flour', are already up to two-and-a-half times more at risk of their baby having neural tube defects, Professor Modi said.

'We have a major issue with health disparities and the current proposals will widen these,' Professor Modi said.

How dare those people not get with the programme and take their medicine, eh, Neena? 

When Will A UK Politician Show The Same Backbone On Behalf Of The People Cull?

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has called a general election for 1 November after a member of her ruling coalition threatened to withdraw its support over her handling of the country’s controversial Covid mass mink cull.

Gosh! Mink are cute and make great coats. Do they rate higher than people, though? 

Frederiksen’s popularity has slipped after the government’s 2020 decision to cull Denmark’s entire captive mink population of 15 million for fear of a Covid-19 mutation moving from the animals to humans that could jeopardise future vaccines.

A parliament-appointed commission said in June that the government had lacked legal justification for the cull and made “grossly misleading” statements when it ordered Europe’s first compulsory shutdown of an entire farm sector.

Sounds familiar. Maybe we should all identify as mink, and maybe then our government could be brought to book for their actions during lockdown? 

We Thought Lockdowns Would Be 'A Tough Sell' Once...

...the news that China is taking on the job of limiting gaming time caught the attention of so many parents I know. According to state news outlets, online gaming companies will be required to limit under-18s to just three hours of playtime a week, between the hours of eight and nine in the evening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The regulation has teeth: companies will be required to ensure they put in place real-name verification systems or go further and take their cue from companies such as Tencent, which recently implemented a facial recognition system that asks users to play on camera to prove they’re over 18.

Well, *shrugs*, that's China for you! 

I know some western parents found themselves looking at the new rules wistfully. Imposing limits on surly children is hard and being able to – truthfully – tell a kid to stop playing video games on a weekday night because it’s against the law can sometimes feel like it would be a parenting superpower versus simply cajoling, pleading or threatening.

Sure, because as Longrider pointed out in comments on one of my posts, there are always rabid authoritarians out there who will seize any opportunity. 

And parents who think telling their children something's against the law will stop them doing it, against all evidence to the contrary... 

I’m a huge gaming fan, but even I get uncomfortable when I look at the business models – and revenue – of some of the industry’s largest players.

Why? Do football fans say 'Oh, I hope my team doesn't make too much money from ticket sales, or win too many matches'..? 

The video game world’s understanding of regulation was shaped by bruising conflicts in the 90s and 00s over whether violent games begat violent children. As clear a moral panic as one would ever see, the experience has taught too many in the industry that all concerns over its effects on children are overblown and all approaches to regulation are to be fought tooth and nail.

Maybe they are, though? 

Western nations won’t follow China’s lead too closely and as much as some western parents might wish they could, such a tight restriction would be a tough sell in a youth culture where games have a much stronger hold on the attention than anything so pedestrian as broadcast TV or music radio.

It would have been, yes. But nearly two years of the majority accepting that the governmennt has the right to order us all to stay behind our front doors may well have changed that...