So, the new idea for schools is to ban packed lunches.
What happened to the mantra of ‘choice’? Choice in hospitals, choice in schools, in amenities?
This idea can get to fuck, to be honest. A school is somewhere that I have to send my children. I do not get a choice in that. Fair enough that restaurants and cafes say that you can’t eat your own food on their premises, you have a choice to either stay there or bugger off and eat somewhere else. You don’t have that choice when you have to be somewhere by law.
There’s plenty of other things that can be done, like banning chocolate and crisps and the like from packed lunches. Many schools already do, but to force parents to have school dinners is ridiculous.
Most schools do not even have a kitchen nowadays and so will have to buy the lunches in. Yes, Jamie Oliver may have shown that good, cheap meals can be provided but how many schools will actually be able to provide that and if they do, how long will it be before standards start to slip due to either budgets being cut or suppliers cutting corners?
Another, meaner part of me thinks I don’t give a fuck what other parents give their kids. I provide mine with a good packed lunch, fuck the rest. Sure, make provision for the less well off kids with free school lunches, and some of the stories I’ve heard, some kids really do need the help, desparetely.
The rest though, it’s their kids the parents are failing. Fuck ’em. let them fail their kids.
Funnily enough, it may be a government commissioned report that advises banning packed lunches, but who are the authors? Restuarantuers. I wonder if the same result would’ve been arrived at if it had been written by someone not in the private sector food trade, someone independent?