Today’s post is mostly bullet-pointed, in honour of David Byrne. So… these people should be kneecapped:
* People who think a good use for my money would be to subsidise schoolkids to eat Jamie Oliver-approved food, rather than the burgers, chips and pizzas that my generation grew up on.
* Relatedly, people who use the phrase "junk food". There’s nowt wrong with crisps, chocolate and Coke, as long as you’re also consuming the occasional vegetable and taking occasional exercise.
* Also relatedly, the grandstanding idiots in politics and the media, who’ve made parents too afraid of the almost-non-existent threat from child abductors, traffic, gangs and Other General Peril to let their kids go outside and do the stupid and dangerous things that every other generation of kids did. And who then blame the crisps, and not themselves, for the childhood obesity that ensues.
Perhaps a better plan would be to send the nannyites and Jamie Oliver to Iraq, along with the cash that would otherwise be wasted on food that British kids don’t want to eat, and feed all the children who’re starving to death post-invasion. Back at home, open up the construction sites and unfence the reservoirs, to make life for British kids less dull. Even if my obesity theory is untrue, this would at least reduce the difference in childhood mortality rates between the two countries.
The kneecap school of argument…
FWIW, the kids in Iraq are probably not starving; starvation is one cause of malnutrition, but diarrhoea is likely to be the more common cause in Iraq since they have food rations but not proper sanitation.
Let’s also not forget that this generation of UK schoolkids is not growing up on the same burger and chips and crisps that our generation grew up on….more corners cut during manufacture leading to much lower quality food, combined with a shift in after-school feeding (more ready meals, less scratch cooking etc.). Thus it’s not fair to say "I grew up eating burgers and chips, and so can they".
And quite frankly, I’d rather the government spent £220million on the possibility that healthier food for kids *might* make them grow up into normal decent adults, rather than spend it on ‘peacekeeping’ in foreign countries that don’t need our ‘peace’. Our kids running amok and becoming the next ‘chav’ generation is a much larger threat to our society than terrorism.