Jamie Oliver as scold and nanny

[Belle]

It's hard to disagree with any of this!! Arrogance on steroids:

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/ar ... iver/20475

[John F]

Really, all this shows is that Gareth Sturdy, whoever he is, doesn't like Jamie Oliver. "Dishing out unsolicited opinions in recent years on turkey twizzlers, packed lunches, sugar and free school meals, all seemingly to the end of flogging books and new TV series"? Come on now. One of the ways one seeks to make the world better is to offer "unsolicited opinions," and another is to write books. This reminds me of climate change deniers blasting Al Gore for his speeches and books. People don't like being told what they don't want to hear. The thing is, Gore has been right all along, and so has Jamie Oliver.

"Oliver’s vision of education is both elitist and joyless. He talks specifically about helping students who are otherwise ‘struggling’." Claptrap. What Sturdy describes is the opposite of elitism. The real thing is to preserve advantages for the elite, however defined, and hindering other students. Is Sturdy himself a closet elitist?

Oliver first became known as the host of a BBC TV series on cooking, followed by a cookbook that according to Wikipedia became the top best-seller in the UK. Having won an audience, a big one, "Oliver initiated a campaign originally called 'Feed Me Better' to move British schoolchildren towards eating healthy foods and cutting out junk food; this campaign was eventually backed by the British government." How is this not praiseworthy?

British doctors get the point of Oliver's efforts, if Sturdy doesn't. "In 2013, Oliver was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal College of General Practitioners [i.e. family doctors] for his work in tackling childhood obesity by improving the nutritional value of school dinners." Does Sturdy want children to be fat, if happy in the short run? Later in life, when struggling with heart disease, diabetes, and a long list of diseases and ailments, they and those who love them won't thank Sturdy for his perverse advocacy.

Belle, not only is it not hard to disagree with Sturdy dishing out his unsolicited opinions, it's morally necessary. He impugns Oliver's motives with zero evidence to back him up; he seems to resent Oliver's success, in life and as an advocate. It's fair to question Sturdy's own motives. What on Earth does this "science teacher in south London" intend his rant to accomplish? Let's hope he fails!

[Belle]

Again we will totally disagree. I deplore the modern tendency of the deep state and it's advocates to tell the people what's good for them. It's patronizing and dictatorial. Jamie Oliver is just another one of these (and he has a monetary reason for doing so). Most of us raised our children successfully and healthily without the agents of the state having to tell us what to do. We do our fellow humans a great disservice in treating them as though they not only don't know what kind of food to give their children, but how to think and what to do. I don't call criticizing a chef who digs into teachers as a "rant". And I loved the comment about the names he has for his children. Sorry, but I think we don't need to be told what to do by a person like Jamie Oliver. I think "Spiked" has it dead right on this one. The comment about the high calorie, low nutrition cakes and confectionery Jamie advocates in his cookbooks tells all. Pull the other one please. What he has produced in print is hardly "zero evidence". The author of the "rant" is a school teacher defending the profession from finger-wagging Jamie Oliver and his army of scolds. I'm sure Sturdy (what a name!) doesn't want children to be fat but, like me, he's probably confident that general practitioners and other health professionals own that job, not a professional 'personality' who creates dishes for the dining table.

If Jamie Oliver were to produce cookbooks which were solely confined to 'healthy foods' he would not be the multi-millionaire he is today. I don't denigrate him for his millions, but he needs to be more honest about his business endeavours. If I want his advice I'll ask for it. And I'm sure the teaching profession in the UK feels the same way; God knows they've got enough extra-curricular activities to deal with. "Feed me better" is an admirable idea, of course, but when accompanied by the big stick and criticism of teachers it becomes diktat.

[jbuck919]

I love Jamie Oliver. I wish he had a regular series now instead of some of the, well I won't use the word, that you find on the Food Network. Many of his recipes are online, and you don't even need to buy a cookbook. As for school meals, in the US they are almost uniformly still awful. I won't eat in a school cafeteria when substitute teaching unless I absolutely cannot avoid it. Since the school day ends early, I sometimes go without lunch first. There's a passage in Michael Moore's documentary Super Size Me about a school that actually solved this problem without breaking the budget, but it is a great understatement to say that it never caught on.

Some private schools are exceptions, of course. (There are none around here.) I once interviewed at the Madeira School in Virginia, famous for its former headmistress who murdered her lover. It is a boarding school. If they had hired me, I could have eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner there for free ever school day. The day I was there, the girls were eating quiche and a very nice salad for lunch.

Colleges are also variable. I went to two pretty fancy schools. My undergraduate school had decent enough food, as did the schools where I had to take my own Academic Bowl Team back in Maryland, but Yale at the time had a well-deserved reputation as one of the best eating schools in the country. I've never been so spoiled, even if the cafeteria lady did pronounce it "kwish."

[lennygoran]

I deplore the modern tendency of the deep state and it's advocates to tell the people what's good for them.

Belle what about things like banning smoking in public places and restaurants or are you only talking about food-I remember the NYC attempt by Mayor Bloomberg on the size of soda cups that one could sell. Regards, Len

[jbuck919]

I deplore the modern tendency of the deep state and it's advocates to tell the people what's good for them.

Belle what about things like banning smoking in public places and restaurants or are you only talking about food-I remember the NYC attempt by Mayor Bloomberg on the size of soda cups that one could sell. Regards, Len

There's the old Belle. (She did not always go by that name.) Political conservatism yet she has no problem with Australia having long ago passed a universal health care plan, or the many other aspects of life in her wonderful country where everyone assumes a degree of liberalism that too much of American politics considers whacko Left. (I will make an exception because Australia does not allow gay marriage, while even the US has rectified that.)

As for the smoking ban, which exists in both countries, the US was in fact a bellwether for that. I'm all for it, because I have always hated smoking in enclosed places and can remember multiple occasions when I had the courage to confront someone smoking in a non-smoking Amtrak car between Princeton and NYC. However, Bloomberg was fanatical about it. There was an op-ed in the Times several years ago called "A ban too far," which was a reaction to the decision to ban smoking, basically, in any generally public place in the five boroughs, including Central Park.

As the line from Peter Pan goes, think happy thoughts.

[John F]

At Harvard, some of the "houses" (undergraduate residences) had their own kitchens which were a bit above the standard of the central kitchen which served most of them. But I had many of my meals in places like Gracie's, a delicatessen near WHRB, and the Hayes-Bickford ("the Bick") and Waldorf ("the Dorf") cafeterias on Harvard Square. Why, when our meals were prepaid at the college's dining rooms? Because we preferred to eat when we wanted to. The Dorf's food was better, but the Bick (as I remember) was open all night, and we could go there after signing off WHRB at 2AM.

My parents sent my brother and me to a couple of private schools in Pennsylvania, and to Leeds Grammar School during our year in England. All of them served hot meals for lunch and I guess they were OK - I don't remember, except in Leeds dessert was often stewed prunes with custard, a thin vanilla sauce. Yum.

More generally, when parents entrust their children to a school all day long, they expect it to look after their welfare, in effect in loco parentis - not just physical safety and discipline but their health. Feeding them healthily, in what for many poor children can be their only square meal of the day, is the least of these responsibilities.

What kind of publication would accept a malicious and possibly slanderous piece like Sturdy's? Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Spiked:

The magazine was founded in 2000 after the bankruptcy of its predecessor, Living Marxism (LM). LM closed after losing a libel case brought against it by the broadcasting corporation ITN... The magazine opposes all forms of censorship, by the state or otherwise. Its writers call for a repeal of libel, hate speech and incitement laws, and of censorship on university campuses. [Hardly disinterested as libel seems to be its stock in trade.] They have criticised laws targeted at paedophiles as counterproductive to rehabilitation and conducive to mob violence. Spiked also regularly critiques risk society, political correctness, and environmentalism. As regards the latter, a particular Spiked target has been what they see as "exaggerated" and "hysterical" interpretations of the scientific consensus on global warming, and what they argue are double standards advocated by more advanced Western nations for self-serving reasons.

Wikipedia calls this "a broadly libertarian perspective." I call it the law of the jungle.

[Belle]

I always read "Spiked" and it's excellent editor, Brendan O'Neill, has been to Australia. He has much to say of relevance and interest and is a fearless advocate of free speech and, like me, he eschews the nanny state. I'm not interested in their discussions about 'global warming' so don't read them. Plenty of points of disagreement, of course, but plenty I would agree with - especially the hysterics and moral panic going down at the moment about men and how dreadful they are.

You might call an argument "the law of the jungle" but, quite frankly, the American mainstream media leaves a very great deal to be desired.

Your comments about what you expect a school to feed children is all well and good, but a teacher's job is not to feed the students. When I was teaching the canteen was run by a diminishing band of parent volunteers - most couldn't be bothered with it - and THEY chose the food. The teachers had enough on their hands fostering childrens' understanding of civility, respect, physical fitness, banking, socializing, gender issues; then there's the tiny matter of educating them - the standard of which in this country is falling behind Kazakhstan because teachers are now following such a crowded curriculum they don't have time for the basics. And now you want them to be responsible for the students' eating habits. Sorry, but this sounds like the old soviet project.

[lennygoran]

You might call an argument "the law of the jungle" but, quite frankly, the American mainstream media leaves a very great deal to be desired.

Belle fortunately there's the NY Times, Washington Post and CNN! Regards, Len

[Belle]

You might call an argument "the law of the jungle" but, quite frankly, the American mainstream media leaves a very great deal to be desired.

Belle fortunately there's the NY Times, Washington Post and CNN! Regards, Len

Absolutely no comment in the interests of peace and harmony!!

[barney]

I deplore the modern tendency of the deep state and it's advocates to tell the people what's good for them.

Belle what about things like banning smoking in public places and restaurants or are you only talking about food-I remember the NYC attempt by Mayor Bloomberg on the size of soda cups that one could sell. Regards, Len

There's the old Belle. (She did not always go by that name.) Political conservatism yet she has no problem with Australia having long ago passed a universal health care plan, or the many other aspects of life in her wonderful country where everyone assumes a degree of liberalism that too much of American politics considers whacko Left. (I will make an exception because Australia does not allow gay marriage, while even the US has rectified that.)

As for the smoking ban, which exists in both countries, the US was in fact a bellwether for that. I'm all for it, because I have always hated smoking in enclosed places and can remember multiple occasions when I had the courage to confront someone smoking in a non-smoking Amtrak car between Princeton and NYC. However, Bloomberg was fanatical about it. There was an op-ed in the Times several years ago called "A ban too far," which was a reaction to the decision to ban smoking, basically, in any generally public place in the five boroughs, including Central Park.

As the line from Peter Pan goes, think happy thoughts.

I think it's only in the US, among first-world countries, that a universal health care plan is seen as socialist or negative. I think it's dreadful that so many Americans live in fear of getting sick, not because of the sickness itself but because it might bankrupt them. Surely it is a sign of civilisation that no one is turned away from hospital when in real need.
There continue to be debates in Australia about the nature of the plan and what it should include, and the role of private insurance, and many other aspects. But no one any more talks about repealing it.

[Belle]

It's proving to be horrendously expensive, Barney!! Almost prohibitively so. And I wonder how much longer it can continue in its present form in Australia as it eats more and more of our GDP. On top of that my husband and I pay $6,000 per year for private insurance and this is set to rise. In Europe I met a few doctors who talked about the American health system and they seemed opposed to Obamacare, though I know absolutely nothing about how it works, but that there must have been some opposition to it from quite a few folks. The thought that people couldn't afford any medical care at all seemed frightening to me. Our son and his fiance had some dealings with the US health system in NYC earlier this year as she developed food poisoning very badly. They were both hugely impressed with both the staff and the quality of the care but they were very fortunate that it was covered by travel insurance.

Jbuck; you can sling insults all you like about my politics (of which you know nothing) but I do not do the same to you. I've tried to be polite in my discussions and not contemptuous and scornful, sticking to the arguments. It seems paradoxical to me that so-called 'liberals' won't allow alternate political views, whereas we - that is I - 'libertarians' are willing to hear anything and everything you have to say and argue the case on its merits and not attack the individual. I read widely and watch intense political and cultural discussions - mainly conducted by academics - online. Our son is in the very highest echelons of Australian politics right now and I can tell you it's a cruel, vicious and unforgiving business.

There are other views out there and this is a fact of life. I cannot comment on your personal or national politics - and I don't - because I have no intimate knowledge of same. It would be presumptuous. And if you think 'libertarianism' means 'anything goes' you're quite wrong. As with all politics, most of us would say we didn't agree with all of a particular ideology. I strongly believe in a properly regulated workforce in terms of minimum wages and the decent treatment of employees with humane conditions.

Now that you've raised the issue of politics I'll tell you a story. Several years ago one of my sons went to live in Western Australia and was (and still is) employed in the mining industry on a 'fly/in, fly/out' basis (that means they spend weeks at a time isolated in the desert and live in demountable sheds). One day he phoned me from the office in Perth, where he also spent time. He was very upset; the company that subcontracted to Rio Tinto (or whatever it was) decided to sack some of the support staff in the office. My son was nearly in tears: "mum, these people had their lunches in the fridge and a Christmas tree on the table and they were frog-marched out of the building without notice". That mental image has stuck with me for several years. But we must be careful not to have the tail wag the dog with regard to politics, nor over-sentimentalise. There's a course of action which must proceed in the cold light of day with regard to actions and consequences. And I have a healthy contempt for news and other media which encourages people to feel like victims and continues to treat them accordingly. Where's the dignity in that?

I think you'll find people and their politics are much more nuanced than you would think.

[jbuck919]

I think you'll find people and their politics are much more nuanced than you would think.

I accept your scolding and think you made some good points. However in the current situation in the US the "nuance" is deciding how much to make the very rich even richer and stick it to everybody else. You said you didn't know much about our situation. Now you know a little more. Also, I guess "libertarian" means different things in the two countries. In the US, it is a backdoor way into right-wing politics with the disguise that some bones are thrown in the other direction. As for Obamacare, all medical professionals realize that it is imperfect, but it is infinitely better than what we had before it. The politicians who want to cancel it or are avoiding improving it or replacing it with single-payer just care more about some corporation's bottom line and/or a benighted ideological principle than they do about the health of American citizens. I will forthwith cease to comment on your relationship to the politics of Australia.