>>Jamie Oliver Return to School Dinners Ch 4 NOW! <<

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just a reminder

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bozza, maybe you could pick up something deep-fried next time?

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slick editing
too many shots of wheels turning to signify Going To Another Location
dodgy product placement, catching up with JO on Sainsbury's Ad shoot

chin dropping moments:
dodgy contents of pub fridge (bringing whole new meaning to "herb crusted cod")
mum who said "he won't eat that" re: menu with lots of rice/pasta on it. no rice or pasta ? which century is she living in??

best bit: Nora (as always)
Blair's garden furniture
Alan Johnson saying "I'm this week's Secretary of State for Education"

Last night's TV

Jamie Oliver is back on the school dinners warpath, and he won't let anyone palm him off - least of all Tony Blair

Nancy Banks-Smith
Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

Jamie Oliver is such a contemporary hero that the new Robin Hood ("a bit of a geezer") will be based on him. In Jamie's Return to School Dinners (Channel 4) he reorganised Lincolnshire (next door to Nottinghamshire), which has lost almost all its primary school kitchens, by getting local restaurants and pubs to provide school dinners.
He is wholly and peculiarly a product of television. Anything this free of fear on television usually has four legs. Jamie and Mitch, a scrap of a lad who packs his own idiosyncratic school lunches, were being filmed on a windswept Lincolnshire shore, very much a director's idea. "I'm freezing," said Jamie. "Do you want to go and get a hot cup of tea?" "Yeah, go on then," said Mitch.

Since he started campaigning for "proper, good, lovely, home-cooked, healthy food every day of the school year", Jamie has seen three secretaries of state for education in three years. Alan Johnson was the latest. A bowl of fruit was positioned prominently on the table, indicating a keen interest in all things dietary. Jamie tipped out beside it a child's typical packed lunch: crisps, snacks and a fizzy drink of a particularly virulent blue. Johnson was new to the job ("I'm this week's secretary of state") and it showed. I haven't seen anyone so unbriefed since The Full Monty. When he said "I can't commit to anything after 2008 financially", Jamie snapped back: "So does that mean our boys are going to be out of Iraq in a year and a half?" At this the minister's special adviser bounded from her seat as if gravity had been cancelled.
Alan Johnson must have felt the feebleness of this performance acutely, and moved fast. Three weeks later Jamie was summoned to meet the prime minister, who said: "To be fair to Alan, after he spoke to you we put out heads together and tried to work it out." In the garden of No 10, against a backing group of exuberant flowers, he strewed handfuls of roses out of his hat. New money for school kitchens, £240m more for school dinners and even a voluntary ban on advertising junk food to children. "That sounds a bit wet, Tony," said Jamie. You've got to love him.

The timetable issue sounded like a real issue to me- the kids now only get 1/2 an hour for lunch or something? Hate mucking about with timetables. They were always chopping and changing things like that at my secondary, supposedly based on research around optimum times for children being able to concentrate or some such spurious rubbish. (well, maybe not rubbish but it seemed that the advice changed every 2 seconds or so) I was in a constant state of confusion I tell you! Suspect the head of that school is a bit stupid, tbh. All he could find to say about the situation was that it was inappropriate for the mums to be serving food from a cemetary iirc. Seemed to miss any of the possible salient points entirely to me. I bet there are sides to this story that we're not hearing.

Alan Johnson saying "I'm this week's Secretary of State for Education"

LOL

The whole programme was a shambles imo (lol at the Times' review though)

But I do like Nora.

But at Nora having internalised Thatcher's values so much that she thought if she was making a financial loss she couldn't be doing her job properly.

she was doing her job properly, it's the system that's at fault. my dd1's afterschool club only sells healthy snacks now (fruit etc - no crisps, like before) and the stuff is still bought (there's nothing else )

True Kathy, but she gots bags more personality than Jamie.

That's interesting aitch71, because I had always been quite a fan of JO but the way you portray him is exactly the way he came across in last night's program, I thought, and that's the first time I've noticed it. I didn't think it was a very good program, too much that was so obviously staged (like the bit where the children called for him to come and put on a costume, and the gob-smacking Sainsbury's plug). I do applaud his aims but like martianbishop, the moment he started trying to get money already ear-marked for schools to be ring-fenced for kitchens I got very uneasy- that's the only thing he cares about, but frankly if it was the choice between a kitchen or a library I would choose the library. You can't make decisions about education with such a narrow focus IMHO.

agree tamum- school dinners are just one thing to be financed amongst a whole host of other school needs.( what about music what about improving school libraries what about Getting kids into sport the list is endless)
i felt the programme was all over the place and very inconsistent in it's arguments. I got the feeling that jamie's scattergun approach could only end up making things very complicated. Surely he needs to be a bit more systematic.?

if i was being very optimistic i would say that the government only needed someone to do the research( that they themselves where somehow unable to do) and give them a plan of how to make things better. i suppose you could say jamie has done this for them and all they need to do is get bloody on with it.

Unfortunately i think long term the money will mysteriously vanish( most likely to fund research commitees and Tzars of nutrition) and not be spent actually do something practical.

maybe i'm just a cynical old pirate

I think the problem is a long term one, and Jamie is looking for short term fixes. He is relying on parents to be 'involved' enough to put together schemes that will bridge the gap, and in the long term, I don't think that is going to work.

This isn't having a pop at parents at all, parents have jobs, other things in their lives and it is probably unrealistic to expect them to be popping down to the local pub to pick up the kid's food on a regular basis.

You only have to see how pressuried people feel to be part of the PTA etc. many people feel (and I have sympathy with this view) that important things, like computers and books, should need to be funded by PTA activities, they should be funded bt taxes, and I bet even more people will feel that way about school food.

This needs a major input of government funding, not stop gap measures, however well intentioned.

couldn't believe how highly pissed off Tony Blair looked. Never seen him look so cross, not even when being quizzed by Jeremy Paxton re Iraq!

He probably had to interrupt v. important war on terror phone calls to US and France etc to speak to 'bloody' Jamie Oliver (as I'm sure he called him before the cameras started rolling). Always know when Tony is cross as he starts his sentence with 'Look....' and he did that last night.

Not suggesting that our kids eating crap isn't important, but imagine having Iraq on your plate and you have a right old geezer wheezing wiv ya.

Love Jamie really!

I missed the first half of this so didn't see the bit about the pub but gather it was a bit of a state. Am now feeling a bit that people seem to be assuming that all pub kitchens are the same. We had a family-run pub for 10 years with a very good reputation for food and there was never a problem with cleanliness. In fact the enviromental health officer told us that he wouldn't be checking up on us as often as usual because we had such a good record and were considered 'low risk'. So there!

Anyway, rant over . Admire jamie's energy and commitment, love Nora, thought bit with Tony Blair was pointless as I was shouting at the tv "don't hold your breath Jamie!". When has TB ever kept his word about anything?

Pixel - if you mean me - I don't My Uncle is a chef - and all his kitchens have been immaculate (and he does great family barbeques too, yum). I just think Jamie O was taking it far too much on trust that all the kitchens he was assigning to schools were run to the same standards as his. Too much of a leap of faith to take especially when you are feeding little ones, imo.

I think TB would have promised the moon on a stick, tbh - he knows he's not going to be there to look bad if these things are not followed through.

As an aside - did anybody see this thing in the papers about Tony's worry lines being in the shape of a "W"? I could really see it on his forehead last night as well. Freaky.

Oh, and that reminds me of the time when I looked in the mirror and whined to then-not-yet-dh "I have wrinkles on my foreskin"
The perils of talking in a foreign language...

It's ok Marthamoo the red mist has cleared and as I said, I didn't see all of it.

Actually you make a good point because I'm sure I read somewhere that some schools are stopping children taking in home-made cakes for cake sales in case their kitchens at home aren't up to standard (pathetic really, has anyone ever heard of poisoning by fairy cake?) so it seems against the grain for schools to allow food to be brought in every day in the ways suggested. Perhaps JO just has a lot of faith in enviromental health inspectors? He can be a bit too trusting sometimes poor love, witness his belief that he actually got a promise out of TB .

A bit off-topic but am I the only one who thought TB choked a bit when Jamie offered to give him a cookery lesson? Just before he said "I'd like that".

I didn't imagine it did I?

quite sure Jamie is a thorn in tony's side. Still, as has been said, when GB takes over he can easily say "£240m for kids dinners??? Never saw that memo!"

Yes, he did choke, Pixel, I loved that bit too
I think that meeting will be shown in years to come in docs about the fall of TB - there was just so much in there worthy of comment.

Don't think GB can get out of it that easily. After all, how many millions saw Tone promise it on television??

Jamie does cut through the crap though - but then it's easy in his position. He has always said there's no way his kids are going to be exposed to typical school diners, because they'll go to private schools (of course) - but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't want something done about the state of kids school dinners in state schools. Yes it's a lot of good publicity for him - but look at all the hares he's started running. Somthing good will come out of it - the one thing that did come out of the programme this week is just what has happened to the money promised, and just how little it is per head per school at the end of the day.

If JO was a reasonable, even handed chap he wouldn't be good TV, and he probably wouldn't get things done. I think on the whole he's been great for kids nutrition and its national profile - lets face it, you've never heard of Annabel Karmel unless you've got small kids - but I'm glad I don't have to live with him or work for him!

Love the 'project' and something has been achieved but tbh without someone 'famous' pushing TB etc the government won't fund it and its the only way it can be done.

At my school we had major building work done last year, whilst this was getting arranged the head asked for a school kitchen to be built on (was just going to be extending current dt kitchen) and we weren't allowed as there is a waiting list!It will now involve taking down new walls and cost twice as much!alll down to governemnt/county council regs