AS a citizen journalist, nine-year-old Martha Payne has proved herself a dogged and effective campaigner.
So much so that she provoked Argyll and Bute into adopting the cowardly response of authoritarian regimes faced with an uncomfortable truth: censorship.
The Lochgilphead primary pupil photographed her school lunch to convince her father that her complaints about always being hungry were valid. Her first photograph showed a single, small croquette with a small square of pizza , three thin slices of cucumber and an ice lolly, because the ice cream had run out. It had the desired effect. Dad was shocked, the blog was started, a meeting with the council resulted in Martha recording: "It's official that we are allowed unlimited salads, fruit and bread!".
She had also unwittingly harnessed the power of the internet. The combination of pictures of the stark meals and Martha's honest appraisals (with frequent high ratings for soups, macaroni cheese and vegetables) struck such a chord with the current concern about children's diets that she received responses from all over the world. Pupils from Finland to Taiwan sent photographs of their own school lunches for comparison, Parents said they now understood why their children complained about the food and teachers provided encouragement and their own good and bad examples. Jamie Oliver called her blog "shocking but inspirational", and Nick Nairn invited her to cook a demonstration dish with him at a conference on school meals. Unfortunately, that led to a "Time to fire the dinner ladies" headline.
Argyll and Bute Council has sought to protect its staff (although they were never criticised on the blog) and forbade any more photographs of school lunches. It was the wrong target and as nonsensical as banning all photography in Glasgow's subway stations.
Far from shutting down criticism (just as the lunches were showing marked improvement) this hasty and heavy-handed response caused an understandable storm of protest, resulting in a 10-fold increase in donations through Martha's blog to the charity Mary's Meals, which provides food for children in the poorest areas of the world. Yesterday the charity announced it would build a school kitchen in Blantyre, Malawi with the astonishing £20,000 raised. That is success on anyone's terms.
Belatedly, and apparently after intervention by the Education Secretary Michael Russell, the MSP for the area, the council recognised the extent of its PR blunder and rescinded the ban on photographing meals. The story of Martha's lunches has a happy ending for children in Argyll and Malawi but it leaves unfinished business for councillors and officials. While Martha's blog has demonstrated the positive power of the internet, the potential danger for children with unsupervised access is just as great, as we have seen again this week with the arrest of 100 people who have indecent images of children. Schools must have proper rules to protect childrenbut these rules should not extend to protecting councils from scrutiny.
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