I was watching BBC Breakfast, I know, big mistake.  There was an item on healthy school dinners or, at least, what the government thinks represents healthy school dinners.  Now, I switched on too late to see the start but the gist was that here was a school that had contracted out its catering (golly would you believe that I proposed the very own thing to my own school some 2x years ago - precocious or what?) The outcome (according to the pupils interviewed) was much better choice and quality, the implication being that here was a scheme that could be rolled out to the rest of the country.

Hmm.  The assumptions were that:

• safety/being healthy is the only thing - they aren’t
• the government knows what is healthy
• the pupils were being entirely straight and honest.
• the government could roll this out to other schools around the country

I think I disagree with them all.

Q&A

So, lying, dissembling 16-year olds?
You’ve kind of answered your own question.  Plus the desire to get on the telly (best to say what the nice TV people want to hear).  Plus the desire not to piss off the head teacher in exam year.  Plus, the sort of feeling that most us labour under: “I know I ought to eat lettuce but I want to eat Mars Bars.”  - the difference between what we say and what we do.

And rolling it out?
The more I watched the more I was reminded of those Potemkin villages where everything was wonderful which Eastern Bloc countries kept going to show off to anyone who questioned the wonders of communism. What are the chances that this school had been given all sorts of carrots and sticks unavailable to others to make the switch?  High, I should think.

Doctor Crippen describes the latest safety-inspired madness.  Junior doctors have been banned from prescribing.  But because learning how to prescribe has always been an on-the-job business it means that in future none of them will be able to prescribe.  And so, in the name of safety, the world is about to become a more dangerous place. Again.

Possibly.  It’s by no means certain.  Of course, they might realise their folly, introduce a training scheme and the nurse practioners that the good Doctor so fears might well do a perfectly good job.  Might.  But, then again, this is the government so the likelihood is that they’ll just screw it up as usual.

Incidentally, while I have a great deal of time for Doctor Crippen when it comes to his hatred of nurse practioners I think he’s barking up the wrong tree.  It all smacks rather too much of wanting to preserve a closed shop.  Which I am against.  That’s not to say that I support the government here.  While it might be perfectly sensible to have nurses (and others) doing work normally performed by doctors this is a government scheme and it’s bound to screwed up.  See above.

Maybe not (registration required).  Hat-tip Marginal Revolution

From James Bartholomew:

The Inspectors are laughably ignorant about the actual work, literally, I once had to leave the room because I had a fit of the giggles.

The quote is actually about care homes but it could be about anything.

God made the world in seven days, but it was a fairly bleak and hopeless place full of volcanoes and sharks. On the eighth day, however, man got cracking and as home improvements go, did a monumentally good job. He created light, warmth, the potato crisp and the dishwasher.

Jeremy Clarkson praises engineering.

Wise words on speed cameras:

Contrary to the slogans, speed does not kill…What kills is bad driving

Mark Ellott

Magic mushrooms to be banned. Well, thank flip for that.  I’m just going to feel soooo much safer.

KILLER FACT!
Luxembourg has both the world’s highest alcohol consumption, and the world’s highest GDP per capita.

Harry Hutton