Fun Police: #2 Don't let them eat cake

Olivia Morris turned 9. Her great grandma baked her a cake to take to school. It was put on display at morning assembly, and everyone sang "Happy Birthday", then she blew out the candles.

Then the cake was left to be.

Why?

Because it doesn't comply with the school's new healthy eating rules.

Her school is Rockingham Junior and Infant School in Rotherham, England. It is well known, if only because it is the school Jamie Oliver launched his campaign for healthier eating at schools.

Head Teacher Heather Green said it would be a "mixed message" if cakes were brought in whilst the school promotes healthy eating. Joyless bint.

The story is in the Daily Telegraph.

Of course this silly little do-gooder forgets that denying children ANY "unhealthy" food simply raises the desire to have it, it makes it forbidden, which of course makes anything far more attractive and interesting. Kids are more likely to secretly covet such food, binge on it, and then show themselves as healthy openly.

Olivia and her friends didn't miss out though. You see AFTER school she took the cake, and celebrated her birthday with her friends outside school, where they shared cake - away from the tentacles of Heather Green and zee Rockingham Junior Re-Edukation Kamp. Just to show how distant education gets from the needs of parents when it is bureaucrats and schools doing what they see is best, not those who pay for it.

Olivia doesn't YET live in a world where such puritanical nonsense is compulsory everywhere.

Zimbabwe's government becoming unstuck

The Times reports that Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has announced that the MDF will "disengage" from the unity government of Zimbabwe citing Zanu-PF as being dishonest and unreliable.

This of course is like discovering that the sun appears every morning, but give Tsvangirai his due, he tried. Whilst South Africa should have facilitated the overthrow, trial and impeachment of Mugabe and his Zanu-PF mafia, it co-ordinated a shameful compromise, which has largely failed.

The issue is Roy Bennett, a MDF MP who has been arrested after his farm was confiscated by Mugabe's goons. Zanu-PF itself is not concerned.

In essence, the issue has not gone away. The only sane solution for Zimbabwe appears to involve force - to overthrow Zanu-PF's power base, arrest Mugabe and take this sad country back from the criminal gang that has run it for so long.

Sadly, the lesson of Africa is that collectively, only a minority of African leaders have any conscience for the suffering of Africans, they are more often that not, gangsters themselves running their countries like feudal lords, granting favours, profiting exhorbitantly, and not showing the slightest interest in being accountable.

Venezuela inches further towards dictatorship

Nobody is surprised that the latest pinup of the far left - Hugo Chavez - is continuing to prove himself to be a thieving mobster. Anyone with delusions that he is some benevolent strongman helping the poor does need to reconsider this view.

Now he is seizing golf courses, because golf is a bourgeoisie sport.

Only a week ago he seized the Hilton Hotel on Margarita Island because of "the need to boost tourism", although Hilton had a concession to use it, it did not own the hotel.

It's becoming clear Venezuela is not a place where foreigners owning land can feel safe from theft. Previous nationalisations have been at taxpayer expense, spending a set price to buy the telecommunications and electricity sectors. Last year he took over the cement and steel sectors as well.

The inevitable outcome will be more poverty, and the ever creeping control over the media, as Chavez refuses to tolerate debate or dissension.

Fun Police: #1 BOGOF

You might not know what BOGOF means - it is Buy One Get One Free in the UK.

Great, you may say. Effectively half price for two items, particularly welcome for families or for goods that can be frozen or readily stored. I have used BOGOF many times, for everything from yoghurt to chips to chocolate to fresh fruit.

Oh no, say the food police, it encourages you to buy more than you otherwise would, making you fat and unhealthy, and that costs taxpayers. So the wagging finger of the "do as we say" crowd want it to end. I can just imagine Sue Kedgley jumping on this in a moment, insisting that for "unhealthy food" 2 for 1 is just morally wrong. Others say it encourages "food waste" as people buy 2 for 1 and don't use 2, so throw it away. Oh the outrage, maybe there are kids in Africa who'd love what is being thrown away?

Sarah Vine in the Times takes on such people saying:

One of the great follies of our age is that there are a lot of people who abhor the idea of affordable food. They think that poor people are fat because the food that they eat is too cheap and too plentiful. If everyone paid a bit more and ate a bit less, they reason, we’d all be a lot healther and happier.

They are the people who prefer to go to shops which harp on about the quality of their products, and who think local shops (you know the ones that are overpriced with a poor range, until a supermarket comes near) are just a glorious example of what is great. The most successful supermarkets are most loathed, as she says

Of the supe(r)markets, Tesco is the one most commonly despised by the hug-your-cow-before-you-put-a- bullet-through-its-head snobs. Quite why this should be is not clear, as Tesco sells exactly the same produce as its rivals.

Sadly Tesco is succumbing to the Stasi like attitude so many have of giving a damn about what other people buy or eat.

If you don't like a BOGOF deal then don't buy it. Some people love it, some people don't, it is a way of managing inventory through price and gives consumers a great deal if they need more than one. If people waste food, it is their money, the food biodegrades, it isn't your business.

It's just sad this culture of control is now so ingrained with government than the private sector succumbs to lobbying by people who want to control what people buy, because they think they know better than others.

I'd just tell them to BOGOF, sanctimonious little petty fascists as they are.

Miners' Strike repeat?

You probably haven't heard of Billy Hayes. He heads the Communication Workers Union which is in charge of the rolling strike action at Royal Mail. He's digging his heels in saying "I'm stronger than Arthur Scargill" according to an interview in The Times.

He says this is because he does have a balloted mandate for the strike (unlike Scargill who opposed secret ballots so standover tactics could be used to intimidate miners who wanted to work), and while coal can be stockpiled and sourced elsewhere, mail delivery is more difficult to replicate.

However, it is not impossible. Royal Mail is financially on its knees, partly due to the recession, but mostly because it remains in the dark ages with technology and work practices, and competition in the postal market has seen the private sector take a good chunk of the business mail market. Meanwhile, online communications eats into the private individual market for letters.

My own experience of the Royal Mail has rarely been inspiring. The postman who wouldn't bother to ring the bell to deliver a parcel, but rather place a card in the box so you have to go to the central delivery office to pick it up - presumably because he was too lazy to carry parcels. How about the one who wouldn't enter the premises to go upstairs because "he wasn't insured" to climb stairs. Funnily enough neither am I, and there is a lift, but he was having none of it.

This sort of communist-bloc attitude to service is helping kill it off.

A union led by a man on a salary that is anything but working class.

The response, I suspect, is that Royal Mail's competitors will have even more of a bumper time. The main gap in the market is the more difficult service for the general public, not helped by the unnecessary layers of regulation for the "deregulated" postal market.

Anyone should simply be able to collect mail, establish post boxes and deliver as they see fit. Removing as many barriers as possible to this sort of competition would help drive a thriving postal sector, bring benefits to entrepreneurs, prospective employees and consumers, and give more reason to privatise the Royal Mail.

However, the likelihood this moribund Labour Government could offer any inspiration to take on the CWU is little beyond zero.