West Berkshire schoolchildren routinely fingerprinted, SCHOOLCHILDREN are being routinely fingerprinted in some West Berkshir Options

[dannyboy]

Why can't schools simply employ 'good plain cooks' and let them get on with it? It would take a brave parent to take on a Ruth Mott!

Then you'd have to actually employ them, with all that entails - pay wages, contribute to pensions, holiday pay, sick pay, training etc etc.

Far better to sack all the cooks & get in some 'outside contractors' who employ servers who need 20mins training on how to operate a microwave & brat pan.

It is the same with the school caretaker, who in the good old days would be on site & ready to repair / do small maintenance jobs. Now it means calling in the FM firm & paying through the nose to have some bloke drive 50 miles to change a light bulb. But at least you have saved the £25k the caretaker / janitor was costing.

[motormad]

Touchy, Andy. Bang your head on the bog roll holder or something?
For one I very much enjoyed my burger and chip filled lunches.
If you (or some others) disagree then that's fine. But my point is the choice which was there was taken away from us. And while a lot of adults think they know what's best, the fact is they don't actually know much more than the kids they are controlling.

[motormad]

Some things were cheaper, but wages were less, so you can't do a direct comparison between the price of a Coke in 1975 & 2005, without knowing what is actually is you want to compare ( commodity prices, income, realative wealth etc etc ).

For instance, a Matchbox car in the late 70s was £0.44. Yet today the 'equivalent' in Tesco etc is only just over £1.00. Is it fair to say that toy cars have only gone up by about £0.80?

No, that's fair enough.

But I guess if we compare the prices of staple foods, bread, cheese, milk, basically the things that would go into these "delicious and wholesome" meals..
Eg Milk is ridiculous compared to 10 years ago. :S

[Andy Capp]

For one I very much enjoyed my burger and chip filled lunches.

As a child, so would have I, and on occasion that is what we had too.

If you (or some others) disagree then that's fine. But my point is the choice which was there was taken away from us. And while a lot of adults think they know what's best, the fact is they don't actually know much more than the kids they are controlling.

That has nothing to do with it. Nutritional guidance is the same now as it was years ago. My point is still, why can we not feed our children properly, and why do parents, as a whole, apparently not care. We used to be able to afford to have cooks on site, but now we don't.

[dannyboy]

Eg Milk is ridiculous compared to 10 years ago. :S

Do you mean that the cost of milk today is ridiculous compared to 10 years ago? Higher, or Lpwer?