boris

i have a soft spot for boris johnson, he is one of those people who oozes affability. it might be that he doesn’t seem to care about his appearance; it might also be that he has an ability to put his foot in it.
recently he has had a pop at jamie oliver’s campaign to improve school dinners by introducing healthier food into schools. attacking saint jamie seems to be a no no.

jamie shot to fame as a mockney chef (now of all the breeds of celebrity chefs are among the ones that make me go why? i am expecting there to be celebrity dry cleaners at some point). to his credit he has turned his celebrity status to some good, training kids to be chefs and his hectoring of the government to improve school dinners.
the school dinner campaign coincided with the recent media quake over obesity in children. there seemed to be lots of studies to discover the causes and a lot of hand wringing. it will be no surprise to one and all that the causes of obesity in children (and in many adults) can be listed as: eating too much, eating too much that is not healthy and not exercising enough. it is not rocket science.

obviously a healthy person is preferable to an unhealthy person, so getting kids to eat properly in schools is a good way to start.
jamie oliver has gotten the government to make a start.
the bbc has allegedly caught boris sounding off about the campaign.
"if i was in charge, i would get rid of jamie oliver, tell people to eat what they like." (boris)

with this boris is showing some support with the two mums who are selling ”junk” to school kids who are sick of the low fat rubbish.

no one will be surprised that boris has denied the story (the bbc are standing by it) or that the conservatives have been on the dog and bone to jamie (see what i did there?) to say whatever boris said it wasn’t endorsed by the tory party. after all don’t want to upset jamie.
(though you would have preferred them to say “hey boris says he didn’t say it, we believe him so there is no need to contact jamie and apologise.” the cynical pat thinks: “mmm no smoke without fire, if they have apologized they know he said something…”

but guess what i am with boris, and i am agreeing with boris for a number of reasons.
lets deal with the ones that matter to the conservatives. they have banged on about personal responsibility and what you eat is really a question of personal taste and personal choice. if you end up as a fat bloater kid – well it’s what you and your parents wanted.

under a future conservative government any issues to do with health will also be a matter of personal choice, because hey we are going to cut your taxes and that means cutting your services so you can use that windfall of tax to pay your medical bill.
but the tories can’t say that – so they talk about cultural change. cameron’s sound-bite was along the lines of “more supernanny rather than nanny state.” it got the expected round of applause even though we all know it is a fatuous piece of hyperbole.

why do you say that pat? easy. jamie may have gotten the ball rolling on the school dinner issue – but who has made sure it has changed? who has provided the funds for the schools to improve the food? was it jamie? no. was it local businesses? no. oh it would be the nanny state.

the tories get upset when the labour government make proclamations about how people should live – because the state shouldn’t interfere, but it is ok for a celebrity chef to do so. yeah that works.
the tories often say that they are the party of personal choice, and cameron has said that they are not a party of pr style. in spinning against the alleged boris story they are actually denying personal choice and they are jumping onto a populist bandwagon.

now steve richards, in the independent (and yes i would like to link to it – but the indie expects you to pay…) has mentioned a couple of things. he points out that while jamie gets the credit it is the government that has implemented and carried out the changes, because that is what governments do. he also points out that why are school dinners bad? mmm it might be because the tory party when it was last in power outsourced school dinners and they were awarded to contractors with the lowest bid (and they are looking for profit).

why don’t kids exercise – could it be that the tories started off the selling of school playing fields? yeah that might be an answer.

so strike two for the tories.

the pity of it is that labour stuck to rigidly to the tory game plan. the irony is that the tories think that they were wrong for doing it.
the tories are quick to go on about a small state and on about social responsibility of the individual and the corporation. we can see how responsible business can be when they can make money selling crap turkey twizzlers to schools to feed the kids.
the tories may have found some new buzzwords and cute phrases but it is pretty certain that if they get back in power it will be business as normal.
at least with boris there is less of the sound-bite and less of the porkie pies…..

(sorry)