Run - away train!

You can always tell when I get bored! Decided to turn my 50 year old toy train into a flower pot! You can so tell I was a tomboy with toy trains!

Been following the lovely story of the wee lass from Lochgilphead primary school who started some sort of project where she kept a blog of her measly school dinners. For one reason or another this story took off like a run away train (like my link with the pic) and it grew arms and legs 7 gathered steam!
If you want to follow the ,Google Martha Payne school dinners and you can follow the entire story. Anyhows to cut a long story short, those employed(?) at Argyll & Bute Cooncil didnt like the publicity their school dinners and God knows what else was receiving so they .....banned her from taking any more photos of the said measly school fayre.
At the same time as this little 9 year old was blogging about her school dinners, she was also trying to raise funds for a very worthy and under rated local charity called Marys Meals (Google that too) and had a target of £7000. A very big target I thought for a wee lass!
Now bear in mind this is the cooncil who had a Communications Officer who went off on some jolly and gave a presentation and let slip that said cooncil was creating fake , yes thats right..fake facebook accounts to spy on anyone who may be critical of this cooncil. Thats another story (Google that one too) you can get such good entertainment out of our wonderful cooncil!

I digress! The cooncil communicated their displeasure to that individual by showing her her jotters! then two other cooncil employees were suspended or what ever becasuse wait for it... (this council has an internal spy system and it picked up some not nice remarks these two or was it three workers were making about those higher up the cooncil food chain.) This has perphaps highlighted the cooncil has a wee communications problemo! well it just got bigger!
Now where was I? Ah yes, They (cooncil) dragged the said wean oot her class and presented her to the Heidy and said your cannae take any more picture of our deluxe school dinners as that red top rag the Daily ReKord has said some sniffy things aboot our lovely dinner ladies and noo they are all crying into the soup which you will be eating later today! so quit it!
Now this 9 year old wants to be a journalist ( I say just give her her English Higher now and let her work for the Daily Rekord !)

I digress again! Oh yes , that other social network Twitter got a hold of the story last night and boy did it run and run and was trending world wide. The upside of this being that the said young lady raised not just 7000 for Marys Meals but Im told a staggering 30,000!!! those of you who are more numerate than I should double check this incase I have placed a zero in the wrong place!
The DOWNSIDE was for the cooncil who have been universally booed off the world stage! I kid ye not (did I say Google it) Now apart from going viral on the tinternet, those with a political bent have also scented failure or victory which ever side of the political divide you are on.
Then LIVE no less on Radio 4 that station for great intellects which probably half the cooncil have never heard off, the Heid bummer of the ruling political conglomerate goes live on air and says the cooncils descision has been reversed!!! apparantly its good to be able to change ones mind and so indeed it is.
The conclusion of this lenghty tale I cannont think of as I myself have lost the thread and possibly the reader the will to live! I suppose the conclusion could be lots of things like
Give the weans better food
Stop using the dinner ladies as scape goats
Be nice to little 9 year old lassies whose mummy is one of the local doctors!!!
Get a new team of Communications people that can actually communicate!
At least the new administration have jumped in to try to quell the situation though no doubt someone will manage to fan the flames more by tomorrow but in the meantime things have simmered down and the angelic wee lass has made a mint for the charity Marys Meals and the big bad cooncil can sleep better. Anyone want to be their Communications Officer???

Finally I should say that the majority of Council staff: dinner ladies, cleaners, jannies, classroom assistants even teachers, bin men etc all work very hard. Its the suited bean counters at the top that should be brought to boot! A recent survey among some Scottish councils worked out the average spend on school dinners per child was between 80 - 85 pence a kid! A tin of bog standard dog or cat food costs 85 -95 pence! Dont blame the dinner ladies folks, rather ask what do the 3 if not more Quality Improvement Officers this council employs at over 40 grand each are doing for your child!
Perhaps the newley elected administration will start sorting this mess out. soon. Good luck guys.


Happy blipping