Ministry of Food

How cozy it is in the Blair New World. Children are being "encouraged" to eat healthier meals at school and if they don't, they can take comfort in the knowledge that an officially approved snitch will rat on them, as this report in The Times assures us (emphasis added).

Parents who do persist with the Tupperware shouldn’t be surprised if they are quizzed on its contents. In Greenwich, where Oliver’s eating revolution has finally taken hold, children tell tales to teacher about suspect snacks.

David Ashley, headmaster of Greenslade primary, says that pupils who bring in packed lunches “are allowed chocolate on a biscuit but not a Mars bar”. If such sweeties are spotted, parents are called in for a quiet word.

At Charlton Manor primary, the head, Tim Baker, says: “Children get stickers for healthy boxes . . . If a child brings in a chocolate bar, we take it out of the lunchbox and give it back to the parent at the end of the day.” Pupils give each other away, he confides: “They say, ‘Miss, he’s got sweets in his box’."

Hopefully, the informant's fellow pupils show him their deep-felt gratitude for his spying on their counter-revolutionary confections-- at the end of the day in a large group behind the bike sheds.