Let them eat cake, but no cameras: British council gags 9 year old school lunch blogger

A nine year old British school girl has had her popular blog about school food closed by a local council. Martha Payne, a primary school student in Western Scotland, began posting photos of her school dinners with commentary in May and today ‘Never Seconds‘ passed more than 2 million page views.

The site became more than just her school lunches, as Martha included photos and stories sent to her by readers from across the world. Upon realising that the site had become popular, Martha channelled the attention positively and began to ask readers to contribute towards her target of a £7,000 donation to Africa school food charity Mary’s Meals.

Writing her goodbye entry, Martha — whose pen name is ‘Veg’ — explained that she had banned from bringing the camera to school following media coverage of the blog:

This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.

Martha is the sole contributor but her Dad, Dave, stepped in to add a little extra context, explaining that the school was following orders from the council:

I felt it’s important to add a few bits of info to the blog tonight. Martha’s school have been brilliant and supportive from the beginning and I’d like to thank them all. I contacted Argyll and Bute Council when Martha told me what happened at school today and they told me it was their decision to ban Martha’s photography.

It is a shame that a blog that today went through 2 million hits, which has inspired debates at home and abroad and raised nearly £2,000 for charity is forced to end.

Time’s Maryn McKenna calls the move to prevent Martha’s blogging “monumentally stupid”,  and we can only echo those sentiments.

In an era when many worry about what children eat (and, more importantly desire on their plate) and fuss over a generation that is accused of being short on attention and poor on grammar, Martha’s blog is an overwhelmingly positive example.

She had the media, and most importantly parents and kids, talking about the important issue of school lunches, and her blog even kickstarted her school into introducing an ‘unlimited salads, fruit and bread’ policy.

It’s quite obvious that the blog caused the local authorities to make changes to the lunches, such was the poor quality of them initially.

Here’s what was served up on May 8:

As her posts continued, so the quality of the food improved significantly, and this was lunch on June 6 – less than a month of photos later:

In one entry, Martha explains that the members of the council came to the school to introduce an improved menu:

Today was very different at lunchtime. Dad had already told me beforehand that some people from the Council were coming to lunch with a reporter from our local paper. There was also a new system for ordering food which I’ll explain when I understand it more. I didn’t see the visitors having lunch but I saw them hovering about and watching us getting served.

We’ve contacted Argyll and Bute Council for comment, although they have not yet released a formal statement of any kind explaining exactly why Martha is being silenced from the ruling.

The story has gained plenty of attention and one plus has been that donations for Mary’s Meals passed £2,000 since the final entry, with the total figure now sat at £2,708.20, at the time of writing.

It remains to seen if more attention can see Martha hit her £7,000 target.

Those wanting to contact Argyll and Bute Council in protest can contact the website or tweet to @argyllandbute.

All images via Never Seconds

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