Badly handled

This issue seems to have been very badly handled by the head teacher, it could have been a great opportunity to teach Martha and other pupils how to make a complaint correctly, working within an organization. Sooner or later Martha is hopefully going to get a job and she certainly wouldn't get far by making her point in that manner from within a company or corporation. It's a pity the ban was overturned, she should have been taught how and when to self- publicize!

living fossils

Unfortunately the old school Miss Jean Brodie type teacher still exists. They call the police on their mobiles and get you questioned when you are merely taking pictures in a public place along with them, their kids, and everybody else, because you pose a threat to the stability of the realm. They do not accuse you of being a paedophile (the school agenda that is intent on making all children permanently scared of the male half of the population, oh no, but they use phrases like "data protection", to ensure their "data" (kids to you and me) are protected from the riotous indiscipline of their own, and the Murdoch media's dark and evil impure imaginations.

Then, as with us, they focus their frustrated ire on anyone in their school and in their care who wishes to express themselves freely in any way. So you get the Art teacher who FORCES a class of children to do His or Her project, because assessing and marking work done according to a child's individual choice and methodology requires the teacher to actually do some work.

Then you get the picture editors of newspapers, and magazines who have a fixed idea about how "their" paper should look AND what in their "opinion" constitutes a good photograph- I can remember being lectured in my final year at college by the Observer's picture editor on how to pose a prelate's hands- and so it goes, trundling on down through visual history, that visual and ideological dinosaurs conjoined with those who take the moral high ground to retain their own power combine to make all our lives tedious and boring.

comment not complaint

Gerald Peake, I'm not sure the intent of the blog was to complain. She is commenting on her meals. You think she should have been banned from making public comments about her meals? It seems to me she figured out for herself how and when to self-publicize and reached a far ranging audience at that. What's wrong with that?

http://fotozine.eu

She's already realised that the internet is the last bastion of free speech we have left. Good that she used it because your caring governments are already working out ways to stop you.

Wrong way round

"...unwarranted attacks on its school's catering service, which culminated in national press headlines which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs."

Wow. So their first concern was for their caterer - and presumably its profitability, their second for the employment prospects of the staff. A distant third is the "consumers" - in this case a rather captive market - and their perception of the service. Bottom of their list appears to be teaching young minds about freedom of expression, in preference giving a sharp lesson on the very British "resistance is futile" corporate mindset. The only genuinely useful lessons for anyone to take from this is that scoring unnecessary and very public own goals is humiliating and that the resulting humble pie tastes worse than school dinners.

A Forced Hand

My understanding of the issue was that a reactionary Scottish Tabloid made an issue of the blog, calling for the catering staff to be sacked. You could therefore understand that the Council were only trying to protect their employees. I doubt the ban would have been put in place had the tabloid taken a more sensible approach, however I dare say this doesn't sell newspapers....

Catering, is it secret work?

"Argyll and Bute Council wholly refutes the unwarranted attacks on its school's catering service, which culminated in national press headlines which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs,"
Well, the catering staff should learn about criticism and that they are not working in secrecy. It's good that so young children are fully aware on how to show their thoughts. In a world that is trying forbid us to think or complain about issues that affect us all.