Oh what a dream start to the new week for the BBC. They instantly move in to exploit Cameron’s slap down of the idea that subsidised milk for under 5’s could be scrapped. There was an item here on it and then how do they start the 8.10am prime time slot – by Mr Humphyrs intoning “Maggie Thatcher – Milk Snatcher, catchy slogan”. The “nasty party” inferences were present and correct and then the conversation meandered to the need for “more State involvement” in the Nation’s health, brought up by John Humphyrs. This was an example of the interviewer using his opinions to lead the debate, thoroughly unprofessional but typical. I also note that Humphrys let Professor Ian Gilmore away with the unsubstantiated claim that the smoking ban had reduced heart attacks by 10%.
MAGGIE THATCHER, MILK SNATCHER!
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How many on this forum can remember the reality of school milk ? It wasn’t pleasant drinking frozen milk in winter and luke warm milk in May and June š
Even worse was the pointlessness of the state providing free milk to a school full of middle class and upper working class children. It may have made sense during WW2 but by the 70s it was a huge waste of money.
Maggie Thatcher ending school milk was one of the greatest days of my life. We were all forced to drink it. Milk left out of the fridge for a good few hours. Absolute yuck, like Humphry’s bias! He likes forcing what he thinks is good for us down our throats too! The sooner a party emerges to spare us of his overweaning ego and those like him on our airwaves the better.
Too true. I remember it, and it was awful.
Why anybody in this day and age thinks the state should provide milk to any child is beyond me. Other than those unfortunate enough to be in care of course.
As the BBC seem very upset about it I suggest that the £50 million be taken from the BBC budget to pay for it. I wonder how that would go down.
It is amazing how that silly slogan “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher” still has such ridiculous power, as if we were living in some starving refugee camp where a milk ration is a matter of life and death.
What the BBC fail to point out is that the milk ration goes back to the days when there was limited financial support from the welfare state. Now we give money out to any fat chav that gets pregnant. I’m sure they can afford to provide their kids with a drink of milk each day.
It was only ever a back-door subsidy for the dairy industry anyway, and well past it’s sell-by date…a feature it seemed to share with the milk after it had been left piled up in the playground for the morning in the heat.
Ironic side-effect of the media age that Heath had the (unintentionally) brilliant idea of promoting someone to a cutting position with a surname rhyming with “Snatcher”. That’s why no-one ever remembers that deeper cuts in school milk were made by Williams and Walker. The Left have all the good rhymes.
Having said that, “Edward Heath Milk Thief” would have worked š
John Redwood reminds us that free milk for the 11-18s was abolished by Labour in 1968.
Thatcher only cut milk for the 5-7s.
The BBC? Economical with the truth? Surely not!
Unrefrigerated milk at morning break. Either too warm or too cold
It started yesterday: Willetts was crucified around lunchtime and then on the BBC1 10:30 pm News we were treated to a 4 minute slot – yes: it’s that important! – concerning the fact that the government was not going to save £50 million pa (that’s pay for, what, 1,500 nurses?) by cutting out free milk to under-5s. Chakrabati almost wet herself over the news and, in her “impartial” analysis introduced a clip of Mrs T (only 40 years ago – but yesterday at the BBC) announcing the then cut in milk freebies contrasting with a clip of black (oh yes!) toddlers drinking milk. The message: Conservatives are mean and racist.
Thus the non-Labour government gets severe stick from the BBC for seriously considering but not, in the end, cancelling a (probably useless in health terms) freebie. I can’t imagine how the BBC could have created any more fuss had the cut gone ahead.
Professor Ian Shilmore, of the Royal College of Physicians, told the Today programme that the decision was “an interesting example of the government’s selective attention to evidence”.
He argued that while the lack of “cast iron” evidence on the health benefits of milk had led the coalition to consider ending the subsidy, evidence was being “ignored completely” in the reorganisation of NHS.
“I think it is giving us some mixed messages about the coalition government’s commitment to improving population health,” he said.
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Prof Ian, on message and on speed dial eh.
Who elected Shilmore, I never saw his name on a list of candidates? I do wish the doctor’s trade unions would do their proper job instead of just spreading scare stories with no basis in science. I blame the fact that some dozy nerk gave the likes of Shilmore computers.
I don’t disagree with anything said above. But if the Tories are so stupid that they couldn’t work out how the BBC would spin this before it got this far….
This ministerial proposal was the media-courting Cameron’s worst nightmare come to lurid life. A gift and a bonanza for the BBC.
Some new ministers may not have the media or politics background or the finely tuned-to-the-BBC antennae of Cameron and may have thought, wrongly, that their job was to approach their ministerial brief rationally.
Would free milk encourage BBC employees to move to Salford? š
Free Cocaine would do the trick.
I never minded the milk. We had a packed lunch from home which I ate with relish as I always enjoyed whatever home food I was given as a child and did not have to cope with the nonsense of TV chefs deciding I should eat something that I would hate. Down the hatch and then it was haring off to play sports or on some wild adventure. Did anyone here have the concentrated orange juice and cod liver oil which I think was either subsidised or free?
I’d forgot about the concentrated orange juice and the cod liver oil! Ah, happy days!!
When Today editor Ceri Thomas appeared on Feedback to defend his decision to completely ignore the story of Gordon Brown’s retraction in the House of Commons of his lies to the Chilcott Inquiry over defence spending, he said that the prime minister’s admission that he gave false evidence was a “one-fact story” that broke the previous day and had been widely covered by Radio 4’s other current affairs programmes on the day itself. He went on to say “Once he had said ‘I made a mistake’ there wasn’t a great deal more for us to explore”.
Well, the milk story was no less of a “one-fact story” that broke the previous day and had been widely covered by Radio 4’s other current affairs programmes on the day itself (“The World This Weekend” and “Westminster Hour” included.) And surely once Cameron had said ‘It ain’t gonna happen’ there wasn’t a great deal more for Today to explore.
And yet explore it they did!!
The BBC and their ‘one fact stories’ thousands of them every year, waiting for a story, any story that they can use to attack their political and ideological enemies and then they thrash that story to death.
A story that contradicts their narrative and agenda and that is critical of or implicates their friends in corruption and dishonesty is hidden. The BBC are kings of the one fact story and for them to claim that because a politician claimed he made a mistake is a bare faced lie of epic proportions because look at the mistakes Cameron has made and admitted to and still the BBC crow and linger and rehash those one fact stories!
THE BBC: ONE FACT STORIES FOR ONE SIDED PEOPLE WITH TWO FACES!
Please be fair Craig, how on earth does the Prime Minister of the day misleading the public over defence under-spending at time of war possibly compare to under-5’s not getting a free glass of milk from the state?
Slugging down a 1/4 pint shot of milk in sub zero temperatures used to give me a piercing headache.
We had jaffa cakes and rich tea. It was a very professional operation at Porters Grange school. Sarfend on sea, in 69-70.
You were spared an even worse headache, then. The standard school milk was a third of a pint, I believe.
Jaffa cakes and rich tea! š I didn’t have biscuits but wonderful home-made bread.
I remember school milk. It put me off milk for life. Plus it comes out of a cow’s tit.
much rather have it from a cow’s tit,rather than the cow’s ar se via the bbc
Yes, I agree with pretty much all the above points…but the real story is Dave’s complete lack of bottle (sorry!). As soon as something gets a bit of flak he goes AWOL. We don’t need a spineless spiv as leader when difficult and unpopular decisions have to be taken.
If this under-5’s had the vote Cameron would have won a landslide if he’d called an election over it.
Yes it was a third of a pint.
Sour milk always gave a school of that era its distinctive smell. That and boiled to destruction cabbage. And the trail of blood drops in the corridor, evidence of the latest nose bleed drama.
Ee bye gum, them wer’t days!
Did Labour restore the milk for kiddies, ‘cos I and the other Junior Bugs were certainly partaking c.1977 ?
Could have been that Kent was rehearsing for UDI and this was the first small step, but still……
Oh and we didn’t have nasty cabbage, which would have taken up valuable plate space reserved for the industrial quantities of boiled liver we had to neck down on a more or less daily basis. Yum !
(Except on the days when luncheon meat fritters were on the menu. Absolutely the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten to this day, and which I’ve never been able to recreate properly).
I thought this was just a suggestion brought up by someone assigned by Cameron to find ways to save money, and not an official plan or anything of the sort? The BBC has acted like it was a full-on policy already.
Kent County Council certainly had some funny ways. I lived in Thanet from the early 70s to mid 80s and I THINK they temporarily wangled something with Kent based milk producers.
I doubt if it was free though, unless there was early common market involvement.
Very nefareous.
Just out of interest, and I could have missed the BBC’s take on this, is it full fat, semi-skimmed or 1% fat milk that the corporation approves of ?
“Won’t somebody think of the poor vegan kiddies ?”
I would have thought that drinking homogenised, pasteurised EU milk, when you haven’t a clue what is in it or where it comes from is positively dangerous. I haven’t touched the stuff for years, just stick to Irn Bru.
The last time I tasted milk, it was disgusting. Anyone remember the lovely Jersey milk in the gold topped bottles ? Now that was real milk !
One of the questions on University Challenge last night was what gives Jersey or Guernsey (I forget which) milk its rich yellowy colour. The answer was beta carotene.