You'll Eat What We Tell You

Pin your ears back for some more bansturbating nonsense. This time, from Waltham Forest Council.

A fast food outlet has been shut down for setting up too close to a school.

Police and council officials raided Bamboo Joint in Leytonstone, east London, to post a closure order because the takeaway broke new rules which ban hot foot outlets near schools, parks or leisure centres.

Yes, you read that right. Raided by police. For selling jerk chicken.

It's further fallout (as referenced here previously) from Jamie Oliver's best-selling TV series, which has led to a frenzy of mutual climax-inducing totalitarianism from the righteous.

Here's the timeline. The mockney moron produces a show which, quite rightly, points out the dearth of healthy options in school meals. Ed Balls, being the prize wanker that he is, jumps on the celebrity bandwagon and demands kneejerk action.

"There is no point in banning junk food and raising the quality of lunches in schools, if teenagers can simply go to eat unhealthy food from neighbouring take-aways," says Mr Balls.

Therein completely missing the point of living in a free society and the concept of personal choice, but that's by the by. Waltham Forest, being a hellish combination of Labour idealistic bullshit and Liberal Social Democrat nodding-righteously-at-the-latest-fuckwit-fad, then scramble to be the first in the country to pass a byelaw which is so ill thought-out as to be laughable.

Waltham Forest will become the first local authority in the country to impose such rules.

The proposals will prevent chicken shops, burger bars and similar outlets from opening up within 400 metres of schools, parks and youth centres and restrict their opening hours.

Note that parks and youth centres have been added (as have leisure centres), it's important later.

Result? Self-regarding local authority nerds storm-trooping into a caribbean food outlet bolstered by the might of the Met.

Jamie, me ole' mukka, is this what you intended? Whaddya reckon, geezer?

[Clyde Loakes] added: "This fast food outlet has not got planning permission and has absolutely no chance of getting it, because of its proximity to a park and a school, so we're closing it down."

He's well hard, ain't he? Clyde Loakes, the hammer of the rice and peas cartel. He has even declared an 'exclusion zone' around schools, the obnoxious dictatorial cockmonger.

Bamboo Joint, which has been operating for about six weeks, is within the exclusion zones around Tom Hood Secondary School, Mayville Primary School and Langthorne Park.

According to Waltham Forest's own site, their councillors advocated that 400 metres was to be the arbitrary limit.

Councillors agreed on 24 March, that no new fast food outlets should open within 400 metres of schools, parks or leisure centres

Yet putting the postcodes into Freemaptools.com reveals that Tom Hood is 593 metres as the crow flies, and Mayville Primary 537 metres.

Were they sailing away, but with fryers primed, General Belgrano-like, or something? If it were my living being destroyed, I'd sue the fuckers, and I reckon I'd have a good case.

Jocular Jamie's drive (and as a result, Ed Balls's) was focussed on schools, remember. However, Waltham Forest, as you may have observed, threw a few other places into the equation, just for good measure.

So it all boils down to this business being persecuted simply because it is a spitting distance from Langthorne Park. Oliver's idea may have been a worthy one, but his crusade has been hijacked by a government minister desperate for attention, enacted by a council leader gagging to big up his sad, shitty existence, resulting in a business being shut down for being too close to where people freely go, people who might freely like to exercise their own choice to consume the food on offer.

Now for the obligatory (these days) fake charity bit.

Waltham Forest Council leader Clyde Loakes said: "Residents have told us they wanted us to take action against the proliferation of fast food outlets and we're doing exactly that."

This was, naturellement, done via a typical Labour 'public consultation'. Its circulation was 11,000 which garnered 304 replies. The council's consultation statement [pdf], though, heavily emphasised what they termed 'key respondents'. Head teachers and health professionals were prominent, but none more so than one Jack Winkler, who Waltham Forest deem as a bit of an expert.

Professor Jack Winkler, Director of Food and Nutritional Policy at London Metropolitan University expressed support for the document and provided the following key findings from a recent research paper "The School Fringe: what secondary school pupils buy and eat from the shops around their schools":

• Hot food takeaways contribute to the high fat diet of schoolchildren, and hence to their obesity. The food schoolchildren buy from nearby hot food takeaways contains 46% fat.

• All hot food takeaways offer child-size portions and child-size prices to local schoolchildren. Hence, they constitute powerful competitors to school canteens, used by most pupils who are allowed off the school premises at lunchtime.

I didn't see anything there about parks, did you?

Nor is there anything about parks in Prof Winkler's original report. He talked a lot about what kids eat.

The top ten foods bought in fringe shops included fizzy drinks, chocolate, sweets, crisps, cakes, biscuits and chips

That is, things that kids like, strangely enough. And a lot about where they buy such.

Many more purchases - 70% - were from supermarkets and newsagents.

Best ban those outlets within 400 meters 600 metres too, then. No? Why not?

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the fake charity. Here it is.

The report is intended to complement the work currently being done by the School Food Trust in improving the quality of school food in the UK.

As previously referenced.

The School Food Trust was established by the Department for Education and Skills in September 2005.

It won't surprise you to learn that this 'charity' receives nil voluntary donations, yet receives turnover of nearly £9m per annum which helps fund 6 employees earning a salary of £60k or more.

Seriously, how can anyone even think about voting for Labour, or the Illiberal Dems come to that?

Just this one story throws up the gamut of illiberalism, local political self-aggrandisement and political connivance. Government incompetence, local authority exaggeration of minor threats, enforcement of byelaws over and above those authorised by elected personnel, misuse of police resources, and the jackboot of healthism stamping on the face of choice and personal responsibility.

Meanwhile, another business lost and more back-slapping for the public sector.

I wish Labour would just fuck off.