TV food critic Prue Leith has urged pubs to serve hot lunches to schoolchildren to fight the recession.Not some of the pubs I’ve eaten in!
She said providing school meals would help pubs fend off closure and improve the quality of meals for pupils at schools with no catering facilities.
Writing in the Campaign for Real Ale magazine 'Beer', Miss Leith said: 'Many schools don't have kitchens or dining rooms so children have to sit in their classrooms or the playground.So what? Perhaps those ‘old codgers’ like it that way, and the landlord is happy to have them as customers, because they may not spend much, but at least he knows they won’t trash the place?
'Many pubs are empty miserable places at lunchtime, with a couple of old codgers supping their pints in silence in the gloomiest corner.
And if they are both happy, who the hell are you to tell them they must change?
'Having a troop of children in the pub would liven the place up no end, make a contribution to costs and solve a huge problem for the school.Because they don’t serve those in pubs, I suppose…?
'Children will learn how to use a knife and fork, talk to each other over a meal and widen their palate beyond pizza and chips.'
And I’ve been to pubs ‘livened up’ by children. But I haven’t been back since…
If school children are to be fed in pubs, how soon before pubs are prevented from selling alcohol?
ReplyDeleteDaft idea.
Fausty beat me to it .. .. ..
ReplyDeleteSchool kids won't want lunches in the local pub because you can't smoke there anymore.
ReplyDelete"If school children are to be fed in pubs, how soon before pubs are prevented from selling alcohol?"
ReplyDeleteNot long now, I suspect. Those that are left, anyway.
"School kids won't want lunches in the local pub because you can't smoke there anymore."
Heh! I wonder if they've erected those 'stub out boxes' behind the bike sheds now...?
No pub is going to be able to provide dinners at the price level of school meals, and they would be strapped to the level the councils are prepared to pay for the kids on free dinners. There would be food getting stamped into the carpets every day, together with the muck from their shoes. The few paying customers who occasionally call in for a pub lunch would never darken their doors again. The landlord and staff would have to be CRB checked. The liability insurance premiums would go through the roof.
ReplyDeleteIt's a ridiculous idea, on so many levels.
Children will learn how to use a knife and fork
ReplyDeleteNotice how the egalitarianism goes out the windows when inconvenient. One minute the oiks are equal but different to us in every way, the next they can't behave like us civilised people.
Apparently, expecting people to tawk 'n' rite like what uver peepal do is insulting, innit?, but to have them eat with their hands rather than cutlery is outbloodyrageous.