Felicity Lawrence (who she? Ed) manages to get incredibly confused while talking about school meals.

The average spent on the
ingredients of a child’s school meal in England and Wales is 35p. The
army spends four times that feeding its dogs each day.

Fancy that, we are meant to say, us Brits, kinder to our animals than our children! Only one problem with the comparison…a school meal is one of several eaten in a day while the number for the dog is for 24 hours. This is however a quibble compared with the idiocy that follows:

To reverse the
industrialisation of school meals will cost. We know because they have
tried it in Scotland already. Schools there are using the
nutrient-based standards for school meals. They have had to invest
£63.5m over three years in better ingredients. For primary schools
alone in England and Wales to do the same would need an initial
investment of £200m a year.

Spending on ingredients is not investment. It is current spending. It may or may not be a good idea to spend money on better or different school meals but please, can we at least have a little economic rationality in the debate? Or even some basic accountancy? If I were to improve the quality of food in the staff canteen (which I don’t have but you get the meaning) and then put it in the accounts as investment I would be dragged off to jail by irate taxmen soon after the auditors recovered from their laughing fits. I know everyone has caught the mania, investment good, spending bad, but please, can we at least get it right on something as basic as this? Buying hand fed, free range, organic tofu to feed to the ankle biters is current spending, not investment.