Fast food school ban? (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

Talking about 'closing the stable door' after the horse has bolted? Look at the takeaway shops in the stretch of Lea Bridge Road between and the Bridge in Lea Bridge Road. At lunch time crowds of kids eat 'special offer kids lunchtime specials'. Pizza for a pound, chicken and chips for a pound. there are too many already open and its too little too late. There are so many that they are forced into mass competition with each other and have had to slash their prices.
They then save money by neglecting hygiene. Look at the recent Walthamstow guardian reports stating that about 18 shops have been forced to close by Health Inspectors.

If schools provided decent cooked food everyday, kids would not want to eat all the rubbish churned out by these shops anyway.

Whilst I agree with most of Berts points I would also add that a lot of parents are at fault.

When I go to my local mini supermarket in the morning, theres mothers, & fathers, buying their kids sweets & crisps for their kids, which i assume is their breakfast!

And your comment about school dinners is now not correct. From September all schools have to keep to new Government rules about what the schools can & cant have on their menus. If you go on the Waltham Forest site it has the Junior school menus in full but the Secondary schools also have healthy items on their menus.

"If schools provided decent cooked food everyday, kids would not want to eat all the rubbish churned out by these shops anyway. "

Yes they would. They don't see it as "rubbish", thanks to parents who eat the same way. A major problem is that some parents expect the schools to raise their children for them.

I think there is a connection between this story and the other one in your paper about highlighting new statistics that more than half of all children in Waltham Forest are living in or on the brink of poverty.

Its easy to preach about the quality of the food sold in these shops (much of which is actually not that bad for you if only eaten occasionally as part of an otherwise nutritious diet), but the fact remains that it is cheap and it is sometimes all there is available to people who do not have much disposable income.

I would prefer the council to stop looking at symptoms and start considering causes, one of which is a lack of investment in real jobs (the nonsense being offered by Reed in Partnership doesn't cut it in my view). One really significant factor is the massive drain on our economy locally being perpetrated by the likes of Coral, Collins Ltd Ladbrokes, Metrobet, the Tote and Paddy Power, who are sucking vast sums of money out of the area through the losses of local gamblers. This money never comes back. I am not against gambling, but only in places which can afford it and on a reasonable scale. The scale is not reasonable in Waltham Forest. Other participants in this cash-hoovering operation are the pawn shops and firms like Oakam, which charges 442% interest on loans. These places shoulld be shut down immediately. While all these operations are allowed to continue to 'market' their grasping 'services', are we surprised that the local economy is not meeting its full potential and there is no 'spare cash' about for a decent diet for the children of the poor?

Cynucal I might be, but are we not less than 19 months from the council elections? How many more gimmicks will Loakes and his jokes come up with in that time? It won't make up for sitting on their butts for the last 29 months.