This April, 9 year old Martha Payne of Western Scotland started a blog about her school lunches called Never Seconds, documenting her school lunches and how bad they were. It quickly became popular and led to the dinners becoming markedly better (apparently fruit and salad "had always been available"). The blog got taken up by many people including Jamie Oliver, and started getting attention from around the world with people sending her pictures of their lunches. Eventually, she set up a donation page to raise money for dinners in Africa - she's raised over £2000. So far, so good.
Until yesterday, when the local council banned her from taking her camera into school and shut down her blog. I wonder if they thought that would be the end of it and she would quietly go away? Well some people just don't understand social media do they? So far the story is trending on twitter, it's been on the BBC this morning on the Today programme, bloggers have taken up the story, and the @argyllandbute twitter account has been inundated with complaints.
Rory Cellan-Jones the BBC technology correspondent has written a wonderfully ironic piece about it and social media here.
How stupid have this council been, and how soon will they respond I wonder? or will they just keep their heads down and hope it goes away?
EDIT So, Argyle and Bute Council have finally responded and issued a press statement here. No apology, no retraction, no "we're really sorry we got it wrong". No explanation other than they don't like criticism. So, because they don't like criticism, and they obviously don't understand or get social media, they've decided the best way forward is to shut a 9 year old girl up. Idiots!
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