Nine year old makes a bundle for charity too
A nine-year-old blogger has won her food fight with council bureaucrats who tried to censor her popular fundraising food blog.
Last week we reported how Martha Payne's school dinner blog was shut down by Argyll and Bute Council in a PR own goal. Martha, who lives in the coastal town of Lochgilphead gave each meal a "food-o-metre" rating, and offered an assessment of its contents. But the council ordered the schoolgirl to stop taking pictures claiming that they were misleading and had caused distress to cafeteria staff.
One report in Scotland's Daily Record newspaper headlined "Fire the Dinner Ladies" and quoted the blog. News of the ban tore through the bowels of the Internet like a school curry. The Index on Censorship weighed in along with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. By the end of the day council leader Roddy McCuish said he had ordered officials to lift the ban on cafeteria photos and praised Martha as "an enterprising and imaginative pupil".
Thanks to the publicity, donations to Mary's Meals, the charity the blog had been promoting, climbed from £3000 to more than £40,000.
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Nick Farrell
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