Martha Payne, 9, from Argyll, put her school dinners under the spotlight with her NeverSeconds blog. Photograph: Gordon Jack/scotimage.com
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Today's top SocietyGuardian stories
• Iain Duncan Smith sets out new welfare agenda: blaming poverty on the poor
• Inequality in Britain narrowed last year – but only because the rich got poorer
• Polly Toynbee: Iain Duncan Smith's fact-free dogma will make many more children poor
• More children facing homelessness as housing crisis deepens
• Mental health problems no longer a bar to becoming an MP
• Man paralysed for seven years uses eye movement to tweet 'hello world'
• Warning on financial scams targeting older people
• Male, pale and stale: time for quotas says Oxfam
• Turn more of the Government's empty buildings over to community or business use
• David Harewood: A celebrity's support for a charity has to be more than just lending their name
All today's SocietyGuardian stories
On the Guardian Professional Networks
• Can councils make their accounts digestible to the public, asks Paul Hughes
• Richard Williams from NCVO and Trustees Unlimited discusses how charities can recruit commercial experience into senior management using non-executive directors
• Aspects of Nice could work for social policy, says Nancy Kelley
On my radar ...
• Nine-year-old blogger Martha Payne, who has been leading a campaign to improve school meals. Martha's Never Seconds blog, featured in Society daily last month, has documented her school lunches, highlighting the unappealing and unhealthy dishes served up to pupils. As we reported last month, as a result of the blog, Martha's dad had a meeting with the local council, which agreed to let pupils have unlimited salad, fruit, and bread. But it has emerged that the council, Argyll and Bute, has been forced to end the project after the council banned her from taking pictures of the food in school. In a post titled Goodbye, Martha writes:
This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my headteacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.
I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I'll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don't think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary's Meals either.
And her dad added on the blog:
Martha's school have been brilliant and supportive from the beginning and I'd like to thank them all. I contacted Argyll and Bute council when Martha told me what happened at school today and they told me it was their decision to ban Martha's photography.
The council has issued a very strongly worded statement, which says it
... had to act to protect staff from the distress and harm [media coverage of the blog was] causing. In particular, the photographic images uploaded appear to only represent a fraction of the choices available to pupils, so a decision has been made by the council to stop photos being taken in the school canteen.
There have been discussions between senior council staff and Martha's father however, despite an acknowledgement that the media coverage has produced these unwarranted attacks, he intimated that he would continue with the blog.
As many commenters have pointed out, even before the council issued its statement, the situation could be a case study in how not to do public relations in a social media age. Kate Hughes, head of communications at Wolverhampton Homes, blogged her advice to the council on how to handle the situation. And I've learned a new term today, the Streisand effect, which is apparently a situation where "an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely".
But there is a silver lining to the story, as Martha has been encouraging readers of her blog to donate money to charity Mary's Meals, which provides school lunches for children in some of the world's poorest communities. A spokesperson for the charity said today:
Martha's support for Mary's Meals has been amazing and we are extremely grateful for everything that she has done to help us reach some of the hungriest children in the world.
We are overwhelmed by the huge response to her efforts today which has led to so many more people donating to her online donation page. Thanks to this fantastic support, Martha has now raised enough money to build a kitchen in Malawi for children receiving Mary's Meals as part of our Sponsor A School initiative and has broken the record for hitting a Sponsor A School online fundraising target in the quickest amount of time.
The fact Martha has broken her target means we have been able to allocate her a school in Malawi, the African country where Mary's Meals feeds more than 540,000 children every school day. Lirangwe Primary School in Blantyre, Malawi – which has 1963 pupils – will soon have a brand new kitchen shelter thanks to Martha and her supporters and, if donations continue at the current rate, it will not be long before a year's feeding costs for all of the Lirangwe children are covered too.
The Guardian is encouraging readers to take a snap of their lunch today and share the photographs in solidarity with Martha. See the hashtag #MyLunchforMartha
• The remarkable debate by MPs yesterday on mental health. Mind has put together a Storify of the debate. Alastair Campbell writes that the MPs who spoke out about their experiences of mental distress will make a lot of difference to Time to Change campaign:
... I was delighted that Kevan Jones and Charles Walker have spoken so frankly about their own experiences and greatly appreciate that Nicky Morgan secured this vital Commons debate.
Part of the campaign's aim is to try to get to the position where people feel they can be as open about their mental health as about their physical wellbeing.
There used to be a taboo about speaking about the 'big C' – cancer. That has been swept away and no-one would say treating cancer was not a priority.
Cuts are happening to mental health services with both the NHS and the voluntary sector under financial pressure.
That is happening against the historical background of mental health being a Cinderella service.
That has to change – and having MPs being so open about their own issues will help to build the political support necessary to stop mental health services being pushed to the back of the queue.
And Connor Kinsella adds:
Now I don't know much how these parliamentary thingies work, but it would seem cheerleader in chief of this most surprising and groundbreaking of days in the Upper House was Loughborough MP Nicky Morgan. She had apparently fought not only for parliamentary time but for the venue to take place in the Chamber and not Committee Room 4b or some other dark and forgotten recess of the Palace of Westminster. And in both introducing and summing up the debate, she along with many of her political peers currently receiving all the public adulation of the childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang spoke more intelligently, authoritatively and compassionately about mental health than I've heard from many a professional.
As Ms Morgan put it much better than I could myself: "All of us have mental health, it's just some people's is better than others."
Remarkable.
• An interesting event happening tomorrow in London. The Homeless Hack Day aims to increase digital inclusion among homeless people, and help charities work better with homeless people through technology. Follow it on Twitter via the hashtag #wdif
Other news
• BBC: Graphic cigarette warnings 'work'
• Children & Young People Now: Social work reforms have 'raised the confidence' of profession
• Inside Housing: Shapps in spotlight over supply crisis
• Telegraph: Ofsted chief to tackle 'anti-school culture' in poor areas
• Third Sector: Cash-for-clothing stores threaten income of charity shops
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