Thankyou and goodnight.....

[oldjerry]

What with all the packing,decorating,plummeting value of this place,delays,hassle over the kids citizenship/dual nationality(not vital but handy) finding somewhere to board the goats for 3 or 4 months(any offers?) etc..etc..etc..even though we have somewhere to stay while we find a decent holding,there have been a few moments when I wondered if emigrating was all worth it,maybe it wasn't too late to change our minds and so on..
Then my eldest,11 tomorrow,asked if she could have a second birth day cake to take into school to share with her class,didn't see a prob,I always make the cakes,and a second one shouldn't be too much trouble.But no....any cake taken into school HAS to be shop bought,as the insurance doesn't otherwise cover the school against allergies,food poisoning etc..!


So my heartfelt thanks to the sad moron who came up with that.........I,m packing,decorating etc,with renewed vigour...7 weeks and counting..........

[prison break fan]

You think as you get older, that you have heard everything, but no you never have. Shop bought cakes indeed!! No wonder people can't cook! pbf.

[pelmetman]

Health & Safety gone mad.

We were watching an antique programme yesterday and someone from a school bought a rocking horse to the show and low and behold she explained that the children could only look at the horse not actually ride it in case one of them fell off it!!

When I look back at all the things I did as a child its a wonder I survived

Sue

[boboff]

Ummm, Jerry I took homemade cakes to a Governors meeting at the school the other day, and when I said they were home made they were kind of explicit in saying " No kids have had there bogey fingers near this have they?"

So I would guess that this is another issue where the Teachers are not brave enough to say why they don't want to eat the cakes, and so blame it on "Rules"

I am sure at the end of Term when you have had 30 kids bring in dodgey home made cakes which you as a Teacher have to at least try, you would come up with this sort of cunning plan.

There is definately no National or official rule regarding this, it's funny at our school the parents who bring in shop bought cakes or biscuits to the end of term "party" or the PTA stand at the Christmas fete are rather frowned upon.

Having said that I am glad it's motivated you to decorate, goodness knows thats a blessing!

[Green Aura]

I think boboff's probably right, oj. It would be really difficult to police what's in cakes and kids' allergies even if they do come in a box (the cakes not the kids - or the allergies ).

But anything that gets your motivation back up is a good thing - so when you leave you must reward the said person with something appropriate. A home baked cake perhaps?

[Susie]

It's because of nut allergies and being able to fill in the right bit of paper (although I have to say, 'because of the insurance' is a useful catch-all for when you just don't want to do something and can't think of a sensible reason).

I think you should send a completely inappropriate shop-bought cake to make a point. There is one in the shape of breasts in T***o, for example. Might be a bit uncomfortable for your daughter, sending her in with a disembodied Barbara Windsor circa Carry On Doctor - but, on the other hand, look at all those delicious ingredients! Xanthan gum and Sodium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate and everything! You don't get those when you make a cake yourself. ;-).

[paul123456]

Hello there ,

Welcome to a one Europe ?
Here in Germany at every school or church fundraising event everyone brings in a home made cake and they are sold
in slices to generate funds .
Best not to mention this subject too much , before you know it Brussels will introduce cake police , and that will cost another
few hundred million .Or they could introduce cake taxes .By the way in Holland then a Hasj cake would be double taxed .

regards ,

Paul

[MuddyWitch]

Oooo Susie you are awfull...but I lke you!

MW

[oldjerry]

Thanks to you all,boboff and GA,thinking you may be right I confronted the deputy head tonight at netball,and she said that we'd had a letter confirming this policy at the beginning of term(I'd binned it with all the others),and it's general policy throughout the county!
Susie,I'd love one of those cakes,but the high priest of small-scale pig producers would excommunicate me if I ever stepped into the Evil Empire,so I've decided to make one like that myself,utilizing two pudding basins,but we may enjoy it when the kids are at their Nonna's for the evening.

[Millymollymandy]

I don't think allergies had been invented in my day and we certainly never gave a thought to what was in a cake - if it tasted good great, if it didn't we didn't eat it - simples How times change.

I so agree, although as soon as we moved to the Netherlands in 1995 we met soooooooo many people with allergies, I just couldn't believe it. I can't say it's just the Dutch people either as one of them was Chinese/American. But so many allergic to peanuts/insect bites/cats - hard to invite people round. Well I did put a friend in hospital inadvertently by cooking her curry - now of course I know all those spice packets say 'may contain traces of nuts' - how was I to know?

Anyway what I am trying to say is I have never met an English person, or a person in England, with any allergy, and have never met any in France, but they were all there in the Netherlands.

So I hope you aren't emigrating there then Old jerry!

[oldjerry]

I'm sure that nut allergy is a reality for some people,but there does seem to be a trend towards ever more rare conditions,either the British are becoming rapidly more ill,or ,in this age of celebtrity,less willing to be 'just ordinary'.
For me it's just contrary to everything we try to do with the kids,ie cooking , etc to have to buy a product from a shop as though that is in some way more healthy.
Maybe I'm just becoming allergic to the UK..!

[paul123456]

Hello there ,

as for the Netherlands , it is one of the most poluted and populated countries , lying between the German Ruhr and the reffinaries in Rotterdam.
So of course there are more and more allergies , also think of what it means for all the Pharma maffia , the more people who are allergic for "mars dust " and other the better it is for the economy .

Also it is the biggest payer into the criminal outfit in Brussels ,

regards ,

Paul

[battybird]

I am one of those people with allergies. Had none until I became sensitive to Latex (wearing powdered latex gloves as a nurse...now banned as they recognise the powder takes allergens into the skin) Now I have odd allegies to various things, makeup, creams and some foods. I feel sure that the sensitivity has triggered these responses. Luckily I am not completely allergic to latex as it is in most things in modern life!
Ridiculous about homemade cakes, but I suppose there is always someone willing to sue if there is a problem. The rocks on the beach near us have countless signs saying " rocks are dangerous do not climb" slippery rocks..danger" (they are in the sea a lot of the time!) How we ever managed as kids climbing trees and making "camps" I dont know! Sound like a real "old git" now! I blame the solicitors!!

[scrap]

as for the Netherlands , it is one of the most poluted and populated countries , lying between the German Ruhr and the reffinaries in Rotterdam.
So of course there are more and more allergies ,

No wonder I usually get a cold or something when I go to the Ardennen...toxins withdrawal!
Good thing I never leave home without my Mars dust...

[Thomzo]

I too have lots of allergies. Fortunately, none of them is serious enough to put me in hospital. I know that they get worse when I'm stressed. I can pinpoint the times when I became allergic to something new to a point in my life when something difficult was going on. But that's not the point about the cakes. They could just ask that all the ingredients be listed.

To be fair to the teachers, if a child brought in a home-made cake and someone got food poisoning then the teachers would get it from all angles: the parents, the press, the governers. It's a sad fact of life that you can't trust anybody and you can too easily be blamed. But then, how do they know the cake in the box hasn't been tampered with?

Zoe