Victory Over Censorship

Later this month, this blog will be celebrating its third anniversary. When I first started blogging, I hoped that this site would help raise awareness of the work that me and my fellow councillors do in West Shoebury as well as engage a new audience in local politics.

My google analytics suggests that currently over the past year that this blog received around 100 hits per day on average which I though was pretty good going. When 9 year old Martha Payne started her blog NeverSeconds last month to highlight what she ate for her school dinners hoping to raise money for her Mary's Meals charity which raises funds for school feeding projects in communities around the world where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education never imagined she would become a worldwide internet sensation and highlight political issues of healthy eating and censorship in the process.

Martha's blog gives a score out of 10 to each meal, a 'health rating' and even the number of hairs found in each meal and got children across the world excited about healthy eating, she attracted images of other children's dinners from Germany, Japan, Finland, Illinois, Spain and America.

Following an article in the Scottish tabloid The Daily Record criticising the poor quality of the food served at her school, on Thursday Martha was told by her headteacher that the local council, Argyll and Bute, had told the school that she would have to stop posting pictures of her school dinners.

Presumably, Argyll and Bute council didn't have a clue as to how much of an internet furore that the censorship of this blog would cause and that a blog of a 9 year old had done more to raise the issue of healthy eating than their own well meaning locally tax payer funded scheme. In the meantime, the hit counter on her blog was rising faster than the national debt and thousands of pounds was being donated to the Mary's Meals charity.

Thanks to the intervention of the leader of Argyll and Bute council, Cllr Roddy McCuish, a statement was issued by the leader condemning the censorship. Thankfully common sense prevailed and a victory over censorship for internet blogging had been won.