Bill Carmichael: Jamie Oliver cooks up message that’s worth digesting

Oh dear! If Jamie Oliver carries on like this he’ll find himself banished from the airwaves forever.

For there’s nothing the liberal establishment that runs our TV stations hate more than someone who challenges their cosy Left-wing orthodoxy.

Jamie, for the sake of your career, please repeat after me: the poor are starving to death in their uncounted millions because of the savage cuts imposed by the nasty Tories.

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There, that’s better isn’t it? And a new series is virtually in the bag!

Instead, the TV chef has a disconcerting habit of telling it like it is. For example, this week he pointed out that “poor” people who 
can afford enormous television sets are not actually poor in any meaningful sense.

And the reason they fail to feed their children adequately isn’t because of a lack of money, but because they spend their benefits on expensive – and fattening – convenience foods instead of cooking cheaper fresh food from scratch.

Ouch! You could almost hear the winces of pain from TV executives around the country. For as far as our liberal Left establishment is concerned these are truths that should forever remain untold.

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But the howls of outrage had hardly faded when Oliver waded in on another controversial topic – this time lambasting lazy British 
workers and adding that all his restaurants would be forced to close if it were not for the efforts of his immigrant staff.

Workers from overseas were far tougher than “wet behind the ears” British youngsters, he said, and he recounted the tale of a mother ringing in saying her 23-year-old son was too tired to come into work.

OK, there is an element of generalisation here. I have been privileged to work with some fantastic young people whose attitude to work couldn’t be faulted.

But Oliver has a point – and that is exactly why enthusiastic foreigners have snapped up millions of jobs created in this country, while 3.5 million UK households have no adult in work.

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Part of the blame lies with the benefits system, which rewards idleness and punishes those who take up jobs, and partly with the education system which fails to adequately prepare youngsters for the rigours of the world of work.

The latest CBI skills survey, for example, found that numeracy and literacy skills were so poor that 48 per cent of employers were forced to put on remedial training for recruits and many applicants lacked other basic skills such as self-management, problem solving and attitude to work.

Critics point out that Oliver is worth £150m and can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be poor and unemployed. But he started his career working 80-hour weeks in his dad’s pub kitchen and he has built up his fortune by virtue of talent allied to ferocious hard work.

Oliver’s career gives weight to that old adage that young people would do well to take to heart: “The world doesn’t owe you a living.”

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Recently, the Girl Guides announced it was changing the promise made by all recruits. The vow to “love my God” and “serve my country” was to be dropped in favour of “be true to myself and develop my beliefs”.

The new oath may be absolutely meaningless, but it certainly chimes with the obsessive narcissism of the modern age. Forget God, forget country – it’s all about ME!

There were almost 800 complaints about the new oath and one troop from Harrogate was so dismayed by the change that it decided to stick with the original promise, although it offered an alternative for those who didn’t believe in God.

Now, on pain of being forced out of the movement, the Harrogate rebels have been forced to back down. Dissent has been crushed and conformity ruthlessly imposed.

Which just goes to show there is nothing so intolerant as the diversity Gestapo.

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