THAT well-known catering firm Scolarest, whose school dinners in Camden give pupils indigestion have bizarrely won another contract in the borough.
I hear eyebrows are being raised at University College London, over moves last week to grant a 10-year catering contract to Scolarest. As anyone who has read this paper over the last 18 months – or who saw Jamie Oliver’s (pictured) recent Channel 4 series on school dinners – knows, Scolarest aren’t exactly held in high regard by the dining public.
Camden Council has been inundated with complaints from pupils, parents and teachers alike since awarding a contract to Scolarest three years ago.
Guy Kershaw, deputy director of estates and facilities at UCL, told me of the plans to “outsource some of our existing catering services” insisting: “Scolarest comes recommended from a number of higher education institutions within the UK.”
When I asked a UCL spokesman who exactly had recommended Scolarest I was told that she “was not at liberty to divulge” that sort of information.
Professor Allyson Pollock of UCL’s public health policy unit, told me: “Much of the research evidence on privatisation of ancillary and catering services highlights its negative impact, such as a reduction in terms and conditions of service as well as loss of control over quality, standards and price.”
Students had better stock up on pasta and pot noodles, it seems.

Bob hits out at the ‘thieves’ and the ‘murderers’

MURDER and theft seemed to be the keynote of an old-fashioned trade union rally at the Camden Centre on Saturday.
Five hundred members of the Railway, Maritime and Transport Union filled the hall, facing 25 colleagues who had walked from Scotland to London promoting the theme: Re-nationalise the railways.
RMT supporters in the Commons, MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn were in fine Old Labour form lambasting the government for shoring up the private railway companies with an annual subsidy of £4 billion.
In a tub-thumping speech, RMT leader Bob Crow accused the railway companies of being “thieves” and certain contractors of “murder” by failing to repair railway lines.
Expelled from the Labour Party, Crow (pictured) reminded members that the union now financed the Socialist Party in Scotland and backed political parties in England who supported the renationalisation of the railways.

It’s a meeting of musical minds

Neil Bowman, left and John Catlow

AS the relaxing strains of a Beethoven cello sonata washed over me at St Pancras Church on Thursday, I could not have guessed how busy a day the two performers were having.
Both are former Camden schoolteachers – John Catlow at Camden School for Girls, and Neil Bowman at Parliament Hill, and together they ran a successful A-level music consortium between the two schools.
But Bowman gave up teaching five years ago to devote more time to performing and accompanying.
And Catlow, former principal cellist for English National Opera, is certainly not using his retirement as an excuse to take it easy.
As I caught up with them after the performance, they hardly had time to talk.
Bowman was off conducting the North Camden Chorus later that day at St Mary Brookfield Church, while Catlow was going to join the ranks of the Camden Choir at the North London Music Festival.
“Will you two be collaborating again in the future?” I asked.
“If we can find the time,” was Bowman’s reply.

The lady was not for smiling

MY colleague Iltydd Harrington, the New Journal’s Books Editor, got the surprise of his life over the weekend when the lift door opened at the Venice municipal museum.
Who should be confronting him? The formidable Margaret Thatcher.
Unfazed, Iltydd, who was holidaying in Venice, said: “You look awfully like Lady Thatcher” The Baroness snarled back: “I am.” Her two minders stared blankly ahead as the lift doors closed.
In error Iltydd then pressed the lift button again – and, to his surprise, the doors opened again, revealing an angrier Baronness! “Oh, it’s you again, is it?” snapped the Baronness. A sanguine Iltydd sweetly said: “I assume you’re here for the socialist May Day festival?”
“I certainly am not” growled the Baronness, beginning her delayed journey upwards. Perhaps, she was in a bad temper because the Tory election team didn’t want her to be in the country during the campaign.
Readers may re call that Margaret Thatcher’s bete noir in the mid-1980s was Iltydd who used to chair the Greater London Council – until the Baronness wound it up.