Oh,good,at last you are saying what I have thought for years,this government are living in their own totally surreal world way from the realities of the real hell they have subjected the population to.
If you look at what they say and what they do(or what actually happens )you will see that they are in fantasyland.

Nigel Wheatcroft, wimbledon,

Well yes, Ms. Miles, but how does the cook-off initiative square with the banish obesity diktat? And mock ye not the Night Garden! A programme hugely popular with my daughter. Personally I see it a a psychedelic Woodentops de nos jours.

Archie, Thrapston, England

Suddenly I am transported back to 2004, when the government announced that all primary schools would be teaching French lessons by 2006. I got very excited (silly me) and began to plan how to approach local schools to offer my services. We're now in 2008, the scheme has never materialised, as will happen with this latest plan, so I suggest that we all make a mental note to check on progress in 2012.

Paula Hill, Montreux, Switzerland

This initiative is utterly ridiculous. The place to learn cooking is in the home. I have never met any capable cook who learned to cook at school. Everyone learns initially from their family. And if the family only eat junk food, 8 hours of cooking lessons - probably learning how to bake - won't help. La-la-land is right.

Rob, London, UK

Don't see what all the ho-ha is about doing cookery lessons - I did them at my school in London under the guise of 'Home Economics' in the 60s. My daughter also took them at her school as part of the school's 'social' curriculum in the 1990s- and I think that's the reason we are both turned out to be such damn good cooks...watch out Nigella...

JM, Brisbane, Australia

Children will get 8 hours of cookery tuition, will they? 8 hours per what? Week? Month? Year? Secondary school career? I have seen nowhere the answer to this question. I suspect it's really not worth bothering with.

C A Ramsbottom, COVENTRY, UK

This would be funny if it weren't so sad. Schools keep being asked to teach more things when they already do a lousy job at the basics. Can't parents teach cooking? Can't governments focus on protecting people, improving the economy, and letting people have the freedom to eat what they want?

Jill, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Has anyone in government done a risk assessment?

As I see it we'll have teenagers, hot cooking surfaces, boiling water, boiling oil, scorching hot ovens, and cutting implements.

And that's before we need to take note of who is allergic to what. Whether we have proper first aid training and equipment to deal with anaphylaxis.

If you can;t have climbing ropes in school gyms, how can you countenance kitchens for pupils?

A recipe for disaster in 2008, surely?

But this obesity thing hasn't struck my kids. They are allowed to eat the 'junk' foods from time to time. At home, for the most part, everything they eat is cooked from fresh ingredients. Oh, and I suspect most importantly, both of my boys have taken a very active interest in a sport activity or two.

Get those lard-arse kids off their fat behinds an away from their computer games and TV, and into actually running about and playing outside and their weight will tumble off.

Chris Palmer, Hampshire, England

In a week where a teenager is stabbed for no apparent reason, a major bank is nationalised and our police force starts a protest march whilst discussing right to strike, our PM goes on a jolly to China and India then attends a farewell party for aTV personality.

When is this government going to actually do something?

Oops, silly me - they did, didn't they. They approved the plan to hand over all responsibility for our country's government to Brussels (yesterday). So why are we paying for them, if they aren't doing anything and have no more responsibility?

KR, Stockport,

Alice, making the young learning to cook is a good thing for society as a whole.
We live in a convenience society where people are addicted to pre packaged meals.
If people take the time to cook a fresh healthy meal it would be beneficial for society as a whole.

Gordon Brown is correct on that view as is the Scottish Government whom have introduced similar initiatives.
It is about building confidence in society for people to be self reliant to cook their own meals.

The Director, LONDON, England

Get the three R's and a few other priorities up to world class standard first! I'd make sport a much higher priority than cooking, too. It's not so easy to teach sport at home. Parents should teach cooking and nutrition - and a host of other things. Not the State.

Verity, Harrogate, England

And...you can't be serious! Or can you? The PM in a piece to do with the retirement of a Blue Peter presenter!? Catch 'em young via TellyNanny , eh, Uncle Gordy... Then everything will be alright. Orwellian...

Verity, Harrogate, England

My 4 year old made (and ate) soup at nursery this week. My 7 year old made flapjacks for my wife and I to eat at parents evening last term. All at my local state primary school in the eastend. So it can be done, with goodwill and effort from committed teachers. Do not be so quick to mock good ideas (or decent childrens' telly - I rather enjoy "In the Night Garden"). Tend to agree that our PM might benefit from letting someone else take over the job of praising TV presenters, though.

Iain, London,

How about teaching children basic finances ? i.e. how to survive on your salary, balance your income and expenditure & not get crippled by debt ?
Oh no, silly me - that would affect consumer spending.

Dave Ford, London, UK

Thanks Alice, I've spent all morning with "iggle-piggle-piggle-wiiiiiiiigle" going round and round in my head.

Chris, Leeds,

it's another empty initiative. i was a member of the token effort 'gifted and talented scheme'. All that happened was we got sent a brochure for expensive summer schools.
It's ridiculous- we all get cooking lessons anyway, in 'catering' classes.

wiltshire wurzel, swindon,

First they need to be able to read the recipe...Also will Health and Safety allow students to operate a cooker?

Laura, Dorking, Surrey

Alice Miles was named Columnist of the Year at the What the Papers Say awards last month -

Then again Bush was re-elected so funnier things have happened.

Jimmy, London,

I think this is the first good education idea this government has had. Yes, there will be difficulties implementing it, but it should certainly be supported.

Jon, Oxford,

A childs main education comes from parents.

Schools should concentrate on core subjects and parents are the ones who should teach children things like cooking, nutrition, manners, religion, respect etc....

Expecting schools to act as substitute parents is asking too much.

Rob, London,

In the Night Garden, excruciating? Rubbish, it is a fantastic programme and wonderfully relaxing. Maybe more adults should escape into it rather than Eastenders or other series designed only to depress.

Absolutely agree on the whole initiatives nonsense but there certainly would be a benefit in teaching children to cook properly as long as the menu is correct. This must include a full sunday roast lunch, a fish dish, soup and at least one dessert amongst others. Probably complete this with a pasta dish, a salad and something more exotic like a basic curry. Proably most pupils cannot even boil an egg. An incentive should be showing that being able to knock up a good meal is a great way to impress prospective boyfriends/girlfriends.

Alex, London, England

What a farce! We have kids leaving school that cannot read/write or do simple arithmetic. We have admissions from the head of the examining boards that A Levels have been 'dumbed down' since they were modularised. Yet all that clown of a minister responsible for our education system can do is announce another eye-catching but flawed initiative. So what will be achieved by a "total of eight hours' compulsory cookery lessons" - very little. They might learn to boil/fry an egg or ice a cake. They are not going to be able to cook a wide range of health food.

John Brown, Glasgow, Scotland

They'll get as far as spending some of the money, realise it doesn't work, and then put things back to roughly where they are right now.

We need a skeleton government, but we really don't need a full-time legislature. If we haven't come up with a law in 500-odd years of parliamentary democracy the chances are we don't need it. The House of Commons is just a crèche for publicity addicts who aren't pretty enough to get on Big Brother.

Tremendous article, btw.

Mikey, Bromley, UK

Absolutely Fred, but I'd extend your 50% to include the MPs themselves. Approaching half of them seem to be a complete waste of space, and about £160k each.

John Lee, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

In a country where too many kids subsist on hamburgers and fish and chips - because their parents are too lazy or ignorant to cook nutritious meals - how would you turn the tide, Ms. Miles?

What is more likely to create a generation of people, knowledgeable about food and armed with skills to eat healthily - cooking lessons in school or snide remarks from overpaid newspaper columnists?

Being against everything may be easy but it is neither interesting nor attractive.

John Blackley, Winter Garden, Florida

Who, by the way, gets to determine which sorts of food - there is a lot of fertile ground here for wasted taxpayers hard-earned (sorry, studies) on whether to include politically-incorrect thing like meat. And that is before details such as the need to incorporate Kosher or Halal requirements.

So it won't happen for the simple reason that rather than spending on cookers and so on in classrooms to do this teaching, they'll spend on these reviews, and political-correctness advisers. And, when none of this - surprisingly enough - actually produces anything they'll internally declare it a failure, and spin a success.

P Orphyry, Skipton,

I agree with your comments about school cooking lessons. But it is yet another example where politics expects schools to correct a social evil. This comes on the day when plans to ban junk food advertising get dumped. It makes perfect sense: liberal in the economic way and never getting into the way of good old business profit, this government is Stalinist when it comes to schools. But the sad thing is that it would not get any better with a different party at the helm: the civil servants who run the show must be entirely out of their minds for recommending such nonsense. I increasingly blame them rather than the poor politicians for Britain's complete lack of political common sense. If there was a party to pledge cutting 50% of central government civil servants, it would get my vote.

Fred Caprivi, Manchester,