The city’s education committee was hearing recently of plans to “roll out” fast, colour-coded, convenient meals next month. This provoked Chris Mason, the Labour administration’s perennial Liberal Democrat gadfly, to observe: “New Labour, new dinners.”

Mason was not happy at references to five and six-year-olds as “customers”. He said: “We take pride in the fact that there’s a faster throughput of customers, which means weans are eating their dinners quicker. I’m just concerned about this marketing approach operating in primary schools. You could roll it out further and have free lottery tickets as prizes for children who do something in the marketing line.”