The world's favourite menu

Today a plane crashed into the sea. A miracle happened. A young girl survived. It seems she was the only survivor. We should all celebrate tonight, however, just as one child is saved and will rihtly be front page news, many won't be so lucky. Let us cook a meal in their honour.

Here's a recipe that would seem suitable.

Find a public lavatory somewhere, don't flush the chain. Take three cupfulls of water from the toilet bowl. Collect a pile of sticks, make a fire and bring the water to the boil. Throw in a handful of rice. Boil until soft.

Sound's tasty doesn't it? Well half the children in the world will eat a similar meal tonight. They will use unsafe water to cook subsistence rations. Do you know how many children died in the world today, due to starvation, unsafe water and bad sanitation. 40,000. Consider it this way. A jumbo jet with an average load has 400 passengers on board. If you filled 100 jumbo jets with children every single day and crashed them into the sea, that would be the same number of dead kids.

25p will buy a child a meal for a day. A Marks and Spencers sandwich costs £2.50, that would feed 10 children for a day. One of our local politicians, Brian Coleman, ran up a £400 taxi bill attending a civic banquet. That would feed 1,600 children - 4 jumbo jet's full of children. I'm not going to give you any lectures about how you should donate some cash, that's up to you. I'm just telling you all of this so that you understand why the behaviour of some people makes me feel so sick.