But the food police in the Education Department have told schools to severely restrict selling pies in canteens along with Vegemite, butter, cream and chocolate chips.

Talk about the Nanny State.

Education Minister Rob Stokes says schools can’t teach good ­nutrition in the classroom and then sell rubbish in the playground.

Meat pies rubbish? Surely our passion for pies can’t be taken so lightly. We munch through an average of 12 each a year. That's 270 million annually.

Personal tastes vary and in Orange we’re lucky to have a big range of locally-made pies that vary from the popular plain beef to a mouth-watering line up of steak and vegetable, steak and kidney, bacon and cheese, potato, mushroom and chicken.

That’s enough to bring tears of joy to a dedicated pie eater.

And Vegemite? Only small amounts, lightly spread, says the minister. But Vegemite is another Aussie obsession.

A rich source of the energy-giving Vitamin B group, it’s almost as much a part of our heritage as kangaroos and koalas. Millions of kids grew up with the black, yeasty stuff.

What will these dreary people ban next?

IT seems just about any new car can be hacked and can be driven by remote control as automakers depend more on software and wireless connections.

Two cyber security geeks remotely crashed a Jeep Cherokee into a ditch by hacking the connected computers inside every modern vehicle that control everything from indicators to brakes.

It’s raised the spectre of hackers wreaking havoc on the roads because cars are increasingly being connected to the Internet so drivers can stream music, watch videos and use GPS.

But think of the advantages if we could control some of Orange’s aggressive drivers who either tear around like total maniacs, tailgating and changing lanes, indicating late or not at all at roundabouts or going so slow they become mobile speed bumps.

A group of expert computer hackers stationed at random locations with their laptops could get stuck into these drivers.

And what about those who double park, which they think is OK because they’ve put on their left blinker that to them means ‘free parking’. It's like having diplomatic immunity. A hacker could move them on.

Our forest of traffic lights stuck all over the place without regard to proper traffic management doesn’t help, either and maybe computer hackers could fix that too?

IT’S that time again when the State of Origin takes over our lives for a few weeks but is it really State against State?

The Queensland team comprises three players who come from Victoria, two from NSW, one from Canberra and one from New Zealand while the NSW team has two players from Queensland and one from Victoria.

The Queensland captain comes from Victoria while a jersey sponsor for NSW is the Victorian beer VB.

Two of this year’s games will be played in Brisbane.

State versus State, they say.