Saturday 27 November 2010

The Lord Lucas connection

A couple of weeks ago, as I have mentioned before, I received an email containing details of Alison Sauer's accounts. Alison, it will be remembered is a key member of the so-called 'secret group' who are drawing up guidelines on elective home education for the use of local authorities. The email came for an address including the name Kaycee. There was a bit of a fuss about this on the HE-UK list and it was suggested that I had actually sent the email to myself, although why I should do such a thing is not at all clear! Everybody had forgotten about it until Friday, when the genuine Kaycee posted that the email address had been tracked down to St Albans, a town in Southern England. The curious aspect of this is that the email address used to find the location from which the original email was sent was that of a company with which Lord Lucas is associated; The Good Schools Guide. Here it is:

Forwarded Message ----
> > From: "kayceeb@cheerful.com " < > > goodschoolsguide@yahoo.com.donotreplythis.ReadNotify.com
> > >
> > To: goodschoolsguide@yahoo.com
> > Sent: Tue, 23 November, 2010 21:51:54
> > Subject: Read Notification:
> >
> > To
> > kayceeb@cheerful.com




Has everybody followed this so far? The obvious question here is who was sending this email and what on earth has Lord Lucas to do with the business? The original email sent to me was a bit of misinformation, trying to throw doubt upon the integrity of both Alison Sauer and a woman who comments here pretty regularly. I cannot for the life of me imagine how Lord Lucas has become mixed up with this. Yesterday, I received an email from the same source as that claiming that the original email was sent from St Albans. It is now claimed that there is not the slightest doubt that the email was in fact sent from Chorley. This is a town in Lancashire about twenty miles from where Alison Sauer lives! Here is what I was sent:

General IP Information
Top of Form 1
#Hostname: 95.148.111.180
ISP: Orange Home UK
Organization: Orange Home UK
Proxy: None detected
Type: Broadband
Assignment: Static IP
Blacklist:

Bottom of Form 1
Geolocation Information
untry: United Kingdom 
State/Region: Lancashire
City: Chorley
Latitude: 53.65
Longitude: -2.6167
Area Code:
Postal Code:



There is something decidedly funny about this whole business. Is the suggestion that Alison Sauer herself sent me her accounts under a false name? I am not the only person who has been sent stuff apparently about the 'secret group'. The fact that a commercial company connected with Lord Lucas is mixed up somehow in this, is very puzzling. Is he connected with the drawing up of the new guidelines? Does he have a financial interest in anything to do with home education? Is he a particular chum of Tania Berlow; who is of course the public face of the 'secret group'? I would be grateful to hear from any reader who knows what the connection is between Lord Lucas and the new guidelines. I am especially intrigued to know why somebody editing The Good Schools Guide would be lending his resources in this way to a member of the group drawing up the new guidelines.

12 comments:

  1. I've even double checked my understanding of the issue. Here's an example explanation:

    http://askbobrankin.com/does_ip_address_reveal_my_physical_location.html

    But that doesn't mean that Evildoers can find your house if they know your IP address. Each time you go online (if you have dialup) or each time you start your computer (if you have cable or dsl) you will be assigned an IP address, randomly selected from a pool of IP's assigned to your Internet service provider (ISP).

    WHOIS Your ISP
    So a person MIGHT be able to get a general idea of your geographic location, based on your IP address, by doing a lookup on the WHOIS database, but that will only tell them the physical location of your ISP -- not YOUR home address.

    And if you use a large regional or nationwide ISP, the IP lookup probably reveals nothing of interest. For example, if you are an AOL subscriber, your IP address lookup will show the location as Dulles, Virginia -- regardless of where you live.

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  2. Sorry, Blogger is deleting messages again. This should have appeared before the one at 6:33.

    Simon wrote,
    "It is now claimed that there is not the slightest doubt that the email was in fact sent from Chorley."

    Simon, the IP address in an email header is unlikely to tell you where the sender lives. The IP address is the address of their ISPs computer. It's easy enough to test yourself. I've just sent myself an email and checked the IP address given in the header. My IP address gives (via http://whatismyipaddress.com/) my geographical address as:

    Country: United Kingdom gb
    State/Region: Warwickshire
    City: Piddington
    Latitude: 51.8333
    Longitude: -1.0667

    Piddinton (though it's in Oxfordshire, not Warwickshire) is over 150 miles from my home. All you can conclude from this information is that your email senders ISP is Orange Home UK and that Orange have an office in Chorley.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 'Simon, the IP address in an email header is unlikely to tell you where the sender lives.'

    Yes, this is why I am wondering what is going on. I am only quoting what I am told by a third party and it all sounds very strange. At first we were told St Albans and now Chorley. I am very suspicious about all these claims and am trying to work out just what is going on. The main thing which puzzles me is how and why Lord Lucas is helping in this!

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  4. Well it appears (although frankly appearances can be deceiving!) that someone (I can only assume Tania, if she is indeed one of those working on the whole home ed guidelines thingy) has roped Lord Lucas into getting someone in his company to track down the source of the original email. Of course this doesn't explain why the original email was sent at all (since we all know that Alison S does run some sort of consultancy company - and the financial report didn't suggest anything significant let alone wrong doing) nor why the sender claimed that the report was someone elses; nor why the email purported to come foro another home educator by deliberately using a similar email address.

    In fact the one thing that seems certain from all this is that IF someone has dragged Lord Lucas into the "home educators play hunt the spy game" we are all made to look even more stupid. Lord Lucas appeared briefly in a home ed online community elsewhere to get shouted down in the arguments between home educators and he rapidly disappeared - I don't think this makes us corporately look any better.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 'Lord Lucas appeared briefly in a home ed online community elsewhere to get shouted down in the arguments between home educators and he rapidly disappeared '

    Yes, the less that supporters of home education are allowed anywhere near real home educating parents, the better. I too was vastly entertained to see the storm which engulfed Lord Lucas as soon as he opened his mouth on that forum. That's why I was a little surprised to see that he was allowing somebody like Tania to embroil him in this latest caper. I suspect that he might yet live to regret it!

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  6. "I am very suspicious about all these claims and am trying to work out just what is going on."

    I think it's just a case of people misunderstanding the significance of IP addresses, at least the St Albans claim anyway. Must say I agree that it was unwise to drag Lord Lucas into the issue. But then it was probably unwise to publish anonymous poison pen letters in the first place too.

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  7. Lord Lucan is back!!!

    He has been away for a long time, well I always thought he had nothing to do with that murder.


    Darren.

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  8. Teacher Julie says-Lord Lucas appeared briefly in a home ed online community elsewhere to get shouted down in the arguments between home educators and he rapidly disappeared - I don't think this makes us corporately look any better.

    Who cares what Lord Lucas thinks? he did not get shouted down Lucas was just told to stop poking his nose in where it was not wanted!
    Who cares how it makes us look?

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  9. 'Who cares what Lord Lucas thinks?'

    He's a LEGISLATOR...

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  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Anon says- He's a Legislator

    so what if he is? I wonder how much it cost to keep old Lucas in the lords? some one told me that a lord get 300 pound per day just for showing up at the lords very nice! I bet he spends more on a bottle of wine that we do on shoping! thanks to us the tax payer!

    ReplyDelete