Nailing an old lie...

Alas, the time is drawing near when I will have to give up this blog for a few months. I know what a grief this will be to my loyal readers, but I have many writing commitments and am also working a in a school some way from my home. I simply don't have time for this at the moment. Before leaving though, I thought that I would take the opportunity to deal with one of the oldest rumours circulating about me. This is that I have named children on this blog. Raquel, who has been commenting here today in her inimitable, if somewhat scatological, way, evidently wants to keep this story alive. She says of me;

it is really fucking creepy when a blogger finds out the names of a person's children and uses them in his blog or emails to the parents.

Please note that this is a specific allegation; that I use children's names on this blog. As if this was not a public enough accusation, Lisa Amphlett says on her own blog that;

. Other parents have, in the past, been understandably upset to have had their children unnecessarily mentioned by Simon Webb — it’s not something that most of us would consider doing out of human decency. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

I asked Lisa Amphlett  for details of this, but all she would say is that it is, 'absolutely true'. 

Now I know that some people who visit this blog have difficulty following one, coherent train of thought to its conclusion, but I would really like them to make an effort on this occasion. I have seen this rumour appear in so many places and yet whenever I ask for details of whose children I am supposed to have named here; nobody seems to know. Everybody has heard it said so often that it must be true. Goebbels used the same technique of repeating a lie so often that in the end, people believed it!

Here then is what I am asking. We have seen two well-known home educators recently making a specific allegation against me; that I have named children, other than my own, on this blog. What is this all about? Where did this idea come from? I will stay here long enough to deal with this matter, but after that I shall be dropping this blog for a month or two.