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.