A final word about posting comments on a blog

This really will be the final post here; at least for the next couple of months. I have been trying to get to the bottom of the accusations being made by Lisa Amphlett and Raquel Toney, which involve my having mentioned the names of children and consequently upset their parents. I have now commented twice on Lisa Amphlett's blog, attempting to get her to tell me why she is spreading these stories about me. She says, in answer to my latest comment:

 Whether or not you understand it YOU ARE HARASSING ME despite me having asked you to stop. I will ask you once again. Please leave me alone.

This must rank as the strangest reaction from anybody to a comment on their blog!  She posts about me, using my name and accusing me of something pretty unpleasant and when I ask what grounds she has for saying these things; she tells me that I am harassing her. It's a good job that I didn't feel that way, when her friend Raquel came on here today and called me a cunt! I suppose that this means that I could post anything I like about a named person and then, if the person commented here, trying to set the record straight; I could claim that I was being harassed by them.  

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.

Why I started this blog

Now that some of the less well-balanced types seem to have wandered off elsewhere, I thought that I might explain how and why I came to start this blog. Since it was largely to counter the activities of people like Lisa Amphlett that I began blogging back in 2009, readers might find this interesting. It will also not have escaped notice that I have recently been called a ‘creepy stalker’ and ‘bully’; these complaints too are worth examining.

      In the summer of 2009, before this blog existed, I found myself the target of a good deal of venom by Lisa Amphlett and others. Complete strangers were inventing all sorts of mad stories about me and spreading them all over the internet. I had no way of countering these falsehoods and since they were being related publicly, I thought that I should take steps to deal with them.  Before I started this blog, Lisa Amphlett was already telling people that I was dangerous:

https://twitter.com/untwining/status/2926565462

This was at a time that I had never even heard of her! I am tempted to ask in what way Lisa Amphlett thought that I was dangerous. Did she think that I was physically abusive? Was I a rapist or murderer? No, it was simply that I had a different view about home education than she herself had. Since I had at that time been home educating for eleven years, while she herself was not even  a home educator, you might find it a bit rich that she should choose to say such a thing.


What sort of stories were being fabricated and spread at that time? Well, that I was a former colleague of Graham Badman, for one. The general view among Lisa Amphlett and her cronies like Maire Stafford these days seems to be that googling people’s names is ‘cyber stalking’. They have certainly changed their view about this.  Maire Stafford, who by the way was also making offensive tweets about me at the same time as Lisa Amphlett; that is to say before I started this blog, was all in favour of this sort of thing. Before we look at that, let’s look at a tweet of Maire’s on July 30th 2009:


https://twitter.com/Maire52/status/2927163148

On the same day, some fool posted this on the HE-UK list:

There is a Simon Webb mentioned here as an Area Education Officer.... under
Badman! Listed is the 
CFHE Directorate Structure Chart which is readily available on the
internet.... .


http://docs. google.com/ gview?a=v
<="" docs.="" em="" google.com="" gview?a="v&" q="cache:W9Udfm7e" whatdotheyknow.=""
m/request/7844/ response/ 21038/attach/ 2/cfe-structure- chart1106. pdf+Simon+ Web
b+badman&hl= en>
&q=cache:W9Udfm7eA8 AJ:www.whatdothe yknow.com/ request/7844/ response/ 21038/att
ach/2/cfe-structure -chart1106. pdf+Simon+ Webb+badman& hl=en


Like many others, this person  had been researching my life and googling my name to see if he could find anything interesting about me and my family. You might have thought that people like Lisa Amphlett and Maire Stafford would denounce this as ‘creepy stalking’ or ‘cyber stalking’, but you would be wrong. That same day, Maire Stafford said of this on the HE-UK list:

Brilliant research 

Oddly enough, nobody thought that there was anything creepy about the remarks being made about my daughter and the attempts to connect me with Graham Badman. Perhaps Lisa Amphlett did not know about this smear campaign? Of course she did, otherwise she would hardly have tweeted on August 7th 2009 that; ‘Simon Webb says that he is not badman's colleague.’ Lisa Amphlett was right in the thick of  the attacks on me at that time;


https://twitter.com/untwining/status/3175964397

This is why I started this blog; to provide a platform to tackle the rumours that these people were doing their best to spread. Those who have been talking  about stalking and bullying  might stop and ask themselves why they did not have so much to say about this when researching my life on the internet was such a flourishing cottage  industry! Of course, there was not a word of truth in the idea that I was or had been a colleague of Graham Badman's. Here's an idea, the next time that anybody feels like saying that I have been cyber stalking or bullying; don't bother. I cannot tell readers how revolting it is to see people like Lisa Amphlett now claiming to be upset. If she and others like here had not been so keen to dig into my life and tell lies about me in the past, this blog would not even exist.

How to obtain information about home education from Graham Stuart; the right way and the wrong way

Some readers have been asking today  about Graham Stuart’s reply to Lisa Amphlett. I thought that it was worth talking a little about this and publishing it here. There were hints that my post  yesterday  was part of a coordinated attempt to smear a group of home educators in the Midlands. It wasn’t of course, it’s just that there is no such thing as coincidence in the Looking-glass world inhabited by these characters. Still, it gives me a chance to look at the correct way to find things out from MPs and also to look at the wrong way of going about the business. The hint was, you see, that because one of this group had failed to extract answers from an MP about something to do with home education, that must be why I had posted about a woman who had been in Ireland and is now in the midlands. (Yes, I realise that this makes no sense at all, but you know what these people are like!)

A couple of weeks back, I wanted to know  three things about Graham Stuart’s intentions,  and also about  the  functioning of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on home education.  The best way to find things out, is of course simply to ask. If you are going to do this, it is better by far to limit your enquiries to one simple question at a time. Once this has been asked, you can leave it a week or two and then ask another question. It might take a few weeks, but that way you tend to find out what you want to know. The first thing I wanted was a written statement of Graham Stuart’s plans, if any, for new regulations about home education. I emailed him on November 22nd, saying;

Dear Mr Stuart,      I'm sorry to trouble you, but a number of people are concerned that you might be in favour of some new regulation for home education in this country. I wonder if you could just confirm whether this is true or not? Thanks a lot.
                                            Simon Webb.

Short and to the point, you see. An hour and  half later,  one of his advisers replied, saying:


Dear Mr Webb,

Thank you for your email. 

The APPG for Home Education, which Graham chairs, is encouraging local authority home education officers to form a national organisation so that they can build expertise, and also challenge bad practice and ignorance in their authorities.

There is no question whatever of Graham suggesting or supporting new regulation regarding home education.  The aim is precisely to avoid some of the problems which arise through local authority officials misinterpreting the existing regulations (whether by accident or design).

Kind regards,

Simon


You see? Easy peasy and now I have a written statement about this MP’s intentions; ’ There is no question whatever of Graham suggesting or supporting new regulation regarding home education.‘ Working in this way, I shall  eventually have simple answers to all my questions. Now let’s look at the wrong way to go about it.  Here is another email to Graham Stuart, this one sent the day after my own:


Dear Graham,
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me on Twitter and invite communication via email. In the interests of openness and transparency, this is an open letter that I will publish on my blog along with any response.
I write with reference to two points:
1. The APPG and its structure, and
2. The proposal that you mentioned at the end of the last APPG meeting in October 2013.
I will deal with them separately for clarity’s sake.
I appreciate that the APPG has been functioning for some time without widespread interest from the HE community. However, your minuted suggestion that  ”home education experts from local authority areas” should come together to form a national organisation to “build expertise and challenge bad practice and ignorance” has precipitated interest, criticism and concern. This is, I believe, largely because of the potentially negative outcomes of such a proposal, which I will expand upon below.
A key concern for me is the unelected nature of the APPG, its secretariat (HEAS) and the “secretariat support”. I can only find the APPG minutes on the secretariat support’s personal website, and from reading those minutes I have deduced that she is responsible for the preparation of delegate lists, invites, agendas, supporting/briefing papers and minutes. I tried to communicate directly with this individual, to be told that my questions would not be answered.
My questions regarding the structure of the APPG are below:
How and when was the secretariat and secretariat function proposed, agreed and clarified? By whom? What were the terms of reference?
To whom do I direct my request for a full client list of the secretariat/secretariat support, as per P11 of the HoC Guide to the Rules on All-Party Groups?
How do I arrange for all future delegate lists/agendas, supporting/briefing papers and minutes to be either made publicly available at the time of their production or sent directly to me and any other interested parties?
What is the formal position of the APPG with regard to proposals that are made and taken forward through the APPG without consultation with and representation of the home education community, especially when such proposals have the potential to negatively impact upon all home educating families?
Is there a procedure for challenging/appeal against the decision to incorporate a secretariat and/or “secretariat support” — on the grounds of, say, a lack of neutrality, conflict of interest, or unprofessionalism when dealing with key stakeholders?
With regard to the proposal itself, I outlined my concerns in my blog post “Questions arising from the home education APPG” (hyperlink here). The professionalisation of “home education” will legitimise and validate what is currently an optional role (and rightly so) within local authorities.
A national organisation has the potential to rubber stamp local authorities as “good” (whatever “good” is defined as; surely operating within the law does not require national organisation?) without maintaining adequate oversight of developing problems or bad practice — this happens surprisingly quickly, and even local authorities with “good” reputations continue to make mistakes.
It could well block home educators from tackling local problems at a local level, effectively funnelling all efforts through a monolithic, “official” body. This is the antithesis of localism and it is incredibly disempowering and destructive in the medium to long term (it happened in my own local authority area when “experts” intervened without the consent of many active local home educators). Having seen the detailed and complex level at which home educators have had to operate in “good practice” areas, I fail to see how a national organisation could hope to replicate the levels of application, dedication and diversity needed to turn local authorities round.
The most worrying aspect, for me at least, is the potential this association has to cause significant harm in the hands of a government that has few sympathies with the importance of families and the primacy of the parent with regard to welfare and education. You and I tweeted about Barry Sheerman’s perspective (hyperlink here) a week or two ago, and it is precisely this entrenched attitude towards home education, also seen in many local authority officers, that could turn any professional organisation into a powerful lobbying group against freedom in education after the next general election.
It is true that there is nothing to stop officers organising if they so wish. However, I think it is totally unacceptable to organise and/or additionally resource this through an unelected and unaccountable body in the face of significant opposition from the affected community, and I would like to express my opposition to this in the strongest terms.
My questions regarding your proposal are below:
Have you had discussions about this national organisation prior to proposing it at the end of the last APPG?
When you referred to “home education experts from local authorities” did you mean local authority officers, consultants or individuals from the home education community?
What is your definition of “home education expert”?
What exactly is the purpose of the next APPG? Is it to scope the proposal, or actively take it forward? Has there been or will there be an evidence based impact assessment?
Are there formal mechanisms in place to deal with opposition from key stakeholders?
I am conscious of asking so many questions but I think they are reasonable and pertinent to the current situation, so thank you for your patience. Should you need any clarification regarding any of the points I have raised, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you and sharing any responses.
Lisa Amphlett


Oh, dear! Can anybody spot the difference between this email and my own? Yes, that’s right, mine was a couple of dozen words, containing a single question. Lisa Amphlett’s, on the other hand, is a long, rambling communication, with no fewer than thirteen questions embedded in it.  What do readers think are the chances of anybody ploughing through all that and answering all the  questions? That’s right; practically zero!  So it proved, because here is the answer which she received ten days later:


Dear Lisa
Thank you for your letter of 23 November about the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Home Education.
APPGs are designed to provide an opportunity for Parliamentarians to learn more about a topic, and that is the function served by the Home Education group.
As you may know, I have been engaged in highlighting and challenging inappropriate behaviour by local authority officers regarding home education for some years. This can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle. It is my belief, and that of the APPG, that an association of local authority officers dealing with Home Education would make it easier to share best practice, stamp out misunderstanding and ensure fair treatment of home educating families.
Any such association would determine its own priorities but could provide local authority officers with guidance to help them challenge the sometimes unnecessarily defensive approach adopted by some local authorities towards home educating parents.
Yours sincerely,
Graham


This all illustrates the  two cardinal rules for such endeavours. First, keep it short and secondly, ask only one simple question at a time.  I have a suspicion that Lisa Amphlett will never receive answers to her questions, whereas I have now the answers to the two most important questions I wished to ask. The third, I shall have in another few days. 

Already, the rage is mounting about this and the conspiracy theorists are gearing up. I fear that the only real mystery is why anybody would think for a moment that such a long winded and prolix communication had the remotest chance of being answered!

Oh, no! Simon Webb is publicising the names of children

I suppose that I have only myself to blame for the latest piece of nonsense to be circulating about me on face book and twitter! When Lisa Amphlett was expressing the desire to speak to me on the telephone or at least exchange emails with me yesterday, I just knew that it would end badly. I said as much to her on the comments here, when I declined politely to do so. She was persuasive though, saying;

my offer of an email, telephone or face to face conversation stands. How can honest communication be anything less than a good idea? 

How indeed? And how could I have been such a mug? Despite refusing to play, she eventually sent me a personal email, trying to draw me into a debate. I could have deleted it, but felt that that would be a bit rude. She was clearly anxious to be in touch with me.  Now the first thing that I noticed was that she had CC’d her email into a third party; a man whose name I did not recognise. Obviously, I checked this person, just in case he was a lawyer or something. A quick google led me to a newspaper article featuring this man, who turned out to be Lisa Amphlett’s partner. In the article, they were very free with their personal details, mentioning their daughter’s name and precise age. I was amused to find that this meant that from 2009 to 2012, Lisa’s daughter had been under the age of five and she had therefore not technically been a home educator at all during those years of activism on behalf of the cause. It will be recalled that much has been made of the fact that Fiona Nicholson is not technically a home educator either, by virtue of her  own son’s age. 

I replied amiably enough to Lisa’s email, checking that I was right about her daughter’s age. I mentioned that I too had been regarded by some as not competent to speak about home education, because my daughter too was not aged between five and sixteen and I was therefore not a home educator. I thought this pleasingly ironic. Let us pause for a moment here and consider what has happened. Lisa has in the past telephoned a newspaper and advertised her daughter’s name and age. She clearly didn’t mind this information being freely available on the internet. She has gone out of her way to get me to exchange emails with her, even though I have told her that I don’t wish to do so. I have teased her about the fact that for three years of her home education activity, she was not officially a home educator at all and we part on what seems to me good terms. Anybody see anything reprehensible in my conduct?

Before we go any further, I should explain that I was pretty sure that this would all end  in unpleasantness, whether I did or did not  respond to Lisa Amphlett’s advances. How could I know this? It is really very simple. Whenever anybody makes a fetish of being honest and truthful, as Lisa did when she talked of, ‘my personal integrity, which I take very seriously’, you can be pretty sure that the individual will turn out to be a tricksy liar! (It’s much the same as her friend Maire Stafford, you see. She of course describes herself in her twitter profile as being mild, shy, timid and sweet; it’s a racing certainty that such a person will prove to be an aggressive bully).

So far, so good. At Lisa Amphlett’s urging, I have been in touch with her and exchanged a few good humoured messages. Imagine my surprise, when I found that as a result of this, people were talking of trying to close down this blog or speculating about calling the police. You gasp? You think it unlikely? Here is a man called Peter Flynn, tweeting last night;

 breach of privacy. Report them to the Blog hosting firm !


if he used the names of my children I'd report him to the police.

https://twitter.com/PeterRFlynn


So, I am to be reported to the police and also the Blog hosting firm, because Lisa Amphlett wanted a newspaper to report the name and age of her daughter? No, that would be crazy! It must be because I publicised the child’s name by mentioning it to her mother. But wait, surely her own mother would already know her daughter’s name? Very odd.

Here is another of that same crowd:

he is playing a dirty game..using names of children etc. Nasty man.

https://twitter.com/offshorebella


I won't weary readers with any more examples.  The good thing here is that we are able to see precisely what has happened and follow  these untruthful rumours to their source. This can only be the personal email that I sent Lisa Amphlett. It is good to be able to see in detail how these rumours are started and who is responsible for them. If nothing else, it should act as a warning for others who become embroiled with this particular bunch of home educators. I say home educators, but you have to ask how much time they are actually  able to spare for educating their children! One sees them engaging in all sorts of conspiracies and rumour mongering at all hours of the day and night, but they never seem to discuss education or childcare. They are all of them too obsessed with fighting imaginary hobgoblins. A little more education and a little less fretting about supposed threats to their chosen lifestyle would be my recommendation for some of this particular crew! In the meantime, the take-home message is clear. If somebody claims that her personal integrity is very important to her; be afraid, be very afraid! You will soon find lies and innuendo about yourself being spread across the internet.

Lisa Amphlett's open letter to Graham Stuart

One of the women who signed the appeal for money to help a mother skip the country, at which we looked yesterday, has now published an open letter to Graham Stuart:

http://www.lisaamphlett.com/2013/11/23/letter-to-graham-stuart-appg/