Dare to tell me...

If you dare to tell me that school is good for most (all?) children, I will spit feathers and turn purple, green, orange and blue like a demented chameleon on a multi-coloured tablecloth.

This mother's story about her lovely artistic son is worth reading:

http://redmummyrambleson.blogspot.com/2009/11/lunatics-are-running-asylum.html

It has brought back to me all the essential wrongness that I remember about schools.

The twenty-seven Year 5 kids pushing one way out of a set of doors and the thirty pushing the other way. The doors bulging and twisting under the force. No teacher in sight. Me, with my hand to my mouth, across the playground, watching frozen in horror and waiting for one or more of them to be knocked to the ground and trampled upon. Waiting for the blood. Waiting for the death.

CHILDREN DESERVE BETTER.

School is safe? School teaches you? Teaches you how to be a barbarian maybe.

School is a place of no choice. School is where you dread to go and hate to be. OK, not all children (maybe in a tiny few cases, school is actually a step up from home) but to young'uns who are loved and respected in their homes?

Is it really what we want for our children?

Having to hide in the toilets away from the three mean and radgy girls who always make you miserable?

Being told you should 'stand up' to them while knowing they'll beat you to pulp if you say A WHISPER to them?

Adults do not know or they conveniently forget how damn dreadful it is being powerless and humiliated and shamed and laughed at and ignored and hit and punched and poked and having your favourite gel pens nicked on your first day at a new school and seeing your best jacket on the floor having been trampled all over with muddy boots.

CHILDREN DESERVE PROTECTION.

My children, and yours, deserve to feel safe every day, not just the day when they have to go to the dentist and so not to school. They deserve to feel secure, not to have their little hearts pumping so fast they can feel sick and dizzy because they see some big kid in the schoolyard who stole the lunch money Mum paid for out of her crap job and who is coming THEIR WAY.

THEN YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND THEY FINGERPRINT YOU.

They steal your fingerprints. You don't give consent because who tells a big tall hard-faced teacher, "No, this is something I do NOT CONSENT to" because it's all "do what teacher says now". But fingerprints - you must have done something pretty bad to be fingerprinted like a criminal but what was it? No one tells you which adds to the confusion and hurting stomach and sick feelings and lightheadness.

Every night you try to sleep to escape the deathliness of your days but you stay awake because you don't want to sleep because that will mean you wake up and it's SCHOOL again and you've just got away from the torture and the hell and the noise and those kids following you around and giggling at something behind your back, but it's not at something else it's at YOU.

God help us. We are spirit-murderers.

God help us. We think this is normal.

In the future, we will look back and cry for what we have done to children.

God help us, but God help the little children first.

Choice that is no choice

Every day, in hundreds of ways, we all make choices.

To get up or lie in bed, what to wear if we choose to get up, whether to turn the heating on or off, what to eat for breakfast, whether or not to have breakfast....

Thousands of choices, not hundreds.

Some choices are no choices. I choose not to hurt my children. I choose to listen to my children. I choose to treat them with respect and consider what they say as worthy (as, indeed, what they say is worthy).

Often I will act upon what they say. They are privy to my thinking about what they choose to tell me and we share a lot of information and knowledge.

Choice should have a choice.

Choice should not be made under duress because choice made under duress is no choice.

Choice should imply that one can limit or, in fact, choose not to choose to choose.

A man who leaps out of a bush and demands that you hand over your cash or he will shoot your dog leaves you with no choice.

' The common English usage of the word "defeasance" has also become acceptable in law, referring to a contract that is susceptible to being declared void as in "immoral contracts are susceptible to defeasance."' (Duhaime)

Immoral contracts are susceptible to being declared void.

Immoral contracts are ones in which we have no choice. Immoral contracts stem from a misunderstanding and misapplication of the word choice, and from a source which sees people as counters on a game board.

A choice which is no choice is force.

Coercion.

The review written up by Badman and so enthusiastically embraced by Balls has advocated 'choice' for no one. Children caught up in this conspiracy of choice are sold a piece of swampland in Florida. They are offered a voice which implies choice. They are told they will be listened to. They are not told that they will be listened to and then ignored.

It is an immoral system based on immoral targets.

It contravenes so many of the United Nations Rights of the Child that Britain has signed up to.

"States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention."

Article 5
http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp

From the same:

"1. States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others."

Article 14

Naturally, we can be respected in that the government can tell us that we are respected, and yet they can behave as if we are anything but respected. I can hear what you say but I don't have to act upon what you say or change my mind about what I think you might need or want or deserve. However, when we treat a minority group like home educators differently to any other group in society, then we are being flushed out into a vast sea of moral effluent. We are going wrong. We are taking heed of our prejudices and our misconceptions to affect other people's lives and that is a serious undertaking.

"What is not acceptable is arbitrary application of law so that some people end up being treated more badly than others where objectively the circumstances do not warrant such treatment."

European Convention on Human Rights, Article 14, from the book Unlocking Human Rights, page 385

Home educators are subject to the arbitrary application of law. We are being treated worse than those people who school their children. As home educating families, we are subject to more intrusion and intervention than any schoolchild's family has to put up with.

Lastly, the circumstances do not warrant such treatment.

To choose to implement laws that place a blameless and caring group of parents in a no-win and intolerable situation is the work of evil. The circumstances do not warrant it. Home educating parents do not warrant it. Home educating children do not warrant it.

Home educators may be forced to undergo a series of malevolent changes in the laws that affect them. They will have no choice but to obey these laws unless they realise that, to bend to accommodate a bad law, goes against their very nature.

Home educators will still have a choice.

To obey a tyrannical law or not.

To choose or not to choose, that is the question.

Demands to Parliament

This government is overly attached to making demands of it's citizens. So it's time to turn that around and make some of my own.

These are my demands:

I demand the investigation of the damaging practices imposed by power-mad local authorities upon a powerless group of women and their children who are coping in the impossible position of assault and battery from this government.

I demand equality of arms, considering that the government has all the might of the state behind it and home educators have a handful of honourable human beings like Mr. Graham Stuart.

I demand a cessation of this war perpetrated by people in positions of power who are abusing that power to obliterate one of the few valid educational choices which works well for children.

I demand respect because we, home educators, are worthy of it and are telling government that we will no longer be abused by the prejudiced and biased whims of officials in any form of government who seek to violate the rights of law-abiding people and their innocent children.

I demand that the government stops criminalising parents who are doing their best to provide a decent safe and reasonable environment for their often-already traumatised and hurt children of the United Kingdom in preference to attending to the misery and anguish suffered by hundreds of thousands of children undergoing all forms of bullying in the schools of this nation.

I demand that the government cease and desist from using its position of power to spread upset and shock and cause injury to decent, kind, loving and ordinary people in preference to looking after children that it could look after but neglects.

I demand that government stop mangling and perverting words such as safeguarding and support.

I demand that government stop inciting the media to repeat slurs and slanders against the home education community.

I demand accountability from what are public servants to serve the group of their masters called home educators who contribute to their exorbitant salaries and ample retirement benefits.

I demand that politicians refuse to make changes in laws until it is perfectly clear that changes in law will do the maximum good and the minimum damage.

I demand that home educators are left alone to pursue their lives ensuring that their children receive a superior education when it is amply clear that the schools of the nation are largely unable to provide an education of any kind or to keep the nation's children safe.

You have to be justice if you want justice

I've been thinking about the depths of corruption that individuals and governments can descend to. Not pleasant thoughts for someone who didn't sleep well at all last night.

I've also been thinking about how much I put my trust in other people. Politicians. Bureaucrats. People.

Then I chatted with my youngest daughter, and I said this: "Where is the justice in it? Where?"

She fixed me with a measuring stare and replied: "The people are justice. It is not merely something outside them. It is in them. You have to BE justice if you want justice."

I could only think "WOW!"

I also thought, "That is it. It is that. All the individuals in the history of the united kingdom have made the law what it is. Many of them have striven to give birth to justice, to be fair, to be even-handed, to remedy the hurt that one person can deal another.

It is inside us. That's what I've been feeling all along. How absolutely wrong I've felt. How twisted up and how I wanted to shriek "That is not right. You cannot do these things. You don't understand," and I have tried to explain and reason and tell and demonstrate. I believe that this is the nature of women and it is held against us because, as is pointed out by Baroness Helena Kennedy in her excellent book 'Eve was Framed' Eve was not part of the law-making brigade. Law was made up by men.

Now, we abide by laws because we are good little ladies (mostly) trying to please our other halves, our fathers, our brothers, our police and all the other men who have contributed to our lives. Yet, those men can be wrong. Laws can be poor laws. Men are frightened and weak and prone to desiring to control the uncontrollable world (to be fair and even-handed so are some women).

Laws can be wrong. Men who make them can be wrong. They can mistaken. Or they can be rotten and corrupt. But, throughout history, the law is, was and ever shall be 'us'.

We uphold it. We pander to it. We complain about it.

There is another law. There is the law of rightness. That absolutely uncompromising feeling or persistent thought or still small voice or loud yelling screeching voice that never lets you forget when something is WRONG.

Changing the law as it is to mold human beings to your will no matter what they say, how they protest, how they reason, how they are consulted, how they yell in anger is simply wrong.

The legal principle of calling someone innocent until he or she is proven - beyond a shadow of a doubt or beyond reasonable doubt - to be guilty has passed our internal censor. It has stood the test of time immemorial. It has the force of custom, of fairness, the odour of violets and the approval of consciences far and wide.

The next principle - Nemo judex in causa sua - is neatly summed up in Latin; the all-but-moribund language that still can dance and sing so lyrically. The phrase means 'No one shall be a judge in his own cause'. In other words, no one can judge a case in which he or she is party or in which he or she has an interest (Duhaime.org)

It is a principle in natural justice, and underlies the doctrine of reasonable apprehension of bias. It states that someone who has a bone to pick with someone else cannot try the someone else and be unbiased.

It's like being judged in your divorce suit by your hostile mother-in-law who will decide how much money you're going to get off her precious son who has never, in her eyes, done anything wrong.

Judges who have an interest in a case recuse themselves. They disqualify themselves. They might declare a vested interest. They should do this to answer the call of fairness in themselves.
They cannot judge without bias if they have something to gain or lose in the case decision.

Graham Badman did not recuse himself. Ed Balls did not ask for fairness or even-handedness or care enough about basic principles that most people live by: he does not deserve to be in such an elevated position and in charge of so many vulnerable people.

It is wrong.

No mangling of parlous words dreamed up by slimy-souled men in grey pinstripe suits can alter whether or not something is right or wrong. They can only confuse and confound your brain. They cannot subvert that part of you, the knowing part of you, that recognises the truth and the right.

Home educators are correct to refuse to be confused and confounded. They are correct to say no to the gamesplaying and the endless drumbeat of unprincipled men.

We are right to believe that we are right for we uphold justice. They - the pinstriped - have lost their way. They are soon to crash and burn in their flight because we are justice. We are the just. The right.

We are justice.

We have to be justice if we want justice.

So they've announced it

Here we are, folks.

"Safeguarding the vulnerable – strengthening the powers of local authorities and others with regards to registration, inspection and intervention will mean effective systems are in place to protect those that most need it. The Bill will introduce a new home educators’ registration system and take new powers for Secretaries of State to intervene in youth offending teams that are failing and potentially putting young people and their communities at risk."

They've announced it. They have. The nerve, the unbelievable cheek of including us under 'safeguarding'. The Queen's Speech. I'm surprised her Majesty's lips didn't fall from her face and land in her lap. I am not a monarchist but you cannot say she wasn't told. You cannot say children did not write to her and tell her. So she is complicit too.

The gloves are off now.

We're away to the races. We're sure to win. Because we care more. Because it's our children. Because it is OUR country and we don't want this vile evil bunch shoving us full of a load of complete pablum that is designed to keep us quiet. IT WON'T.

We don't want you, BALLS. You can't keep anyone safe. Just the opposite.

We don't want you, BADMAN. Creating your own little tax haven and promoting your wickedness.

Do you hear me? I'm not shouting. I am stating. GO. NOW.

GO AWAY NOW.

You have wasted my time for years. Your day is over. Your extinction is here. NOW.

GO.

GO-BALLS. GO!

I used to believe in the system. NO MORE. I used to think they were honourable. NO MORE. I am sick of their slimy ugliness. So GO-BALLS!

See him run in his patterned underwear, eyes popping and bulging, screaming and shouting... See him run.

Run, Balls, run.

We're after you.

You will wish you never heard of home educators. By God, you will.

In the eye of the beholder

For some unknown reason today I decided to surf the net and chanced upon 'terrorism' as a subject which interested me.

Mostly terrorism doesn't interest me. That is to say, it does, but it scares me stupid (which takes some doing!)

Today, though, I lingered. I found out some fascinating facts.

First of all, there is no specific widely-accepted definition of terrorism. No, none that everyone agrees is fitting.

I think that terrorism or fear of it is an excuse to pass draconian laws against what is not, and will not be, a grave threat to anyone.

Oh, I have no doubt at all that there are people called terrorists somewhere who find that all their political arguments, all their religious zeal, all their so-called rights count for nothing against the might of the state or a group of states or the world generally.

It's all in the looking.

So, one man's terrorist may see himself or herself, or even be, another man's freedom fighter. Possibly it's a great shock to find that society feels you are such a threat to them, or you have such a poor reputation, that you need to be locked away or merely just monitored, but you can bet that your freedom to speak, act and feel as you deem you should will be compromised.

Here we have a few definitions from eloquent men as to the meaning of terrorism:

"Terrorism is the deliberate, negligent, or reckless use of force against noncombatants, by state or nonstate actors for ideological ends and in the absence of a substantively just legal process."
David Rodin (Oxford philosopher)

Deliberate use of force. How do you define force then? Is it the making of someone or a group do something that they find offensive and repugnant? Could it be manipulating home educators into believing that a faulty and ridiculous court of the Badman review has found solid evidence against them and means that their right and proper educational freedom will be curtailed in future because some bureaucrats do not, and refuse to, understand the meaning of education?

By state or nonstate actors for ideological ends. In home education, the state itself has taken up our case as being 'not us' and is fairly determined that we shall be forced to accept registration, licencing and monitoring for no justifiable reason.

The absence of a substantively just legal process. As home educators have grown to realise through all our channels of heart-rending appeals and thrashing about attempting to get someone in power - anyone in power - to cancel the abysmal review of home education, there has been no just legal process here. There is nowhere to go, no-one to whom we can explain our case (as yet) and assert our innocence.

Other definitions of terrorism:

"Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted." Walter Laqueur

If you take 'the illegitimate use of force' as smearing and defaming home educators, and continuing to discriminate against this minority group then, yes, I think Walter Laqueur's definition is a dandy one to think about. Especially, the 'when innocent people are targeted' bit.
We are certainly innocent. The clearest and most accurate figures about home educating adults show that they are probably much more likely to be trustworthy with their children than are the rest of the population. So innocent. Yes.

"Terrorism is the deliberate use of violence aimed against civilians in order to achieve political ends". Boaz Ganor

Once again, violence can be seen from the beholder's viewpoint. From mine, I can see the many hours I spend - and so many good and true home educators spend - attempting to shore up our rotting and disintegrating civil rights and maintain the status quo as a form of violence against us. That status quo which was illegitimately stripped from us when Graham Badman - the cheerleader of the dodgy review -told a home educator "The status quo cannot remain".

"Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience". James M. Poland

I think we can say that our situation was premeditated - how many consultations have we ploughed through in the last four or five years? Deliberate? It is hard to see how this constant barrage from the heavy guns of government could have been an accident. Threatening? Well, the final and inconceivable threat is that we will lose our children to a callous, vicious system. Our children will be wrenched from our arms by social workers or government officials simply because we are anything but compliant. We are not the norm. We do not think that the government's sanctioned morass of half-baked theories and hothouses for bullying called schools are good enough for our young. So fear and intimidation is a technique you use on a segment of population who fail to conform. You frighten them into submission. You coerce them into letting their human rights evaporate like the shimmering mist of truth and freedom that we thought we knew in our country.

The influencing of an audience, of course, goes on daily. Mr. Brown cannot spell or write properly because he is blind in one eye. Poor Mr. Brown. The old I-feel-sorry-for-the-lad feint. Re-direct your opponents' rational and natural anger by playing the sympathy vote.

There's the sickly-sweet 'we must safeguard children' song soughing in the background too. All very plausible until you realise that the children the authorities could have safeguarded were left in unsafe conditions. It rather falls apart then.

Darul Uloom Deoband said at the Anti-terrorism Conference in 2008, "Any action that targets innocents, whether by an individual or by any government and its agencies or by a private organisation anywhere in the world constitutes, according to Islam, an act of terrorism".

According to Islam, we have the case of the home educating community, milud. Accused of incubating a terrorist cell in one (mythical) Islamic home educating family, turning our beloved babies into domestic servants, being involved in child trafficking, abusing our young, and being so mentally ill as to wish to subject our offspring to extreme medical procedures in order to have some attention for ourselves (Munchausen's by Proxy, anyway), I think we have been targeted and we have been threatened and we have suffered acts of terrorism.

The General Assembly resolution 49/60, titled "Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism," adopted on December 9, 1994, contains a provision describing terrorism:

"Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them".

Incubating a state of terror in any one group of citizens in a country is unjustifiable. This terrorism of the UK government is totally without foundation and is not to be justified under any consideration.

"Hence depending on the perspective of the state a resistance movement may or may not be labelled terrorist group based on whether the members of a resistance movement are considered lawful or unlawful combatants and their right to resist occupation is recognized. Ultimately, the distinction is a political judgment".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism

In other words - the words of Edward Peck, U.S. Former Chief of Mission in Iraq (under Jimmy Carter) and ambassador to Mauritania:

"And so, the terrorist is, of course, in the eye of the beholder".

Poppy generation

I must bow my head now. I confess that I missed Remembrance Sunday.

Normally, I don't miss it. I've been known to sink my double chin to my chest to honour the dead of the two World Wars, and the dead of every other war and the survivors of all misbegotten deeds. But this year has been different.

This year, I feel their pain deep in my aching bones, and I have their screams echoing endlessly in my ears. They are with me, those violated creatures mired in mud and filth and the scarlet of their blood and that of other humans, knowing that the end of their lives - and such short lives - was a millisecond away.

You rest now, beneath the poppies. You sleep and wake to heaven now. You have passed the baton to this generation - these ones now quick and breathing.

And how we have failed you, our dear dead; how we have failed to see that discourse fills the airwaves now and not truth that you put your shaking hands to the guns to protect. We bow our heads at the thought of the comfortable dreadfulness of those days wherein you gave your future and your dreams. It is a cosy feeling that we have, snuggling up in our coats and jackets, watching the march of the handfuls left of the few who made it back alive but not unblooded and not unchanged.

We remember on November 11th (or the nearest Sunday) only to forget on the day after.

How much you must long to shriek at us. How much you must wish to awaken us. How much you try to warn us.

"This too can happen to you..." they whisper from their scattered graves. "Beware. You too can lose your freedom. The poppy can be your symbol as well as ours. Beware".

A million bombs fell upon our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and they clambered over the bodies of the beloved, the children, the families, the friends and the unknown to reach the haven of freedom.

But there are other ways to destroy a man or a woman: it can be done without dropping a bomb or pointing a gun. The new times have more subtle deaths for us.

"Beware. You too can lose your freedom at the behest of vile men. Beware. The poppy can be your symbol as well as ours. Beware. Oh, please, beware".

Whoever cares the most...

"Whoever cares the most, wins" is a quotation from the episode called 'The Son Also Rises' from the series Battlestar Galactica.

It is a delicious saying, isn't it?

Whoever cares the most, wins.

We care the most. Savour that feeling. We are winning. We will win. It is inevitable.

I do not doubt that determined and confident people can make the difference. They can climb the mountain. They can even move the mountain.

It will happen. Everything has gone too far in the country, but it is our country and we will have it back. We will make our poppy generation proud of us again. No dictator, whether he be German or English, will EVER enslave the hearts and minds of Britons, of steadfast, clear-thinking home educators.

We care the most, we will win.

Believe it. Feast on it. Know it. Let your bones declare it for it is so.

Wherever the wave of probability is now it will break in our favour. Whichever lever must push forward to reinstate and, in fact, make home education grow exponentially is being thrust forward now. Our momentum is unstoppable. We are the force of nature that no mere weak and puny men can oppose. We are creation. We are creators. We are the guardians of tomorrow. We are the keepers of such precious cargo. We are the beginning of our future. We are parents. We are mothers and we are fathers.

Whoever cares the most, wins.

We have already won.

War, I cry war!

Home education has been issued a death threat. Or a death promise.

A lot of people have been trying to interest journalists in the civil rights side of it. Very few have responded. Most have not.

More people have attempted to speak to their MPs. Again, some have listened and understood and acted. A lot have listened and dismissed us.

So what is there to do in a war when the enemy has an overwhelming advantage in arms? Keep talking, keep explaining, keep heartened, keep up the pressure, keep screaming "NO!"

Here is something practical I can suggest: you might write to a Lord or Lady.

If the legislation to put shackles on home education gets through Parliament - which is possible since Labour are a majority there - then it goes to the Lords. The Lords have struck down, or watered down, many an insane, immoral proposal of the government's before. However, if they don't know about it, they may not understand the underlying thrust of the recommendations which are specifically designed to rid this country of home education.

One way or another, the government will stop people home educating. A clue to this was the mention of Germany, in the beginning of the Badman Review. The laws there are from 1938 when Hitler was in power. Now that we are - happily or not - going to be dragged into Europe, having donated our sovereign power to the other countries of the EU, we will likely have to come into line with policies operating in other EU countries. Home education is illegal in Germany. A home educating family fled to France to find that German police came to their door in France. Another home educating child was removed from her family and put in a detention unit simply because she was home educated.

This, put quite starkly, is our future.

It is not a question of whether or not we are registered and a few lovely LA people approve of us and give us (what we should have already) exam centres and other sweeties. This is the outright survival of home education or not. This is war. THIS IS WAR.

Badman said we had to come out of the trenches. He recognised that this is war. He stated that it is war.

It is reinforced by the fact that, although the Badman review was completely and fatally flawed, it has not been shoved in the nearest incinerator. It has been taken up by an odious Secretary of State. It has been followed by a 'consultation' - yet another misuse of a word -since they consult ONLY to say they have consulted but THEY DO NOT LISTEN and they do not change their pettifogging minds.

I am not trying to offend anyone or place blame, but we really must open our eyes. We need to wonder why a PUBLIC authority -bought and paid for by US - needs to inspect us. We need to think about why the government is so keen to impose more restrictions on home education when the existing laws are more than adequate to deal with ANY problem in home education should it arise.

We need to ask ourselves why a group of people in charge of a country seem to be so deaf, so intolerant, so incapable of listening, so intransigent, so prejudiced, so convinced that they are right that they are determined to enter our homes - our private places - and interrogate our children ALONE.

Is that the action of a benign group of people?

Is this what we want for our children? To be under the jackboot of people like these who DO NOT CARE ONE STUFF for our children/any children unless those children are being perfectly groomed to produce money for the economy (meaning themselves) as proper economic units should be.

If they cared for children, NO CHILD in their care would suffer. No child would have a poor outcome. No child would leave their care lost and lonely and labelled as human refuse.

No child in a dangerous situation would be left to die or to be grievously wounded - no matter what time of year it was or how many parties were planned. If they cared, they would protect. But they don't care. They just do not. Only enough to manacle home educators who are producing children with inquiring minds and questioning but loving hearts.

They care about putting your home educated child in prison.

They care about that.

Actually, Mr. Badman, we're ALIENS (or don't call me earthling or I'll set my perconchel on you!)

No, Mr. Badman, we don't practice the dubious and rare - if it exists at all - Munchausen by proxy habit. To start with, I don't drag my children to the doctor unless they absolutely have to go. I haven't thrown my babies into operating rooms or complained about all kinds of symptoms that they may or may not have.

So I think we can discount this mother being disturbed by Munchausen by proxy.

You have accused us of child abuse. Nope, not guilty!

You have suggested that we are terrorists. Nope, again, I enjoy being law abiding, thank you.

Now, it's the Munchies - again another accusation of child abuse. As I said, my children are relatively free of hospital and medical visits.

Ok, Ok, I'll come clean. I've had enough. Stop... Just stop the questions already. I confess...I am really an ALIEN from the planet Honour.

Before semiantain years ago, we didn't exist on your blue and white planet, but with my incredible changeling machine I shrank all of my family members to fit into one of your disgusting meat sacks each. It was quite claustrophobic at first, but we're used to them now and we can even make them work well. Nobody knows that we are from the planet Honour. That planet is famed for exracterating reports that stand up to rigorous scrutiny from twenty calazecs (that's roughly times one hundred) statisticians, then the reviews and recommendations are robustly examined for vested interests from the authors, and then the reports are put through a truth machine (rather like one of your old-fashioned mangles) which squeezes out anything that will harm another Honourable. Only then will a report be allowed to pass to the second level of test - the SATT. Sequestered Antipathy Thematic Test. I won't explain it because you, with your enfeebled sense of honour, wouldn't understand it.

So there you have it. Not criminals. Not mentally ill. Not trying to extort anything from the system. Not thieves. Not liars. Not with anything particular to gain from educating our young, except educated young. Not anything else that will come to light as more information oozes from various sources.

We're just aliens. We must be aliens because I certainly cannot understand why, while following our duty to provide an education for our children and doing our best to raise honourable human beings, we are under such sustained and deliberate attack. You would think these humans have abandoned the Human Rights Act. You would think public servants were masters of the public. You would think we've landed on a morally dessicated planet.

Maybe, fellow Honourables, we should secede from the planet Earth and declare that our homes belong to the high and exalted planet, Honour.

Lord knows, we need more Honour here.

The case against home education

The case against home education

You really should be out working. How can you do that if your kids are at home?

Should I be out working? Maybe I work extremely hard in my house, maybe I run a business, maybe I don't wish to make bloated cats much fatter by putting more food in front of them. Maybe I enjoy spending time with my children before they are not children and go on their journeys into life. At any rate, it's none of your business what I do or don't do.

How can you teach anyone? You don't have a teaching qualification.

I don't pretend to teach anyone. I think that is overwhelming hubris really. Somehow my children managed to utter words and then string sentences together without me coaching them. They stood up and walked and then progressed to running without me showing them how. I trust them to find out what they like to learn and learn it. If they need help, I'm here to give them the benefit of my many years of experience in learning.

How can you get them to behave at home?

My children are not barbarians. They are sensible, interesting, decent human beings and I do not need to make like a lion tamer to have them do what seems to be the right thing in any situation. Again, if they have difficulties I am around to give them advice. Other times, they give me advice. It's a whole advice-giving thing.

Don't you want time to yourself?

If I do decide to be anti-social, I can withdraw into a room not tenanted by anyone else at the time. Or I just ask for some space please. It doesn't happen often because, unlike what seems to be true for so many of the population, I thoroughly enjoy being with my youngsters. They are magic, wise, witty, understanding and helpful.

Can't you let go of them? Is that why you home educate?

We home educate because school was not good enough for my children. They were given no respect there - not even for their natural bodily functions. They were abused in school. They were not allowed to be their unique and wonderful selves. I can testify that they are not abused at home and they are always respected, listened to and deeply and absolutely loved. I can let go of them when they wish to fly away. I know that they are learning and growing and readying themselves to become airborne. When that happens it will occur because it is part of a natural unfolding and the timing is right, and not because they were chucked out of a nest prematurely.

Can I home educate? Me?

Yes, of course. Just begin and let your instincts lead you. We are accustomed to ignoring our deepest intuitive voice and the warmth of knowing that we have developed through generations. Allow yourself to feel what is good for your child and yourself. Your young one will guide you too. Go now and be with your child. They are only babies and youths for a moment of time. Savour it, for that time will never return.

Visitors on October 31st

We normally don't get anyone on Hallowe'en which pleases me because when I lived in Canada Mother and I had to work in shifts to cover the constant assaults on the doorbell.

We do, however, buy in some little treats in case the ghosts and ghoulies come a'calling.

Saturday evening, we had visitors.

H opened the door to three witches whose pointed hats were bigger than they were. The tiny wiccans were accompanied at a short distance by an adult. The three short broomstick-jockeys were sweet, happy, friendly and pleasant, and quite obviously pleased with their gifts.

Later I swung the door ajar to see a werewolf and a shorter girl dressed up as a teenager would be for a night out. Both lovely, charming in fact. They giggled delightedly at my aghast face, and kept giggling as I chatted to them. Nary an adult in sight.

Then I thought 'Hey-up, why are these childer - none of whom I recognised - actually visiting my premises, speaking to me - an unknown adult and taking sweets from my possibly dangerous hand? Shouldn't I be CRBed or ISAed or something'.

Quick, call the government! Ring Ed Balls! Tell Badders! Call the emergency services!

Protect me from the children.

Then I thought 'Oh, you're all right, Danae, and they know it. They can tell good guys from bad. Besides those wands look rather lethal, and I bet the littlies can run much faster than you'.

So I went down from high alert to enjoying myself in our community, and I thought that it isn't all gone. Those children didn't see me as anything other than an adult to giggle at and who would provide them with perfectly sound sweets.

I must be OK.

When you let people be people with other people. When the community gets communing. When people trust their instincts and get about their day to day lives, all is well.

It's when we sow evil thoughts in their precious minds that the trouble begins to bubble in the cauldron.

Maybe Hallowe'en Saturday was meant to show me that all is not lost.

Yet.