Spinning, bumping and grinding

So Mr. Badman has noted the serious interest taken in his pseudo-intellectual recommendations and the furious pace of home educators who have brilliantly and effectively dismantled the edifice on which they stand (or totter).

He has had to shout for his pals in the LAs to come and help him as he sinks further into the mire upon which he set out his stall.

If you take a report so poorly written that becomes a platform upon which a government builds changes in the (already perfectly good) law, and in the report you use dodgy statistics, irrational proposals, hopeless illogic, and seek reckless destruction of laws that serve us well by providing a balance between the power of the state (local authorities) and the power of the people (parents), then you can expect to be questioned, have your work eyed up like a stripper's g-string, and thoroughly and roundly criticised.

That we allow a man who is so blatantly and obviously prejudiced to write such damning and completely inane and dangerous drivel is a strike against the heart of this country.

That he has the nerve (I nearly said balls!) to flail about like a drowning weasel to ask for more evidence to back up his insanity is another strike against the living tissue of this land.

That he is allowed more time to receive this help, to regroup his forces of darkness to continue this disgusting and evil power-play against law-abiding, caring parents is a thrust of the dagger down into the very soul of Britain.

So let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes. How many consultations? How many ultra vires LAs? How many happy children who home educate? How many home educators on the review panel?
How much money has been drained out of the coffers for this utter vile travesty? How many children are better off for this DCSF and its spin meisters?

Consultations? Four or five. Others that concern home educators. Too damn many. We actually have lives, you know.

Ultra vires LAs? Dozens? I have been a member of a few lists for four years and can recall agonised parents shouting for help so many times. My own LA representative lied to me about having the right to come into my house (but, cunningly, I had checked with a member of a national home education group so I knew that she had no right). She lied to me. A public servant, whose rations I help to pay for, brass-faced and staring me in the eyes, LIED to me.

Happy home educating children? I don't know an unhappy one, and have never heard of a child who doesn't unfold like a pinched plant leaving the darkness and reviving in the sun as they grow into home education.

Home educators on the review panel? None. Eh? Yes, none. The true experts. The non-school, home educating as I live and breath experts. Representation in Badman's group of bad advisors? Not one.

Tax payers' money? Well, my 88 year old mother probably contributed her share. The bill will add to about £275,000. Of course, this is a guess; informed by Tanya Byron's equally stupid review of computer games. We, who pay for these things, don't know the true total because the DCSF won't tell us. Telling us how much we've coughed up is a form of harassing and vilifying Badman apparently.

How many children are better off? None. In fact, they are worse off. Quite a few concerned mothers have told me that their children are terrified to see officials alone, don't want to be showing their work, don't want to perform for schooly agents like performing fleas, and are scared of the Badman.

They've cried themselves to sleep.

Cried. Children. Shed tears.

Some of them are petrified that they will be forced - frog-marched - back to school from which safe and glorious hell hole they had previously been removed because they were in danger.

Safeguarding?

Yeah, right.

Pull the other one.