A breathtaking piece of effrontery

A couple of days ago I mentioned here that a mother was reluctant to send back to her local authority a questionnaire which they had asked her to complete. I gave no details of the list which this was on, let alone the woman's name. However, it appears that she feels upset by my use of her case here. Other members of the list are now expressing annoyance that I have taken a private message and spread the contents around. Wendy Crickard, a former teacher, had this to say;

' What a pathetic creep it is - perhaps 'Get a life' is the appropriate advice
to him or is it that he can't get a friend anywhere? WendyC'

Strong words indeed! But wait a minute. Wendy Crickard, where have we heard this name before? Oh yes, that's right. Back in October 2009, after I have been chucked off the HE-UK list and almost forgotten about it, she posted there explaining that she was meeting an MP and wished to show her details of a private message which I had sent to the list. Up until this point, I rather assumed that messages which people posted on HE-UK were private and should not be quoted or shown to others. I had certainly not done so myself. Here is what Wendy Crickard said on October 7th 2009;

'Does anyone have copy of the email to this site in which S.W. boasted of
misrepresenting himself in order to further his journalistic career? I’ll
happily wave it at Linda Waltho on Friday. WendyC'

A number of those on the list helped by producing other messages of mine for her to take to Linda Waltho MP and show her. Not one person said anything at all about these messages being private. The impression one gained was that this behaviour by Wendy Crickard was absolutely fine and acceptable. From that time, I have not been at all fussed about the privacy of messages on that particular list. It was Wendy Crickard's actions and the enthusiastic response of others on the list which rid me of any inhibitions which I might otherwise have felt about this. For her now to start complaining about anybody passing on details of a post from the HE-UK list is really a bit rich!

It is odd, incidentally, that converts to a cause are always more extreme in their support than those who have been supporters of that cause all their lives. One notices this with Catholic converts and others who join religions or political parties in later life. I suppose that Wendy, having spent all those years as a teacher, now feels that she must be more gung ho than other home educators in order to demonstrate her changed allegiance. It is an interesting psychological point.