Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

After posting for some time on the Unofficial site (under the sometimes censorious Julian and the generally laid-back JR) I stumbled unwittingly onto the CHOBA official Old Blues site. I didn't ask to go there. It somehow came up complete with a window giving my signature picture and an inviting flashing cursor. So I decided to accept their invitation and post. It asked what I thought of CHOBA. Not very much, I said, giving my thoughts on John Daniel and Judy Evans, two OBs who had posted on it in, what seemed to me, the now familiar tone of smugness and political naivity that I have come to associate with this charity school.

In no time at all my posts were taken down and an email ticking me off sent from a crisp PR woman called (I think) Heather. Well I think she was called Heather. It certainly wasn't Sharon or Debbie, still less Taylor Jean. CH didn't have PR women when I was there. The HM (Clarence) would have sent a polite note. Less money around then perhaps. So anyway I persisted in sending a few more posts, one proposing a motion for an upcoming debate (which did stay in) but a couple of others regretting that CH didn't do robust opinion and free speech and reminding them of our country's debt to Voltaire and the European Enlightenment which would definitely have allowed free speech. Strangely it is these posts which have now disappeared off the list of Visitor Posts. How mysterious. I think sentimentally of doing history under Chern when he used to emphasise the values of the Enlightenment, reform movements, extended franchise, free speech, etc.
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So you went over there, in your first few posts you swung it around a bit, got a bit ad hom, and are now surprised when you get short shrift?

I share your total amazement and outrage, I really do.

"I couldn't possibly comment !"

Ha-ha! The CHOBA site has banned me again. After a previous contretemps in which I failed to join in the "Praise the Lord for our Foundation" ass-licking fest, they relented and put my window in again. But it didn't last long. I spotted a picture on the CHOBA site in which Tory peer Lord Agnew was pictured with a clutch of CH pupils, polishing his "charity credentials". After checking him out on Wiki I pointed out that the noble lord was a big cheese in the academies movement and that one or two questions had been asked about him in his career. These quite innocent misgivings about such an august figure were clearly not acceptable on the CHOBA site, so I've been banned once more. But anyone else is free to Google or Wiki Lord Agnew and make their own minds up.

rockfreak wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 8:43 pm Ha-ha! The CHOBA site has banned me again. After a previous contretemps in which I failed to join in the "Praise the Lord for our Foundation" ass-licking fest, they relented and put my window in again. But it didn't last long. I spotted a picture on the CHOBA site in which Tory peer Lord Agnew was pictured with a clutch of CH pupils, polishing his "charity credentials". After checking him out on Wiki I pointed out that the noble lord was a big cheese in the academies movement and that one of two questions had been asked about him in his career. These quite innocent misgivings about such an august figure were clearly not acceptable on the CHOBA site, so I've been banned once more. But anyone else is free to Google or Wiki Lord Agnew and make their own minds up.

Who's a bad troll, then...?

Pe.A wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 9:16 pm
Who's a bad troll, then...?

Personally I think he's a brilliant troll... mire power to him

Thank you Gingerbeard17. Indeed my point about the noble Agnew person is to ask what his aim is in all this. He's a big cheese in the multi academy trust movement and we know by now that the Stalinists who run education in the Tory party are increasingly prone to centralising everything and turning any school that takes their fancy into an academy at the drop of a bit of chalk. Could the rather furtive and ferrety-looking Agnew by any chance have CH in his sights in this respect? If you check out his profile you'll see that he's one of these people about whom questions seem to get asked, in one case about a conflict of interest.
Suppose CH were to be sold off to a private buyer. What about the Tory peer Lord Harris, the carpet magnate who is prominent in the academy movement. I suppose it would mean a change in the school motto. Instead of "Fear God, Honour the Queen, Love the Brotherhood" it might be "Tread softly for you tread on my 50 percent wool twist" (in Latin of course).

Gingerbeard17 wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 6:42 pm

Pe.A wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 9:16 pm
Who's a bad troll, then...?

Personally I think he's a brilliant troll... mire power to him

i know. i was just channelling my inner public schoolboy and pulling his plonker...

Pe.A wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 8:27 am

Gingerbeard17 wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 6:42 pm

Pe.A wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 9:16 pm
Who's a bad troll, then...?

Personally I think he's a brilliant troll... mire power to him

i know. i was just channelling my inner public schoolboy and pulling his plonker...

Not an exemplary turn of phrase, given the current legal status quo.

J.R. wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 3:24 pm

Pe.A wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 8:27 am

Gingerbeard17 wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 6:42 pm

Personally I think he's a brilliant troll... mire power to him

i know. i was just channelling my inner public schoolboy and pulling his plonker...

Not an exemplary turn of phrase, given the current legal status quo.

Please JR; I think that (perhaps apart from the plonker) we can all separate this thread from what is happening in Hove etc. As for the muddying of the power, pretty good, not quite brilliant

More on the ferret-like (Lord) Theodore Agnew who was pictured on the CHOBA site. Owen Jones's excellent investigative book "The Establishment, and how they get away with it" notes that the said Lord is, or has been, a member of Policy Exchange. This is one of several Thatcherite rightwing lobby groups that pose as independent think tanks: others are the Institute of Economic Affairs, Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies. These groups work hard at massaging data and then feeding it to sympathetic media outlets where it is presented as hard news. These organisations are awash with corporate and financial funding, and it's remarkable how their executives, such as Mark Littlewood, the DG of the IofEA, were happy to openly tell Owen Jones of their aims and strategies which are straight out of the Milton Friedman handbook. Littlewood revealed that they hardly had to go to their powerful donors for money - the donors were only to eager to seek them out.
Anyway, it does make me wonder even more what the Agnew person's aim is in visiting CH and cosying up to its pupils. He used to work for Michael Gove and we know that Gradgrind Gove found it very hard to keep his interfering hands off schools. Did someone invite Agnew to CH or did he invite himself? Is the head beak Simon putting his head in the lion's mouth here?