Hey Col, nobody here is pretending to be a responsible psychologist or psychiatrist. Just average autodidacts trying to find a plausible explanation for someone else's extreme behaviour. Go have a look at her site. Does it strike you as normal or reasonable that somebody should invest so much time, energy and money in the way she has over the issues she has?

Basically her kids didn't get the test scores to get into selective schools and her son was accused of bullying. She's responded to that with a 7 year crusade against anyone with any authority and believes that government departments, school staff and students have conspired against her family, presumably to stop her kids from reaching their potential. Presumably they've done this despite the fact that their own lives would have been far simpler if they just gave in and sent her kids off to whatever school she wanted.

Nobody is looking for a diagnosis in the clinical sense, just some satisfactory explanation for a story that otherwise makes no sense.

On responsible comment, if by that you mean that Jolanda could suffer as a result of amateur speculation I'd argue that either it's water off a duck's back (she's had plenty of this kind of experience on forums) or it's troll feeding, in which case she's getting the response she's looking for.

I don't generally agree with Col on politics/economics but I have to agree with him on this. :)

Whatever one thinks of Jolanda's campaign we don't know her or her family personally and cannot know all the facts no matter what the perceptions might be. You can give a variety of people a set of pictures, scenarios or stories and everyone will come up with a different perspective.

No-one here is qualified to make psychological diagnoses let alone via forum comments.

Vanilla by targeting I mean that at every available opportunity the DET tried to humiliate and discredit my children and deny them opportunities. Examples of this, apart from the resulting manipulating of test scores and school applications after I complained are as follows?

1. Teachers humiliating my children and making sarcastic comments about my children’s intellect in front of the whole class and continuously criticizing them.

2. Teachers regularly totally ignoring my children when they are the only kid with their hand up wanting to answer a question and instead making a point to ask them to answer questions when they didn't have their hand up so as to put them on the spot and embarass them.

3. The school unfairly acussing my son of being a bully and telling the parents of my sons friends to keep their children away from my son as he is a trouble maker.

5. Teachers not allowing my daughter to play the piano in a talent quest. She had passed all her Piano exams with Honours and was extremely talented. However they let another piano player who was not at my daughters ability level play and about 20 dancers, and on the day of the talent quest even students who had not auditioned and who just mucked around were permitted to compete and my daughter was not allowed.

There is so much more. More than I can say on this forum as you so quickly run out of room.

I just want to add that my children were coming home distressed and upset, they didn’t want to go school. What they were telling me what was happening was wrong and unfair. They were becoming depressed and their body was reacting and becoming sick. The way that they were being treated was wrong so I complained and that triggered even more severe bullying and harrassment.

I would just like to add that it wasn't all teachers, but you only need one or two with power and protection to make a child's life miserable and to cause significant harm.

I am attracted purely by the title of the discussion, I have really no idea what is your issue with school children. I've just browsed through some posts and decided to respond.

One post struck me of Jolanda explaining how ombudsman acts. It is spot on. I also read some criticizm on you Jolanda but have no sides on this. I'm sorry if I may put you off, I simply focus on accountability in government and bring you my view on this.

Government needs some departments fully operational in order to function. Let's make it easy and list just a few representative: police, courts and health dept. Regardless if there is any justice at all in courts, if they somehow function, it is what government needs.

One only aspect of this machinery operation is quite unpleasant but factual.

Unfortunately the way the democracy have evolved is that there is no business in health but in sickness, there is no business in justice but in maintaining social injustice, and so on. This could take only place when there is no accountability in government.
Similar mechanism is in most other departments.

Health. Imagine the rice grower grows good rice, and sells it whole unpolished. Farmer gets little money for it, merchant little, and retailer little. There is no business. But... let's see what happens in "modern" and "developed" society when government has whole big department to look for your health. The farmer still gets not much, the polisher gets little bit, the husks processor gets fair bit because he converts them into vitamins, the merchant will get some, retailer, the doctor because you sooner or later will get sick from eating depleted white polished rice, the pharmacist or health food supplier and so on. There is lots of business from selling polished rice? No it sounds innocent and just common practice. There is lots of business from maintaining sickness and not much business from selling healthy whole rice.

This same principle applies to police, courts and any government department.

Legal industry as any other industry seeks maximum benefit at minimum effort.

mmistrz. Thank you for your post. I am more than happy for you to turn the attention back to what this thread was about and that is accountability in Government.

Attention needs to be paid to how situations are permitted to evolve and to happen.

Our experiences have shown that:-

1. The role of the Government is to only respond to allegations and deny and lie so as to cover up.
2. The role of the Investigatory bodies is to support the response by the Government so as to cover up.
3. The role of the Court is to support the Government and the Ombudsman by either doing nothing at all or by helping to stick a knife in people’s back.

In a nutshell there is an administrative conspiracy and process to cover up failures, misconduct and corruption by public servants and Government employees - including contractors.

The Opposition are in on it because they do nothing at all to counter it or stop it. They all hide behind the same process as it protects all of them. The general public have no rights and therefore no protection.

People need to speak out and stand up against this as they never know when it might impact them.

.....
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller

Hi Jolanda

Was very intersted in your response to Vanilla. You say the the DET tried to humiliate and discresit your children on every available opportunity. Again I say everybody can write a victim story about every incident in their life.

in regards to the teachers not allowing your daughter to play piano in the talent quest.

could it be that there was restictions on the number of children and/or number of piano players allowed. Could it also be that your daughter is obviously gifted in music also being probably years above her age in talent. therefore the teachers felt that this would not be a competition if your daughter was in it, (she was obviously the best) and therefore choose the other child.

Could it be that as your daughter probably knew every answer to every question, got the best mark for every test that the teachers wanted another child to feel the feeling of coming first other than your child.

Could it be that the DET had nothing to do with this??