Tracing the money trail

Discussion of the SES's satellite organisations in the USA.
HoHumBug
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 5:31 pm

When a week is not a week

Postby HoHumBug » Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:23 am

Frodo...you want precision.....Depending on groups and edicts form time to time over its existence SES single 'weeks' have been anything from 7.5 days (Fri eve to Sat a.m.) to 9.5 days (Fri eve to Mon a.m.). It is perfectly possible, if you are a 'tutor' to be involved in two consecutive weeks or, if you are part of the Lambie team touring the British Colonies, to have 3 or more consecutive weeks of residentials.

Snowman
Posts: 75
Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 9:31 am
Location: London

Postby Snowman » Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:45 am

Frodo wrote:Snowman says an SES man ran off with his mother and nobody in SES helped. That's a real allegation. Mind you, his anguish extends to blaming the SES for moral culpability which presupposes a sort of closed community with a central authority over every aspect of people's lives. Which, as I understand it, it isn't. Which also irritates me a bit. On the one hand people moan about the SES being insular and interfering, then they complain that it doesn't do this or that to sort out marriages. I'm very sad for Snowman but somebody ran off with his mother and that's that.

Frodo


Frodo,

There is a very serious problem with your attitude to this forum - you are not thorough in your reading and writing. You have entirely misrepresented the information that I stated concerning my mother and it was not an allegation.

You have missed the entire thrust of what I was highlighting when I made that post. My mother was in the SES and did not run-off with anybody. My mother was ostracised from her group and humiliated openly by MacLaren in front of hundreds of her friends whilst on a senior residential weekend at Waterperry. As the victim in the situation that sparked the abuse from MacLaren she was offered no support by the SES or her so-called friends.

The affair between her husband and another senior SES lady was supported by the "closed community" which had "central authority" (over both my parents at that time) and was the heart of the SES. This episode is a perfect of example of the SES being insular and interfering in the lives of its students.

Please get your facts straight before constructing your messages on this forum and I feel that an apology would be appropriate.

Snowman
Posts: 75
Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 9:31 am
Location: London

Postby Snowman » Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:51 am

Frodo wrote:I just said that you said we should argue facts with facts.


Frodo,

You're losing credibility very very quickly.

Frodo
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Feb 25, 2005 6:39 am

Postby Frodo » Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:09 pm

Snowman, I'm not sure what credibility I had to start off with. But it sure hurts to start losing it.

I take these postings very seriously and do read before constructing one of my own. Keir also accuses me of not reading his thrust accurately. Perhaps I'm just not very good at assimilating thrusts.

Yes, I did get it wrong about whether it was your mother or your father who had an affair. I couldn't find the original thread where I'd read that. It was your father. Well, like I said, I'm really sad for you. But it still isn't clear to me (I obviously didn't have the benefits of a classical education like what you did) what you're saying. In the thread concerned, the question was about whether or not the SES is a hotbed of immorality. You actually say that it is a gaurdian of immorality. I was saying that in a large body of people that has been gathering for several decades, there are bound to be some unfortunate affairs of this nature. You say there were hundreds of people present at Waterperry. Well, if you dipped a giant ladel anywhere into any community, village, city, whatever and drew out hundreds of people, I'd bet you'd find more than a few indiscretions.

Then you say that the SES protected your father but ostracised your mother. I just don't know what this means or what actually happened. Did senior SES people form a ring around him and beat your mother away with sticks? I don't know and I don't trust my imagination to accurately guess.

Meanwhile, you upbraid me on my attitude, my delusions and my credibility in front of hundreds of web users and then complain that McLaren could be harsh!

Having finally located that original thread, I find some questions posed to me personally.

The SES displays all the signs of a cult.

Not all the signs, no. Charismatic leadership, unquestioning obedience, financial motives, rigid dogma .. . none of these.

The SES is morally impoverished.

The SES is often accused on this web page of being overly moralistic.

The SES, as an institution, is hypocritical

Which addresses the above, I suppose. I am sure that there are members of the SES who's moral values are unsound and who engage in immoral activities. An institution as such can't itself have feelings.

The SES emotionally abuses its students.

Disagree.

The SES recruits from the St James schools.

Agree.

How did I do?

All the best to you, Snowman, I mean nothing adverse in all this.

Snowman
Posts: 75
Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 9:31 am
Location: London

Postby Snowman » Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:21 pm

Frodo wrote:Yes, I did get it wrong about whether it was your mother or your father who had an affair. I couldn't find the original thread where I'd read that. It was your father. Well, like I said, I'm really sad for you. But it still isn't clear to me (I obviously didn't have the benefits of a classical education like what you did) what you're saying. In the thread concerned, the question was about whether or not the SES is a hotbed of immorality. You actually say that it is a gaurdian of immorality. I was saying that in a large body of people that has been gathering for several decades, there are bound to be some unfortunate affairs of this nature. You say there were hundreds of people present at Waterperry. Well, if you dipped a giant ladel anywhere into any community, village, city, whatever and drew out hundreds of people, I'd bet you'd find more than a few indiscretions.

Then you say that the SES protected your father but ostracised your mother. I just don't know what this means or what actually happened. Did senior SES people form a ring around him and beat your mother away with sticks? I don't know and I don't trust my imagination to accurately guess.


A code of silence and denial existed amongst the higher levels of the SES that protected those people who were in that group. My mother and father were part of that group and yes my mother was pushed out because she began to become a threat to the stability of that exclusive club. My father spent weeks away from his family on SES business. Protected from criticism and conducting an affair in the presence of all the other members of that core group. So, Yes, the SES was guarding that immoral behaviour in full knowledge of its existence. It suited them to do that regardless of the moral issues and the damage that it was causing to my family.

If you want to raise an issue out of its original context and then proceed to summarise it inaccurately, please don't then re-contextualise it to serve your own spurios defence. I refer specifically to the discussion about the SES being a hotbed of immorality.

I know that there are many other instances of extra-marital affairs within memebers of the SES and I am sure that the stats compared to society in general are similar, or whatever. My example is of the senior memebers of the SES and their determination to ignore, protect, condone - call it what you will - immoral behaviour taking place right under their noses in order to preserve the the SES status quo. When I challenged a memeber of this group directly, I was met with a stonewall of denial and rather than attempt to suggest ways of helping my mother I was persistenly advised that I should remain in the SES as that was the only way I could realise the Truth.

I also fail to see what relevance a classical education has on this discussion either - you need to exercise common sense, of which I am certain you are amply imbued.

Frodo wrote:Meanwhile, you upbraid me on my attitude, my delusions and my credibility in front of hundreds of web users and then complain that McLaren could be harsh!


Hundreds of people were present in the room at Waterperry witnessing MacLaren verbally humiliating my mother to the point of tears. I can only assume in an attempt to further humiliate and alienate her from the group. This was a truly dispicable act and I have heard from some who witnessed it that they too were appalled yet were too afraid to speak out.

I hardly think that questioning your credibility on this website compares in the least - you are anonymous and I have attacked only your line of argument and your research and you are free to respond at your leisure. Do not presume to compare a verbal assault and character assassination in front of your friends and fellow students with a gentle grilling on an internet forum.


Frodo wrote:Having finally located that original thread, I find some questions posed to me personally.

The SES displays all the signs of a cult.

Not all the signs, no. Charismatic leadership, unquestioning obedience, financial motives, rigid dogma .. . none of these.


Please see the following for my thoughts on this:
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=201&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Frodo wrote:The SES is morally impoverished.

The SES is often accused on this web page of being overly moralistic.


I'm sure you guess my response to this.

Frodo wrote:The SES, as an institution, is hypocritical

Which addresses the above, I suppose. I am sure that there are members of the SES who's moral values are unsound and who engage in immoral activities. An institution as such can't itself have feelings.


Hypocrisy is nothing to do with feelings it is about contradicting, in actions, stated aims and values.

Frodo wrote:The SES emotionally abuses its students.

Disagree.


There are numerous testimonies on this forum and I have first hand knowledge of countless other examples of instances where the SES has psychologically abused students, causing varying degrees of emotional pain, all justified by the ideology that the organisation espouses.

Frodo wrote:The SES recruits from the St James schools.

Agree.

How did I do?


Do you think that St James should be a recruiting ground for the SES? I do not think that this is a good idea especially considering that many parents are unaware of the dependency that their child's school has upon an organisation which promotes the aforementioned beliefs.

As to how you did; I think you did very well under the circumstances. i.e. your lack of knowledge of the SES and St James. Please demonstrate that am mistaken in this respect.

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Free Thinker
Posts: 325
Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2005 4:05 am
Location: USA

Postby Free Thinker » Thu Jul 07, 2005 1:34 am

Capital letters in e-mails or on the internet can be interpreted as either shouting, or in my case, emphasis by someone too lazy to use Bold HTML. From now on, I'll use bold and keep the capitals for shouting (see below!)

Frodo wrote:As for service to the community, which Free Thinker is so vehement about, it can be argued that the SES is entirely a service. To keep the premises clean and tidy is to the benefit of all the students. The students are part of the community. The SES was founded on the quest for social justice and the work that it does is directly to that end. People give up their time to help other people. You're just trying to define what you think the service should be. I'm sure that SES members do a lot for their communities. The work done within SES buildings is mainly practice, with a benefit, obviously, to its membership. The rest is entirely to do with how the students respond in their daily lives which to great extend concerns how much they can do for people.


Service to the community means that you offer help to those who need it outside of your own typical group. Community service does not mean serving the people closest to you. When I was in high school, community service meant choosing a place outside of the school where I could help, and helping there. Volunteering to be work on the paper recycling program (which I did) was not community service. That was service to the school. I chose to volunteer in the pediatric ward of a hospital that was in the community the school was part of.

If I gave community service that fit within your definition, I could consider cleaning my own house and yard that, since I'm part of my own community. But to any one I've ever spoken to, it means that you help out somewhere else or to other people in the community besides your own group. Churches that have soup kitchens are not there to feed their congregation. Of course members of the congregation may be poor enough to need it, but generally, it means that the church opens its doors to other people in the community who need help.

My point is that the SES is selfish - it's all about serving its own needs. Whether there are homeless people in the neighborhood doesn't matter (as long as they aren't cluttering up the sidewalks outside the school) if the tea served to Mr. Lambie is brought in a pre-heated teapot on a polished wood tray. Who cares if students in the nearby public schools are receiving a poor education as long as St. James has well-kept gardens?

Why not make the WHOLE community a better place to be instead of restricting it to a place where only people who have high status are going to be anyway? Yes, of course there are people within the SES who volunteer (I was one of them and knew many others.) That isn't the point. The point is that the organization itself should support, encourage, and require service that is truly needed. One could argue that since service at the school itself really ends up serving those who are doing the service, how is it really service? Sweeping the floor in my own house helps my husband but it also helps me. Sweeping the floor at our nearby soup kitchen helps hundreds of people who normally live either in very impoverished houses or on the street. People who attend residentials at Waterperry already live in very nice places.

Gandalf
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2005 9:05 pm

Postby Gandalf » Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:22 am

In relation to the discussion in the How well does the SES live up to its own aims? string a while ago HoHumBug wrote in this string:

From what I can see the London SES, even excluding all the UK branches, has achieved very big property gains. Since it started buying, restoring and selling properties in the 60's it now sits on a mortgage-free property portfolio worth over US$55,000,000 and has banked over US$25,000,000 in additional free cash. It goes like this:

Queensgate, London SW7: number 90 was purchased in the late 60's for £20,000, Nos. 91 and 92 were annexed soon after and the whole lot sold for over £4m in 2001/2.
Sarum Chase, London NW3: bought for £80,000 in the 60's and sold recently for £10m. Chepstow Villas, London W11 :bought for £20,000 in the 60's and sold in 2001 for over £2m.
Nanpantan Hall, Leicestershire: given to the SES in the late 80's still owned by the SES and extensively renovated by the students. Am I bid £4m?
Waterperry House: Oxfordshire: given to the SES in the 1970's on condition that the horticultural centre was kept going and the staff were kept on. Still owned by the SES and extensively renovated by the students. Am I bid £15m?
83 Brook Green, London W6: donated to the SES in the 60's and London pad for the SES Leader. Am I bid £1.25m?
Mandeville Place, London W1: Purchased for under £2.5 m in 2000 by private treaty from the Trinity School of Music this property never came to the market. A property surveyor in the SES got to hear of the planned sale and the SES Executive Board moved quickly and quietly to secure it. Am I bid £12m?.It is the latest jewel in the UK property crown.

There is, of course, nothing illegal in making gains from property dealing in a capitalist society but, as with so much other SES activity, its deeds are utterly inconsistent with its own lofty proclamations on most subjects.


I imagine these assets are now quite a lot greater than even the figure HoHum quotes so the debate as to the ability of the SES to self-perpetuate itself even if it has no discernible purpose should not be underestimated. It may already have attained that most unique combination of attributes by becoming simultaneously moribund and immortal.

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bonsai
Posts: 322
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 12:08 am
Location: London

Postby bonsai » Tue Jul 18, 2006 9:44 am

Gandalf wrote:It may already have attained that most unique combination of attributes by becoming simultaneously moribund and immortal.


What an extraodinarily strange sentence but I have to agree.

It does appear that the goal of achieving a self serving and self sufficient community to ride out the demise of the Kaliyuga doesn't appear to be sustainable however it ain't going to disappear overnight given its assets and the loyalty (or is it dependence) of its membership.

Bonsai


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