Guilt by association

Anyway, just in passing we were talking about how Ray had launched his new website, which is the crock you'd expect it to be, with the usual cast of Ray's dubious friends and links to iffy astroturf organisations.

One of these is The Gifted Academy, which has managed to escape my attention up to now. I don't know how active a grift it presently is, but at any rate Ray thinks enough of it to list it on his front page

on his brand new site so it's current as far as he's concerned.

So what's The Gifted Academy? It's a patently fraudulent educational establishment that reckons it offers

a variety of assessments, tests and consultancy in IQ, Personality, ability and cognitive tests; also the revision of educational programs and enrichment programs for Gifted and Talented students and individuals

as well as alleged Educational Consultancy (education? that's a stock photo of lawyers) and other bullshit much of which is the hallmark of Tony Buzan, whose cronies make up the entire personnel of this particular scam.

Including, naturally, your friend and mine.

Ray posing as a Trustee

If Ray is the Trustee, the Chancellor is this chap

who is of course neither a General nor a Professor, though he does have some dubious connections.

Why do they need a Chancellor? Come to that why do they need a Dean and a Vice Chancellor, and where do these people have their offices? We could entertain ourselves all day with all the nonsense and the frauds on this website, and do please fill your boots, but just for today we'll finish with a look at this page.

You'll notice that much of it is other Buzan foolishness (Tony Buzan, Think Buzan, Ray and Tony's fake charity The Brain Trust and so on) but it includes the official branding of some very serious organisations, which are claimed to be The Gifted Academy's "Associates". These include the British Psychological Society, Henley Business School at the University of Reading, Imperial College London and the Royal Society of Medicine.

Now I don't reckon organisations of that kind allow just anybody to stick their logos on their website and claim them as Associates, what with having reputations to protect, and reputations moreover which would likely be severely damaged if anybody believed they endorsed this particular bunch of clowns.

So, in the spirit of just-wondering, on Sunday I wrote to the British Psychological Society.

Dear BPS

I happen to be researching The Gifted Academy, a supposed educational establishment, and I noticed that among the organisation's claimed "Associates" is the British Psychological Society - your branding and website are displayed here.

I wondered whether you were in fact Associates of The Gifted Academy, and whether they have permission to claim you as such.

Yours

Justin Horton

I received a reply yesterday.

Dear Justin

Thank you for your email.

I've contacted the organisation advsing that we are not aware that we have any association with them and that we do not accredit any psychology programmes offered / run by them. I have therefore requested that they remove our accredited logo from their website site so as to avoid any misunderstandings and prevent misinformation being made available to the public.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Kind Regards.

The "accredited logo" is still there as I write, much as you'd expect. I wonder how long it will be before they take it down?

In the meantime, I also wonder whether, for instance, the Delancey UK School Chess Challenge really wish to be associated with these chancers. And to close, just another reminder that the Trustee of this disreputable bunch is one of the best friends Mr Clean Hands 4 FIDE has in English chess.