Recently the regular poster Turnoi made the choice to leave the board and have his posts deleted. The admin requested that nobody posted to that thread, which I respect, however Turnoi directly referenced me and I feel it is only fair I am able to offer my side.

I know you will do your best to defame and discredit me.

I have never had that intention, I have never tried to discredit anyone, simply offer a different (and more experienced) view on the topics he so regularly posted about (including YL teaching and private schools). Unfortunately Turnoi took exception to this from my very first post and then proceeded to argue the opposite of whatever I said for the next 3 years, regardless of how accurate the information I was providing was.

But your “efforts” will be in vain; your posts can hardly be associated with me when my posts are gone and the people I am working with know me well - long-time friends who won’t care about anything you might say. Isolated from the context of my posts, your posts will make you look just hateful and racist

. Of course 'isolated from context' my posts will appear argumentative, as nobody can now see the many, many posts full of vulgarity that the mods had to edit heavily, the nonsensical claims about grammar rules or vocabulary definitions. Nor will they see the childish assertions of 'Rubbish!' or 'LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL' when he thought he was right (about subjects he really wasn't right bout!). They won't see the hypocritical and contradictory posts (first slamming Cambridge English as a scam only associated with training centres and then extolling the virtues of the TKT, a Cambridge English qualification, one example of many!). They won't see the ridiculous bouts of selective reading or outright fallacious claims about me and others, including spending a year calling me a man. They won't see the frankly stalkerish behaviour exhibited by the creating of fake online profiles about me. So yes, isolated from that context, my posts may indeed appear argumentative... although I have never resorted to vulgarity, as Turnoi did frequently, I have always remianed consistent in my opinions, instead of changing them depending on who made the comments.

I have never, ever been racist.

The Livermore comments on my English, regardless of whether they are justified or not, will expose her as biased, which is quite a serious thing for a Cambridge examiner to be

When Turnoi asserted himself as an authority on ESL and English grammar and then made so many mistakes of his own (while taking pleasure in pointing out the mistakes of others), then it is only fair that somebody pointed out Turnoi's mistakes also. Very much a case of giving out but not being happy to receive.

I take my role as a Cambridge Speaking examiner very seriously and I would never treat a candidate in the same way I did Turnoi's mistakes. The reason being that candidates are students, they do not claim to have doctorates in Linguistics and teach advanced level English at Universities around the world! Somebody making those claims should be held to a higher standard, and therefore shouldn't make the mistakes Turnoi regularly did.

To the mods/admin: It is only fair that I get my say also. If I do not I will not be posting here that often any more myself.