Hoping for some Veg Fan help!

[DavidT]

This is the response I had from Urban Allotments today.

" Good morning,

Thank you for your email. Tt`s great to hear that you have been following the Get Schools Growing campaign and can assure you that any queries made to Elmsleigh Centre are replied to individually and as soon as possible. I can slao assure you that totals are not being manipulated in any way and all votes on the website are valid.

All the schools have done a fantastic job in raising awareness of their campaigns and collecting votes for the competition and I do hope that you continue to support your school with your vote.

Please feel free to give me a call on my number below or email me through your number and I would be happy to phone you to discuss any furthet queries.

Kind regards,

Laura.

Laura Shroff".


From info@urban-allotments.com

[Willow10]

Is her number the one I posted above off the email reply from Elmsleigh ...

01628 625900 DL: 01628 594429

If so, I'll be having a chat with her tomorrow! I received the figures via email from one of the guys off my regular forum and it makes *very* interesting reading, especially the 135 votes in less than an hour last night, given their hourly average over the last 5 days has been 2/3 !

They do seem very accomplished at these giant leaps out of nowhere.

Question, DavidT - did you copy/paste that email on to your post above? Is that exactly what was sent to you?

[DavidT]

I couldn`t copy/paste it. I had to type it verbatum.

[DavidT]

Phone number. 01628 625900

[Willow10]

An update - the ASA have now got involved. After they received several complaints they were on to the organisers and immediately made them add T&Cs to the voting site, something they should have done from the start, and have said they will continue to look into the 'vote rigging', the fact that hundreds can't vote for us or it won't count their votes. Just have to wait and see what, if anything happens there.

Well we're into the final straight and where it seemed to be a 1 horse race with a clear winner I'm not so sure now!

Hythe are making a run for 1st! It's such obvious cheating as they're leaping up in lumps of several hundred at a time now, but my goodness it's making me smile

*Them winning* might actually be our last hope - there's no way Buckland will accept 2nd place if they are pipped at the post, and will demand answers as to how Hythe could go from over 2000 behind to win so quickly! If nothing else maybe they'll also then have to look at what's been happening with our votes.

So ... Go Hythe!

This going to be a final to watch!

[DavidT]

So, perhaps, we should all vote for Hythe?

[Willow10]

I was thinking that myself, but I kinda want them to win by cheating so Buckland have got a reason to demand a recount. If they get one, we want one too.

One way or another Stanwell Fields will have it's justice!

[deep voice] ... And now I must away to fight crime and save the world!

[Lesley Jay]

You wouldn't believe that this is /was a competition for primary school children - I haven't been allowed to vote for nearly a week, but how many of the other 'also ran' schools have had their votes nobbled???

[DavidT]

Surely, if all your voters vote for Hythe that IS cheating, as we are trying to manipulate the outcome?

[Willow10]

Honestly Lesley, I don't know what to think any more. This whole thing has been a farce from start to finish.

We have been emailing and calling the right people for well over a week now and no-one seems to want to take any kind of responsibility for any problems we are having.

I don't know if any of the other schools have had the same problems, but given that there were only ever really 3 schools in with a shot at winning, and we were penalised for taking 1st place, both the top 2 schools are now being seen regularly making huge leaps in votes, it would indicate that they have both found a way to manipulate the voting system, allowing multiple invalid votes, something we were told had been 'fixed'.

The way Hythe school have been voting the last couple of days, anyone with half a brain can see it's obvious cheating, yet according to Elmsleigh not only is there nothing wrong with the vote site or the competition, they are not even aware of any complaints regarding said problems!

And that's why we've asked the ASA to keep investigating. So many peole have emailed and complained, yet they insist that's untrue, a blatant lie, and now they all have logged figures of hourly voting, it's not something that can be ignored. Surely?

But apparently it is being ignored. So our last chance is for Hythe to continue to cheat and to beat Buckland, who will NOT take it lying down. The're bigger and can shout louder than us. THEN we can all hopefully get some answers, and get someone to put their hands up and admit they got it wrong.

After spending a little time tonight watching the voting site I'd say we're likely to get our wish of a Hythe win. Their vote count went up faster than I could refresh the page. 200 in 20 minutes, 160 the next half hour, and so on. Almost 900 since lunchime!

Now we NEED them to win so we can have a shot at getting the truth as to what happened. If they need a helping hand tomorrow ... so be it.

I believe Buckland will fight back by doing the exact same thing before time is up so a real fight between these two is on the cards tomorrow. I think my hope is that perhaps, when it's all over after a Hythe win, there's a lot of screaming and shouting, the votes are independently scrutinised, these 2 get disqualified for cheating and we win by default

Hey, a girl can dream!

The really sad part of all this is that a whole load of children are going to be disappointed by whatever the outcome is.

[Lesley Jay]

Willow, take a look at the Greenhouse Sensation website which has loads of links to help schools raise funds for their own vegetable garden. - A summer term project, maybe??

school-gardening | schools

[Lesley Jay]

I must thank ALL our members and guests who have taken the time to vote for Stanwell Fields School.

Thanks!!

[Willow10]

Thanks for the link, Lesley. I'll take a good look round there tonight

I'd also like to thank every single member of these fabulous forums for all their votes and support over the last few weeks. It's certainly been entertaining!

Through some very poor organisation and rather dodgy practises we're finishing in 3rd place but we're really proud of what we all did. Went from serious underdogs a week behind, to 1st, back to 3rd, then we managed to claw back 2nd place again.

Our hope now is that the current surge in votes by both top schools trying to 'out-cheat' each other to the finish line WILL raise eyebrows, and voices, and we might finally get some answers and truths as to just what happened.

We (some of the staff) are also in talks with the Head and Site Manager to try and get into school next weekend - we might not have the raised bed allotment, yet, but for now we can give the kids something to come back to after the Easter break. We're putting together a working party and we'll spend the weekend marking out an area and digging it all over, planting seeds, the works. If all goes well and we can get in to do it, I'll get some photos as we're working and upload them so you can see what we did

I'll keep you up to date on any developments as they happen. Still a lot of complaints floating around out there, and it aint over yet!

[Lesley Jay]

Originally Posted by Willow10

Thanks for the link, Lesley. I'll take a good look round there tonight

I'd also like to thank every single member of these fabulous forums for all their votes and support over the last few weeks. It's certainly been entertaining!

Next weekend - we might not have the raised bed allotment, yet, but for now we can give the kids something to come back to after the Easter break. We're putting together a working party and we'll spend the weekend marking out an area and digging it all over, planting seeds, the works. If all goes well and we can get in to do it, I'll get some photos as we're working and upload them so you can see what we did

I'll keep you up to date.

That will be great for the kids to come back to after half term but PLEASE don't sow any seeds - you must let the kids sow the seeds themselves. They absolutely love watching the seedlings grow followed by the plants growing from seeds they have sown themselves!!

[Willow10]

Thought you might like an update. All our emails calls and complaints have been ignored to date - except 1.

A guy from my other forums emailed a very eloquent complaint, and has managed to get a repy ...


"Dear ****,

Thank you for your email and apologies for the delayed response.

It is sad that an innocent community competition has been surrounded by such negativity and we were shocked that the website was hacked, and that this has seemed to throw the campaign into controversy ever since.

Throughout the entire campaign, and especially in response to any queries received, we have continued to test the system rigorously and can still find no fault. That said, we do understand how much effort all the schools, in particular the top three as you pointed out, have put into campaigning for a chance to win the prize and are reviewing how we reward them all considering how close the final results were.

We will be letting the schools know the results when they come back from their Easter holidays next week, along with an announcement of how we will be rewarding the top three schools.

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Kind regards,
Laura

Laura Shroff
Senior Account Executive

01628 625900
DL: 01628 594429 "



That's about as close to an admission of errors as we're ever likely to get I reckon. If they truly believed there was nothing wrong with the voting they would have no reason to reward all 3 schools. These were the logged stats from the top 2 schools on the final days voting (they were sent to the organisers) :

Last 20 minutes

Buckland ... 120 votes
Hythe ... 187 votes

Last hour

Buckland ... 190 votes
Hythe ... 412 votes

Last 6 hours

Buckland ... 647 votes
Hythe ... 928 votes

Last 24 hours

Buckland ... 870 votes
Hythe ... 1237 votes


Those numbers are HUGE! But they still insist there was no faults with the voting process! I did notice they didn't mention the word 'cheating'

I guess we should be thankful that they have acknowledged our efforts and in the end the kids will benefit from whatever 'reward' they choose to give. I will certainly let you all know as soon as we do next week.

We are all ready to start digging on Saturday morning and who knows, we might end up with extra allotment space now!

Lesley, sorry I typed that poorly before. I didn't actually mean the staff are going to plant the seeds, I just meant we'll have them all ready to go for the kids to do when we get back. I understand Year 6 have already been growing tomato plants in the classrooms.

We have had numerous offers of seedlings and plants from all over Stanwell. Also, a local builder has been in touch and offered us some old wooden boards he has for free, if we can use them in any capacity. The support has been fantastic and our kids are going to love this project.

Who knows, by Harvest Fesival time this year we might be able to display our own produce instead of buying it in!

[Lesley Jay]

Hi Willow, really the organisers had to award every school with a prize as there would have been uproar otherwise after the voting fiasco. I just hope they give every school the raised bed allotment.

[julian]

What was the outcome?
Thanks

[Lesley Jay]

Hi Julian, the outcome was that Buckland won and Stanwell Fields came third but with all the complaints about vote 'rigging' the organisers awarded Stanwell Fields and the second placed school a single bed allotment raised bed for their hard work.