Church and State blog: A4E try it out again - one step away from an Appeal Tribunal!

Monday, August 16, 2010

A4E try it out again - one step away from an Appeal Tribunal!

A4E (Action for Employment), a private sector company, have £300 million of Government training contracts and controls 25% of the long-term unemployment budget for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and they are very much in our faces. They seem to think that the suspension of our benefits is going to be a cakewalk. Declan has already lodged a formal complaint for unfair treatment with the chairman and owner of this company (see blog of 12 August Chairman of A4E in the spotlight), copied to two of its advisers, one being none other than David Blunkett MP, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (see previous blog Formal complaint against A4E for unfair treatment).

They also seem eager to get the job done quickly, but having been to the European Court of Human Rights and back from the street - the DWP put us to the street and kept us there for more than 2 1/2 years because Declan did not “sign on” TWO DAYS BEFORE he was due to do so on 29 September 2006 (see blog of 21 June Department for Work and Pensions double breaches the Data Protection Act: Letter to the Information Commissioner) - we are familiar with the law.

On Friday at 5.30pm, Declan received a text message informing him he had been transferred from the company's Camden branch to the its Holloway branch and had to attend an interview at 11.00am this morning. "Have a great weekend" were the A4E worker's parting words. By 11.30am this morning, Declan had them looking straight down the barrel of an Appeal Tribunal! This is his letter this afternoon to the manager of Holloway branch, who was making all the calls for an employment officer who took issue with Declan's reading of Section 9(6) of the Jobseekers Act 1995 (this letter relates to what A4E refers to as your "My Deal" contract, whilst the complaint I published in the previous blog makes reference to what they call a "Journey Plan"; both My Deal and Journey Plan together constitute what the Act terms a jobseeker's agreement; basically, A4E are now targeting both in Declan's case):

Section 9(6) of the Jobseekers Act 1995 states that "The employment officer may, and if asked to do so by the claimant shall forthwith, refer a proposed jobseeker’s agreement to an adjudication officer". The employment officer Declan was dealing with this morning made a meal of the word 'may' in this extract and said that she was under no obligation whatsoever to refer what she was proposing to an adjudication officer. When Declan informed this woman that she was in fact acting in breach of the Act, she didn't come across concerned at all. Declan, of course, was entitled to his opinion, she told him.

As for the BT Home Hub we are waiting for, our live-in landlady Belinda McKenzie - a 2006 article in the New Statesman about MI5 whistleblower David Shayler, who lived in one of the rooms below us at the time, states that Belinda's house “doubles as the hub of the British and Irish 9/11 Truth Campaign” - has promised me we will have it on 26 August, when Haringey Council has to pay her rent increase (see blog of 14 August Declan pays £100 to be linked to the cable TV network in the house).

Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler after he was evicted from Hackhurst Farm on 20 August 2009.

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Monday, August 16, 2010

A4E try it out again - one step away from an Appeal Tribunal!

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