Church and State blog: Letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

We have to sign on tomorrow morning at our local jobcentre, Highgate Jobcentre Plus, and we are certain there is something there in store for us (see previous blog New email to the chairman and owner of A4E). Basically, Action for Employment (A4E) - a private sector company that has £300 million of Government training contracts and controls 25% of the long-term unemployment budget for the Department for Work and Pensions - wants Declan to amend his existing jobseeker's agreement, dated 26 July 2010, in such a way that would enable them to, among other things, put him in any job of their choosing. According to Section 9(6) of the Jobseekers Act 1995, a claimant can ask for a proposed jobseeker's agreement to be referred to a decision maker, which is what Declan has done. A4E refused (although they have yet to do so in writing), and have even gone so far as to have him removed from their premises by the police (see blog of 3 September Declan's case against A4E on YouTube video; this video is also now in NAC About, where an updated version of it will remain).

Registered letters to the chairman and owner of A4E, Emma Harrison CBE (see blog of 12 August Chairman of A4E in the spotlight) and to the manager of the Jobcentre are not acknowledged - not even when one of A4E's Advisers, the Rt Hon David Blunkett, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, seeks a response! I have already written that if we don't step our game up, we are back to the street (see blog of 26 August A4E seek to have our benefits suspended/terminated with a telephone call), so this is Declan's email to new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith, the main content of which was dispatched to him by registered post this afternoon in letter format:

And this was delivered by hand to the manager of the Jobcentre, with the original dispatched to her by registered post (the letter Declan refers to here from Blunkett is archived here):

As I stated in the blog of 28 August Perhaps the Department for Work and Pensions will understand YouTube videos, I have started to produce YouTube videos with the intention of reaching out to other targeted individuals, people who, like us, are at the receiving end of covert action. Everybody knows the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who is at the moment battling allegations of rape - he must be exceptionally good at multitasking! This particular propaganda is already having an effect, and some fellow Wikileaks activists, including an Icelandic parliamentarian, are considering asking him to step down from his role as the group's public face, or ousting him if he won't leave voluntarily. Anybody wanting to know just how effective propaganda is in the control of information and thought, should spend two minutes watching this trailer for the new film Psywar.

Psywar Trailer from S DN on Vimeo.

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.

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Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

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