Church and State blog: May 2011

Monday, May 23, 2011

Are we back to being 'squeezed' in public libraries?

We are back having problems publishing pages on our website! The last time this happened, in February, the Network for Church Monitoring site was brought down as Declan was about to publish our first book excerpt from a Nobel Prize winner (see blog of 8 February Website brought down as we are about to publish our first book excerpt from a Nobel Prize winner). This time, our internet connection is so slow I can't put the finishing touches to a fascinating interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, by Distinguished Prof William Barnett, from Macroeconomic Dynamics, Volume 8:4, pp 519-542, 2004.

Prof Samuelson, who died in 2009 at the age of 94, has been described by the New York Times as "the foremost academic economist of the 20th century". The interview I am working on is more than 20 pages long and has taken a lot of work, but has been well worth it. Prof Samuelson is more relevant today than ever, if that is possible. In this video, he talks about Wall Street needing regulation, monitoring, and punishing:

The regular download speed on my laptop is 9872 Kbps, and upload speed 487 Kbps:

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Today I'm dealing with a download speed of 280 Kbps and an upload speed 0 Kbps:

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Declan is not doing much better with a download speed of 320 Kbps and an upload speed of 4 Kbps:

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If this is to continue, I will have to bring my laptop to the British Library tomorrow and publish the interview using their free Wi-Fi. Of course, nothing is guaranteed there either (see blog of 2 April 2010 Back to being 'squeezed' in public libraries). In fact, if I search this blog for the word 'squeezed', I get 11 postings!

Friday, May 20, 2011

Central London County Court refuses to commit to taking Declan's case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus

At least this morning the Central London County Court took Declan's case against our jobcentre, Highgate Jobcentre Plus, under the Data Protection Act 1998 (see blog of 26 April Central London County Court refuses to take Declan's case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus). However, they still have to decide whether they will process it and Declan had to come away with an unsealed copy of the papers he attempted to have filed.

Click to 2-page pdf

Meanwhile, Declan is still waiting to hear from the List Office in the High Court with a date for the hearing of his case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus pursuant to the Jobseeker's Act 1995 (see blog of 14 April Declan's Notice of Renewal of claim for permission to apply for Judicial Review). Moreover, next week he will be filing another case in the High Court against Haringey Council (his Letter before Claim can be read here; they continue to deduct monies from our rent allowance with apparently no end in sight). And of course the Department for Work and Pensions has threatened to terminate our benefits in three weeks time (see previous blog Department for Work and Pensions threatens to terminate our benefits on 8 June).

On the flip side of all this, we now have a chairman registered in Companies House! Dr Stephen Mumford is the founder and president of the US-based Center for Research on Population and Security. He has been called to provide expert testimony before Congress on the implications of world population growth. Dr Mumford has in fact been funding our Network for Church Monitoring website since last December, after it was removed from the Internet by our former web host Just Host (see About us). Suffice to say that Declan has long considered Dr Mumford his mentor.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Department for Work and Pensions threatens to terminate our benefits on 8 June

Last month the Central London County Court refused to take Declan's case against our jobcentre under the Data Protection Act because the Court Manager considered proofs that were good enough for the High Court insufficient for her court (see blog of 26 April Central London County Court refuses to take Declan's case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus). Declan had to write twice to an office in Glasgow to obtain the proof she specified and only today did he receive it, except that it states our benefits are only guaranteed until 8 June.

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By way of comparison, this is what we received last February (no termination date showing):

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Tomorrow Declan will write back to this office in Glasgow requesting a written statement of reasons for the manager's decision, since we have not received one, and on Friday he will again attempt to file his case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus in the Central London County Court. Also today Declan received a letter from our MP, Lynne Featherstone, who is a minister in the Home Office, concerning A4E (see previous blog A4E asks Declan to sign for an unrevealed 'work boost').

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We are not expecting any results in our favour: when Declan wrote to Featherstone more than a year ago regarding the interception of our emails, she said that she would try to prompt a response from the Home Secretary (see blog of 20 June 2010 Interception of communications: Our MP responds); only a few weeks ago she recommended that Declan finds himself a solicitor (see blog of 26 March Interception of emails: Home Office minister advises Declan to find himself a solicitor)!

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, May 23, 2011

Are we back to being 'squeezed' in public libraries?

Friday, May 20, 2011

Central London County Court refuses to commit to taking Declan's case against Highgate Jobcentre Plus

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Department for Work and Pensions threatens to terminate our benefits on 8 June

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