Declan complains to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about Newham Council for unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 (WITH UPDATES ON NON-ACCESS TO OUR WEBSITE)
Related blog post 5 July 2016: Will a Newham councillor take up Declan's complaint against Active Newham for unfair treatment?
Paragraph 40 of Declan's next updated complaint to the United Nations re the London Borough of Newham, which provided insufficient information to close his complaint against Active Newham for unfair treatment
40. On 3 June 2016 the Applicant applied to be a befriender with Newham Council-commissioned Active Newham. Active Newham's weekly volunteer bulletin emphasises in relation to befriending opportunities that "We have a number of exciting and challenging roles to suit you", and urges volunteers to apply "ASAP". Nonetheless, on 17 June 2016, the managing director of Active Newham wrote to the Applicant stating that "we will be in contact should your application be successful and if there is a suitable opportunity". On 20 July 2016, following the intervention of the Applicant's local councillor, the Applicant met with Newham Council's head of commissioning (sport and leisure), who undertook to provide the Applicant with the date of the next Active Newham befriending training session. The Applicant subsequently received an email from the Council's manager of corporate complaints informing him that he may not be informed of the next training session, or asked for personal information to facilitate a befriending match up, because the session will be "bespoke to the person who needs befriending". This nonsensical reasoning is at variance with the rational information provided in an Active Newham newsletter: "After attending the Newham's Volunteers befriending Induction and training, Sajid was introduced to an older person - Mr Porter, based on the information he provided at the session." On 8 August 2016 the Applicant made a formal complaint under the Equality Act 2010 to the Chief Executive of Newham Council, Kim Bromley-Derry (see Annex 22, p. 67). Despite the Applicant's complaint for unlawful discrimination against the London Borough of Newham, he has yet to be engaged by Active Newham as a befriender. The Applicant submits that this is clearly indicative of a high degree of vulnerability to mistreatment in general.
40. On 3 June 2016 the Applicant applied to be a befriender with Newham Council-commissioned Active Newham. Active Newham's weekly volunteer bulletin emphasises in relation to befriending opportunities that "We have a number of exciting and challenging roles to suit you", and urges volunteers to apply "ASAP". Nonetheless, on 17 June 2016, the managing director of Active Newham wrote to the Applicant stating that "we will be in contact should your application be successful and if there is a suitable opportunity". On 20 July 2016, following the intervention of the Applicant's local councillor, the Applicant met with Newham Council's head of commissioning (sport and leisure), who undertook to provide the Applicant with the date of the next Active Newham befriending training session. The Applicant subsequently received an email from the Council's manager of corporate complaints informing him that he may not be informed of the next training session, or asked for personal information to facilitate a befriending match up, because the session will be "bespoke to the person who needs befriending". This nonsensical reasoning is at variance with the rational information provided in an Active Newham newsletter: "After attending the Newham's Volunteers befriending Induction and training, Sajid was introduced to an older person - Mr Porter, based on the information he provided at the session." On 8 August 2016 the Applicant made a formal complaint under the Equality Act 2010 to the Chief Executive of Newham Council, Kim Bromley-Derry (see Annex 22, p. 67). Despite the Applicant's complaint for unlawful discrimination against the London Borough of Newham, he has yet to be engaged by Active Newham as a befriender. The Applicant submits that this is clearly indicative of a high degree of vulnerability to mistreatment in general.
Declan has been waiting for two weeks for the manager of Newham Council's Corporate Complaints to confirm that he is through with the Council's complaints procedure and that he can go to the Local Government Ombudsman citing breach of the Equality Act 2010 by the Council in relation to his complaint against Active Newham for unfair treatment (see paragraph above). She hasn't bothered to get back to him, so he has upped the ante with this complaint of unlawful discrimination to the Chief Executive of Newham Council, Kim Bromley-Derry, copied to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which will serve as an exhibit to his next updated complaint to the United Nations:
Click to enlarge
And we're back to non-access to our website notwithstanding the $1,000 per year SiteGround is paid to host the site and manage our server:
1st: Tuesday 26 July 2016, 9.34pm
2nd: Wednesday 27 July 2016, 12.10pm
3rd: Wednesday 27 July 2016, 5.55pm
4th: Thursday 28 July 2016, 11.44pm
5th: Friday 29 July 2016, 12.29pm
6th: Saturday 30 July 2016, 3.58pm
7th: Sunday 31 July 2016, 7.03pm
8th: Tuesday 2 August 2016, 10.23pm
9th: Wednesday 3 August 2016, 1.05pm
10th: Sunday 7 August 2016, 10.49am
11th: Monday 8 August 2016, 11.38am
UPDATES:
12 August 2016 (11.40am): Could it be another miracle? Uninterrupted access to our website for the last four days days.
12th: Sunday 14 August 2016, 2.02pm
13th: Tuesday 16 August 2016, 8.56pm
14th: Thursday 18 August 2016, 10.48pm
15th: Thursday 18 August 2016, 11.14pm
16th: Saturday 20 August 2016, 6.04pm
17th: Sunday 21 August 2016, 2.35pm
18th: Thursday 25 August 2016, 3.07pm
Related blog post 20 July 2016: Following my previous Newham Council blog post, this N4CM blog has been decimated (WITH UPDATE)
Paragraph 11 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations re the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which dismissed his complaint against the secret services in less than three weeks
11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. On 5 March 2014 the Guardian reported that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints, and upheld only 10; five of these concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that had been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to the Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister has dismissed it as "a kangaroo court". The newspaper also reports that as a consequence of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.
11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. On 5 March 2014 the Guardian reported that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints, and upheld only 10; five of these concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that had been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to the Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister has dismissed it as "a kangaroo court". The newspaper also reports that as a consequence of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.
HEAVEY v. THE UNITED KINGDOM
COMMUNICATION SUBMITTED FOR CONSIDERATION UNDER THE FIRST OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), a former Franciscan monk who became one of the best-known champions and a prolific popularizer of freethought and rationalism in the first half of the 20th century, had this to say:
"The criticism of religion seems to be an unpopular job. I am, as more zealous and self-sacrificing purveyors of skepticism will assure you, really a timid and innocuous person, yet I have had my life threatened in Sydney and have been protected by friendly guns in Denver. I have heard ladies of Minneapolis regret that none had the courage to shoot me, and British Spiritualist clergymen have deplored in their journal 'Light,' that I have never yet had the horsewhipping which I have merited. Friends have rushed before me in the streets of London to protect me, they imagined, from a vitriol-thrower, and sailors have been bribed by clergymen of the southern seas to put my luggage ashore a thousand miles away from my destination. I have been forced by the pressure of the Catholic Church on a London publisher to tear up a literary contract worth at least twenty thousand dollars, and have had my books shamelessly misrepresented in the press and expelled, under menaces, from booksellers' shops. Insults, injuries, intrigues, lies, libels, vituperations, depreciations..."
What's changed?
