Check out our news website Church and State to find out about our writers and read some amazing stories: http://churchandstate.org.uk. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the site; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State".
Perhaps The Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns NatWest Bank, has problems with security that its CEO Ross McEwan is unaware of. Declan was unable to use one of his NatWest Debit Cards at NatWest East Ham this afternoon. When he returned to the bank with his original Personal Identification Number (PIN) letter to try the card over the counter a third and final time, the bank clerk told him the PIN he was using applied to a card that had been cancelled in May 2015. Rather than have Declan use the card a third time, she ordered him a PIN ReAdvice. We are using old PINs on all three of our NatWest Debit Cards.
NatWest Alert 9 May 2016: "Your business email address registered with your NWB business account has been changed on 9 May 2016."
UPDATE 22/2/2017: This afternoon Declan phoned NatWest Customer Service, having been to NatWest East Ham again this morning for PIN ReAdvices on our other two cards. NatWest Customer Service say that NatWest East Ham has got it all wrong. First of all, Declan's first two attempts with his card yesterday should have been accepted because the correct PIN was used both times; unless, of course, the terminal was faulty. Second, the PIN ReAdvices will simply tell us to keep using our old PINs. NatWest Customer Service apologized several times. NatWest East Ham, on the other hand, knew none the better this morning. They ordered a PIN ReAdvice on Declan's second card, and insisted I must call into the bank myself if I wanted a PIN ReAdvice on my card. At least now I don't have to bother.
How you manage to do what you do is simply amazing!! And with the pressure on to adjudicate what seems more and more like attacks from a personality from 1984!
Donald A. Collins
Founder, International Services Assistance Fund
County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice
This afternoon District Judge Avent ruled in Declan's claim for compensation against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's, a homeless charity, that data we alleged to be false, fabricated and nonsensical (and left us vulnerable to eviction for non-cooperation with the support provider) constituted no more than "a difference of opinion as to wording" and that no breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 had occurred. Although originally listed for a one-day hearing, the trial only lasted two hours, i.e. one hour short of the preliminary hearing last October. Declan says it was the most hostile atmosphere that he has ever experienced in a courtroom. It left him reeling, he says, after no more than five minutes. At the end of DJ Avent's summation, Declan asked for leave to appeal. "What for?" the judge asked. "Because this is just a difference of opinion as to wording," Declan responded, quoting him verbatim. "No," the judge replied, and that was that.
We are in a supported tenancy because of Declan's physical health condition (and the high levels of harassment and intimidation we routinely face). We were forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total from 4 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 and from 14 April 2013 to 17 May 2014. Before we came off the street the second time, Declan was diagnosed with asthma and a chest infection; in fact, he became so weak that on 15 April 2014 the Royal London Hospital wrote: "If possible should try to find accommodation off the street." So when in May 2014 a supported housing tenancy came through (under an internationally acclaimed programme called Housing First run on behalf of the Mayor of London for entrenched rough sleepers), we took it. Because the flat only came with a fridge and cooker, we first had to sink the deposit we had for an accommodation into making it habitable. And that was just the start of things to come....
A difference of opinion as to wording?
For example, by no means exhaustive, this is paragraph 23 of Declan's Witness Statement dated 14 November 2016:
"Still to this day, I do not know the service to which the staff action/intervention "Signposted to another service" referred. No mention was made of the action note in St Mungo's Defence, notwithstanding the extraordinary lengths I had gone before the defence was filed to highlight the seriousness of blatantly retaining data that was false, fabricated and without meaning (vague to the point of having almost any kind of interpretation)."
According to the Information Commissioner's Office, it is a legal requirement for organisations to provide information to people that is concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible (not to mention legitimate), and it must use clear and plain language.
We were evicted from our previous flat on 14 March 2013 because according to our then live-in landlady's ex-husband, Dr Nigel McKenzie, a consultant psychiatrist in Highgate Mental Health Centre, our flat was needed for somebody with a mental illness. Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler also lived with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie in the same political 'safe house' for a couple of years until 2007. According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair"; he was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act. It is unfortunate that Shayler declared himself the Messiah in 2007, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article published in September 2006 featuring Shayler and Belinda gives no indication that Shayler believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with him the following year reveals he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. He has never regained his normal self.
The Esquire article below* is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It is an eye-opener, highlighting the monitoring and surveillance that Shayler had to live with back in 2000, and the contradictory briefings and slanders that were coming out of the British establishment and the media. The author, Dr Eamonn O'Neill, is a lecturer in journalism at Strathclyde University.
*On 2 May 2013, Issuu removed this pdf from my Issuu account following a copyright complaint by Hearst Communications. I had uploaded the article to my Issuu account in December 2012. In March 2013, when last I checked, the article had been viewed more than 15,000 times. It can be read here.
BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)
Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair", according to BBC Panorama. He was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act.
County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice
On Monday we have the hearing of Declan's case against the homeless charity St Mungo's at the Central London County Court in the Royal Courts of Justice. This morning we received notification from Newham Council that we have had our Housing Benefit suspended because of "information received from DWP", that they have recently been advised of a change in Declan's circumstances. There has been no change in our circumstances; moreover, we have had absolutely no dealings whatsoever with the Department of Work and Pensions for over three years!!
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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..."
'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty
Unbelievable! This attack involved more than breaking the formatting Declan and I had produced on 115 footnotes to a 36-page book excerpt. It also involved the vandalisation of the text; for example not just breaking 75% of the italics but also the gross misspelling of words that had been previously saved and proofed in preview. This is the excerpt from a book by Prof Paul Cliteur that was so royally targeted last night prior to its publication on Church and State:
Prof Cliteur is Professor of Jurisprudence, Leiden University (the Netherlands) and one of our 90 Honorary Associates. We are immensely proud of our Paul Cliteur category, which we are currently developing. It is my intention to add another two articles to the category this week. Prof Cliteur's material is seriously informative for anyone concerned about liberal democracy in the 21st century. Simply outstanding!
At the moment Church and State's category pages are also under serious attack. Declan has just checked and hardly a category page is showing a full complement of Facebook likes/shares. We are well familiar with this particular attack. I posted this graphic two weeks ago (the third article below has 1/2 million social recommends):
'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty
I am a former social psychologist from Madrid. My husband Declan, a former physical education teacher, is from Dublin. We came to England in 2003 from Ireland with the then-aim of forming a network organisation for those abused by church. We were twice forced, through no fault of our own, to live rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total, from November 2006 to July 2009 and from April 2013 to May 2014. Declan established Network for Church Monitoring as a nonprofit company limited by guarantee in 2011. We are currently living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' Section 21 eviction notice from our landlord, Peabody Trust housing association. This notwithstanding that our tenancy is a flat that falls under the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (see paragraph 3 under "Church and State" below). We have no children.
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
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[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).
[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.
