Church and State blog: British Telecom: Will BT Executive Level Complaints provide us with a copy of the engineer's report dated 24 May without a Subject Access Request under the jurisdiction of the Telecommunications Ombudsman? (WITH UPDATE

Saturday, May 27, 2017

British Telecom: Will BT Executive Level Complaints provide us with a copy of the engineer's report dated 24 May without a Subject Access Request under the jurisdiction of the Telecommunications Ombudsman? (WITH UPDATE - DAY 11 1/6/2017)

Re: Blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016

From my earlier blog post's Update 1 June (8.36am):

"I have just updated my blog post of 16 January with this morning's 464th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 94 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day."

An unprecedented ten blocks in one day on 7 May with our publication of Atheist Ireland republishes 25 blasphemous quotes in solidarity with Stephen Fry. Nineteen blocks last week; ten blocks so far this week; one block since midnight today.

The War on Free Expression

The two Internet cuts below were the first two such cuts that have occurred since our contract with British Telecom (BT) commenced on 28 May 2014.*

1st Internet cut: 26 May 2017
2nd Internet cut: 27 May 2017 (graphic above)

* We have filed these first two internet cuts since May 2014 in a folder we have created called "BT Internet Cuts", with the date and time part of the graphic for each cut. We pay BT £65.53 per month (£786.36 per year) for BT Infinity fibre optic broadband.

Within hours of Declan's complaint to BT CEO Gavin Patterson on 24 May about the handling of the bad TV reception we had been accustomed to getting of late through our BT YouView box, the engineer Alexander Boyce confirmed in a double-signed handwritten note that there would be no charge for his visit because he could not say that we had damaged any BT equipment or that the fault (viz. intermittent TV reception through our BT YouView box) was the result of our home wiring.

24 May: British Telecom: Declan's complaint to the CEO of BT about the handling of the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late through our BT YouView box (WITH TREBLE UPDATE - Day 5 26/5/2017)

We are still waiting for BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer) to confirm whether any charges have been raised on Declan's account by Boyce. Nor have we been provided with a copy of his report dated 24 May. Will BT Executive Level Complaints provide us with a copy of this report without a Subject Access Request (SAR) under the jurisdiction of the Telecommunications Ombudsman?

DAY 11 UPDATE 1 June (9.46am): On 28 May Declan copied BT CEO Gavin Patterson into the complaint below to BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer). We are still waiting for a reply. We can't understand what is so special about a supposedly run-of-the-mill report by a regular BT engineer, and what it is about Declan's straightforward request for same that BT Executive Level Complaints are finding so difficult to handle.

For the attention of Gavin Patterson, Chief Executive, British Telecom

Miranda Bracey
Executive Level Complaints (Consumer)
British Telecom

Address removed for email

28 May 2017

Dear Ms Bracey,

Thank you for your email. Please could you confirm what charges, if any, have been raised by your engineer Alexander Boyce following his visit to my property on 24 May. Please could you also provide me with a copy of his report without the fee my Subject Access Request (SAR) dated 25 May would likely incur.

I can confirm that I am currently watching TV with a signal strength that remains stable at 92% and quality that remains stable at 100%. Mr Boyce told me that any signal strength above 50% is acceptable when it comes to home wiring. I therefore fail to understand how any charges could have been raised by him in his report.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey

M: 07880437681

Internet cut updates:

None since 27 May.

From My Picks:

20 February: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

'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

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

Saturday, May 27, 2017

British Telecom: Will BT Executive Level Complaints provide us with a copy of the engineer's report dated 24 May without a Subject Access Request under the jurisdiction of the Telecommunications Ombudsman? (WITH UPDATE - DAY 11 1/6/2017)

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