Church and State blog: We're back again to HM Revenue and Customs: Is it the intention of HMRC to harass me to have their stop on my mail removed? (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 10/7/2017)

Sunday, July 09, 2017

We're back again to HM Revenue and Customs: Is it the intention of HMRC to harass me to have their stop on my mail removed? (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 10/7/2017)

Re: Internet cuts since 26 May 2017

From my earlier blog post's Update 10 July (9.06am):

"And it's not just Facebook blocks, blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site that Declan and I are dealing with these days. We have also been dealing with Internet cuts since 26 May. See my blog post of 21 June, Internet cuts: We pay £65 per month for BT Infinity but feel we are in a race against time to stay online (WITH UPDATE 10/7/2017 RE: 56th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)."

We had to suspend work on our Church and State website on 15 June after 4 internet cuts in one night. 4 internet cuts on 25 June; a record-breaking 6 cuts on 6 July; 3 cuts yesterday; none since midnight today (as of 10 July at 9.06am).

The War on Free Expression

On Friday Declan complained to Royal Mail about the treatment of our incoming mail; see my previous blog post, Complaint to the CEO of Royal Mail: Has Royal Mail declared open warfare on our incoming mail? And this question is raised on top of Internet cuts that are going out of control (WITH UPDATE 10/7/2017). Then this Sunday evening I find myself emailing HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after discovering a stop to any automated correspondence being issued by them to my address.

From HMRC: "HM Revenue & Customs has been unable to deliver mail to you. Please update your address."

For the attention of Jon Thompson, Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary of HM Revenue and Customs

Complaints Service (PAYE and SA)
Tier 1
HM Revenue and Customs

Address removed for email

9 July 2017

Tax Reference [number removed]

Dear Operational Manager,

I wish to complain that I have been asked on my online account to update my address (please see my name and address box).

I hereby confirm that my current mailing address remains as follows:

Mrs Maria Dolores Heavey
71 Queens Road West
Plaistow
London
E13 0PE

This has been my home address since 17 May 2014; therefore, my address does not require updating. This is not to mention the fact that such an update could trigger the suspension of my husband's Housing Benefit (please see the email and attachment below). Please could you have the offending note removed.

Alternatively, I respectfully request that HMRC show that this cannot reasonably be regarded as a reasonable course of action.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Dolores Heavey
UTR: [number removed]

M: 0788 043 7681
E: dheavey@gmail.com

UPDATE 10 July (12.38pm): HMRC are still insisting on my online account that I update my address, notwithstanding the threat to our Housing Benefit if I do so. (According to Newham Council, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and HMRC are tied into the oneSource service they share with Havering and Bexley Councils. The last two times Declan has had to update his address with HMRC, Newham Council wrote that they suspended our Housing Benefit because the DWP notified them that our address had changed.) This morning Declan received this response from Samuel Ford of Royal Mail's Chairman and Chief Executive Office:

Dear Mr Heavey

Thank you for your email on Friday 7th July – I was unable to respond as I was not in the office.

I’m sorry that you have had cause to contact us again to report a problem with the delivery of your mail. It is clear that we let you down once more – and it is especially disappointing that it has occurred despite the action already taken with your previous complaints.

I have therefore contacted senior management in your area to take a top-down approach to this complaint. This method of reporting makes the most senior relevant manager aware of the incident so that patterns are stopped before the problem becomes endemic.

Please be assured that I do understand the severity of this issue, and I am doing everything I can to ensure we get this fixed for you.

I will write as soon as I am able – but if you need anything else from Royal Mail in the meantime please just let me know.

Kind regards

Samuel Ford
Royal Mail - Chairman and Chief Executive Office

UPDATE 10 July (6.05pm): HMRC still have not removed their stop on my mail. Declan has been informed by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) that my complaint will have to go through HMRC's complaints process (Tier 1, Tier 2 and Independent Adjudicator) before the PHSO will consider the matter. There's no telling from this e-letter of acknowledgement what we are looking at in terms of HMRC:

Perhaps it will be our narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HMRC; see my blog post of 29 November 2016, Will it take the Independent Police Complaints Commission to protect our address with HM Revenue and Customs? (WITH UPDATE 22/12/2016).

From My Picks:

9 June: Ministry of Justice: Complaint to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice against the County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice (WITH UPDATE - Day 13 21/6/2017)

'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

Sunday, July 09, 2017

We're back again to HM Revenue and Customs: Is it the intention of HMRC to harass me to have their stop on my mail removed? (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 10/7/2017)

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