Church and State blog: It is our narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HM Revenue and Customs. The Department for Work and Pensions has our Housing Benefit twice suspended by repeatedly claiming we have vacated (WITH UPDATE 11/8/2017)

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

It is our narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HM Revenue and Customs. The Department for Work and Pensions has our Housing Benefit twice suspended by repeatedly claiming we have vacated (WITH UPDATE 11/8/2017)

Re: Internet cuts since 26 May 2017

From my earlier blog post's Update 10 August (6.50pm):

"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 10/8/2017 RE: 125th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)."

11 August (8.30am): We had to suspend work on our Church and State website on 15 June after 4 internet cuts in one night. With a then unprecedented 6 internet cuts on 6 July; 6 cuts on 22 July; 6 cuts on 4 August; none since midnight today (as of 11 August at 8.30am).

102nd 4 August 2017, 10.19am
103rd 4 August 2017, 12.02pm
104th 4 August 2017, 2.03pm
105th 4 August 2017, 5.32pm
106th 4 August 2017, 8.58pm
107th 4 August 2017, 11.47pm

The War on Free Expression

HMRC Customer Service Manager for PAYE and Self Assessment: "We previously asked you to complete Self Assessment tax returns because you told us that you would receive self-employed income. However, your 2015-16 return only included income of £2,967 from Network for Church Monitoring and as you had told us that this was PAYE income, we have closed your Self Assessment record" [emphasis added].

We thought that is was bad enough when HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) updated my address without my authority on 11 July; see my blog post of 13 July, HM Revenue and Customs: My Self-Assessment address has been updated by HMRC without my authority and Declan has just been informed by Newham Council that our Housing Benefit may be suspended as a result (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 14/7/2017). Then last Thursday I received a letter from HMRC Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Self Assessment stating that HMRC had closed my Self Assessment record. Taking HMRC Customer Service Manager (PAYE and SA) John Fitzpatrick at his written word (quoted above), my Self Assessment record was unjustifiably closed on the ground of fabricated hearsay evidence which no independent judiciary would accept; see my blog post of 3 August, My Stage 2 complaint re the unauthorised updating of my address by HM Revenue and Customs includes the issue of the unjustified closure of my Self Assessment record by the Customer Service Manager for PAYE and Self Assessment (WITH UPDATE 4/8/2017). Declan copied HMRC Chief Executive Jon Thompson into this unacknowledged email last Friday to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions David Gauke for our indisputable narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HMRC:

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

The Rt Hon David Gauke MP
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Department for Work and Pensions

Address removed for email

4 August 2017

BY EMAIL AND RECORDED POST

National Insurance Number (NINO): [number removed]
Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR): [number removed]

Dear Secretary of State,

Incorrect notifications regarding a change in address

I refer to the attached letter from Newham Benefits Service (NBS). Since October 2016, NBS have twice suspended my Housing Benefit because on both occasions they were informed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that I had vacated.

My home address since 17 May 2014 has been and remains 71 Queens Road West, London E13 0PE. This is also the address on my Self Assessment record with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) since 17 February 2017. The address of the non-profit-making company limited by guarantee that I incorporated on 18 January 2011, Network for Church Monitoring, is Suite 101 254 Pentonville Road, London N1 9JY. This address is based on the company's registration details since 8 November 2016.

On 11 July 2017, HMRC updated my home address on my wife's Self Assessment record without her authority. I am informed by NBS that they have not received any notification regarding a change in address from HMRC or the DWP. I am writing to you to clarify the situation and impress upon you the detrimental effect any incorrect notification may have. I am also copying HMRC Chief Executive Jon Thompson into this email.

Neither my wife nor myself is self-employed; that is, contrary to HMRC's latest assertion that my wife told them she is PAYE self-employed. My wife has made a Stage 2 complaint against HMRC on both the unauthorised updating of her address on 11 July by HMRC PAYE and Self Assessment and on the subsequent issue of the unjustified closure of her Self Assessment record by HMRC's Customer Service Manager for PAYE and Self Assessment based on fabricated hearsay evidence which no independent judiciary would accept.

If the DWP have any further questions regarding this email please do not hesitate to contact me, the easiest way to do so is to email me at dheavey@gmail.com.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

"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

7 July: 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 DOUBLE UPDATE 10/7/2017)

As Declan points out in his email above to David Gauke, Newham Council have twice suspended our Housing Benefit because on both occasions they were informed by the Department for Work and Pensions that we had vacated. The first time this happened, last October, Declan was summoned to a full-blown investigation by Newham Benefits Service. He produced a bundle of 57 pages with a number of further documents, and was interrogated for over an hour and a half by a Senior Council Tax and Benefits Officer before our Housing Benefit was de-suspended. We have absolutely no idea what we could be looking at this time around. (Declan wrote the pre-action letter below in respect of the second such suspension last February.) Suspensions can also last any period of time and the tenant pursued for rent for the length of the suspension.

Click to enlarge

UPDATE 9 August (10.12am): Nothing from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). I am also still waiting for written assurance from HMRC that my address will not be updated by them again without my authority, and that the issue of the unjustified closure of my Self Assessment record by the Customer Service Manager for PAYE and Self Assessment will be handled by HMRC in accordance with the appropriate laws. We are in two minds whether or not to complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) about serious staff misconduct, on the part of HMRC, involving criminal or near criminal behaviour.

UPDATE 11 August (8.36am): Still nothing from the DWP, and I have not received so much as an acknowledgement from HRMC to my Stage 2 complaint last week. Declan has phoned the IPCC. They told him that I can complain to them if we want to, that they would then contact HMRC for the recording of my complaint. I have downloaded the IPCC complaint form! We have chosen "corruption" from the list of options HMRC provide on their website for serious staff misconduct involving criminal or near criminal behaviour. Newham Council's threat to suspend our Housing Benefit for the third time since last October remains as apparent as ever. They write: "As previously explained once we receive notification of a change in your circumstance that may affect your entitlement our procedure is to suspend the claim to avoid an incorrect payment."

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).

Re: Investigatory Powers Tribunal

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) dismissed Declan's complaint against the secret services on papers in less than three weeks, on 1 September 2011, stating that it was "obviously unsustainable". This is paragraph 11 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

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.

Click to enlarge

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

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

It is our narrative going forward that we are being harassed even by HM Revenue and Customs. The Department for Work and Pensions has our Housing Benefit twice suspended by repeatedly claiming we have vacated (WITH UPDATE 11/8/2017)

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