Church and State blog: British Telecom: Tonight Declan complains to BT about our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service (WITH UPDATE 8/9/2017)

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

British Telecom: Tonight Declan complains to BT about our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service (WITH UPDATE 8/9/2017)

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

From my earlier blog post's Update 6 September (11.15am):

"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 6/9/2017 RE: 155th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)."

8 September (5.42pm): 724 blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016.* See my blog post of 16 January, The blocks on public access to our Church and State website continue unabated (WITH UPDATE 8/9/2017 RE: 724th block since 26 July 2016). 101 blocks last month that included 8 blocks on 15 August; 21 blocks this month; 18 blocks this week that includes 6 blocks on 3 September; 1 block so far today (as of 8 September at 5.42pm).

1. 651st 15 August 2017, 12.03am
2. 652nd 15 August 2017, 1.56am
3. 653rd 15 August 2017, 3.39am
4. 654th 15 August 2017, 5.34am
5. 655th 15 August 2017, 10.51am
6. 656th 15 August 2017, 3.11pm
7. 657th 15 August 2017, 4.34pm
8. 658th 15 August 2017, 6.45pm (8)
-----------------------------------------
61. 711th 3 September 2017, 3.56am
62. 712th 3 September 2017, 5.47am
63. 713th 3 September 2017, 7.23am
64. 714th 3 September 2017, 5.34pm
65. 715th 3 September 2017, 9.05pm
66. 716th 3 September 2017, 10.20pm (6)
-----------------------------------------
74. 724th 8 September 2017, 4.07pm

* An unprecedented escalation of 52 blocks in one week at the end of April 2017 that kicked off with our focus on the Danish Cartoon Crisis.

The War on Free Expression

British Telecom is one of the world's leading communications services companies. We pay BT £65.53 per month (£786.36 per year) for BT Infinity 2 fibre optic broadband. Nonetheless, tonight Declan has had to telephone BT Technical Helpdesk to complain about our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet, plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service. Our internet connection was coincidentally restored within seconds of the call without the Helpdesk even having had a chance to do anything about it. As for their TV service, the Helpdesk didn't even try to fix our BT TV YouView box because our TV and aerial are working fine. Instead, they placed an order for a new TV set-top box. Declan copied British Telecom Chairman Sir Michael Rake into this complaint last June to BT's Executive Level Complaints (Consumer) about their account of what happened during an engineer's visit to replace a badly fitted BT master socket that was otherwise working fine:

For the attention of Sir Michael Rake, Chairman, British Telecom

Shirley Mackie
Executive Level Complaints (Consumer)
British Telecom

Address removed for email

16 June 2017

Dear Ms Mackie,

This evening I spoke with an advisor in the Ombudsman Services: Communications. I have been told that I must request a second deadlock letter before writing to them because your deadlock letter below has instigated a new complaint.

I refer to your comment in which you state as follows: "An engineer attended on 7 June, but was unable to complete the necessary work. The engineer explained he was unable to repair the current master socket and offered to provide a new, securely fitted master socket on the same wall as the existing socket. But you advised you did not want this."

I do not accept your version of what happened during the engineer's visit on 7 June (hereinafter referred to as the "Complaint"). Firstly, your account is at variance with the attached ACR recording from my smartphone that informs you that the engineer only stated before leaving my home that the work needed to be carried out by my landlord Family Mosaic, not BT. I previously provided your colleague Miranda Bracey with this recording on 7 June.

Secondly, your account is at variance with the attached engineer note from 7 June, which states as follows: "This is a Fibre customer and will need a Fibre trained engineer to be allocated." Thirdly, as you have conceded below, it was a third engineer who visited my home on 12 June and securely fitted a brand new master socket to another location on the same wall. He also carried out a comprehensive line test and could not find a problem with my line.

I therefore hereby request a second deadlock letter that provides me with BT's full and final position on my Complaint and refers me to the ombudsman service.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey

Declan received this initial response on behalf of Sir Michael Rake:

16 June 2017

Hello Mr Heavey,

Thank you for your email to Sir Michael.

I'm really sorry that you've had to come back to us regarding this matter.

I will ask our team to look at the deadlock for you and contact you no later than Tuesday.

Best wishes

Tracy

Tracy Reid
Executive Level Complaints (Consumer)

18 June: BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer): Request for 2nd Deadlock Letter for the Telecommunications Ombudsman (WITH UPDATE 19/6/2017)

UPDATE 8 September (5.47pm): Unbelievable! We received our new BT YouView box yesterday evening, but in less than 24 hours we are back to where we were this time yesterday with no signal quality or signal strength. Last night we were getting signal quality 94% and signal strength 100% and good picture. We have already written off this new TV set-top box as a waste of our time and money.

Last night at 8.35pm:

This afternoon at 3.24pm:

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, September 05, 2017

British Telecom: Tonight Declan complains to BT about our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service (WITH UPDATE 8/9/2017)

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