Church and State blog: We are cut off the Internet again this morning. Our TV is a constant reminder that non-stop internet cuts can kick off at any time with cuts that can last for hours

Thursday, December 06, 2018

We are cut off the Internet again this morning. Our TV is a constant reminder that non-stop internet cuts can kick off at any time with cuts that can last for hours

Our Church and State website has no less than 40 Nobel Prize winners on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

We pay British Telecom, one of the world's leading communications services companies, £70 per month (£850 per year) for BT Infinity 2 fibre optic broadband. I have been recording our internet cuts as a BT customer since 26 May 2017. Declan has made countless phone calls to BT Customer Service and has dealt with BT Executive Level Complaints multiple times. Never has there been a fault found with our phone line or in our area, and our BT Hub mysteriously rectified itself last August to such an extent that we haven't yet installed the new hub we received that month as a matter of urgency. That said, we have just been cut off the internet once again. Our TV is a constant reminder that non-stop internet cuts can kick off at any time with cuts that can last for hours (the longest being 3 1/4 hours on 16 August):

Update Summation 6 December 2018

292 internet cuts since 26 May 2017 (173 cuts 2017; 119 cuts 2018). With an all-time record-equalling 7 cuts in one day on 19 June 2018; 22 cuts last May that included on 8 May the 3rd ever 1/2 hour cut on the same day as Declan's updated complaint to the UN; 16 cuts last August that included on 17 August an all-time record-breaking cut of 3 1/4 hours; 1 cut today, the morning after Facebook's 51st block against our Church and State website. (As of 6 December at 11.10am.)

173 cuts 2017
119 cuts 2018
Since May 2018*
- May 2018: 22 cuts
- June 2018 40 cuts
- July 2018 26 cuts
- August 2018: 16 cuts
- September 2018: 0 cuts
- October 2018: 3 cuts
- November 2018: 1 cut
- December 2018: 1 cut

* All cuts on old BT Hub - new BT Hub delivered on 19 August 2018 yet to be installed. The bandwidth on our 2nd BT YouView box is seldom enough to watch TV channels (and because of this, our TV usually operates off our TV aerial or our TV viewing restricted to the BBC iPlayer). This has been, and remains, a constant reminder with respect to whichever BT Hub we use for our laptops.

7 July 2018: INTERNET CUTS: Are 45-minute Internet cuts to be the new norm? We pay British Telecom £850 per year for broadband (WITH UPDATE 6/12/2018: re 292nd Internet cut since 26 May 2017)

And the ongoing assault on my primary laptop has now gone a record-breaking one day shy of five weeks:

Removal of our flat door in 2012

UPDATE 6 December (11.04am): "... This time around, my primary laptop has been messed about for one day shy of five weeks (35 days). At the moment I am struggling with a broadband speed of 14Mb. Declan has no such problem on his primary laptop. As an invasion of privacy, we compare this on-off targeting of our laptops with the removal of our flat door in 2012. (It was the Independent Police Complaints Commission's finding on that occasion that since our then live-in landlady had subsequently signed an undertaking to the County Court promising not to harass us, there was no requirement for the Metropolitan Police to take further action.)"

27 November: The assault on my primary laptop runs into a record-breaking fourth week (WITH UPDATE - DAY 35 6/12/2018)

Click to enlarge

Is Edward Snowden a Hero or Criminal? This is a solid documentary called #Citizenfour that may influence your thinking either way:

JOIN THE CONVERSATION #CITIZENFOUR

From My Picks:

16 November: St Mungo's: Declan reverts to data protection law in his dealings with the Mayor of London's St Mungo's TST for the accurate recording of his complaint of unfair treatment against Newham Council (WITH UPDATE - DAY 18 6/12/2018)

For over two years, Declan has been fighting without success to secure a long-term volunteer position through Newham Council's Active Newham. Declan has made several complaints of unfair treatment against the Council, culminating in his recent complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (Ombudsman's Case ID: 18011204).

http://churchandstate.org.uk/honorary-associates/

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

Thursday, December 06, 2018

We are cut off the Internet again this morning. Our TV is a constant reminder that non-stop internet cuts can kick off at any time with cuts that can last for hours

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