Dear Rector,
On
November 19 I informed you that on Sunday, November 22, I would busk in front
of St James before the Sunday Service, from 9:45 to 10:00, reading Homer’s Iliad in Ancient Greek. Before writing to
you I went to St James. I appreciated the grand porch of your church, and
thought: if the weather is too bad, I shall just stand in the porch with my
little poster ‘Busking with Homer read in Ancient Greek’ around my neck,
reading the Iliad just for myself,
for reading it aloud in the porch would hardly be appreciated. Then I received
your reply: ‘I’m very sorry to hear about your situation but I need to let you
know that we do not have a service in St James at 10am this Sunday, 22nd
November.’
Your reply made think: ‘Did the Rector decide to cancel the Communion
because of my intended busking?’ I apologize for that thought, but your reply
has made me realize that I should justify my intention to busk in front of St
James a little better and more thoroughly than I did in my letter of November
19. In that letter I wrote: ‘I take recourse to busking because my only
income is a State Pension of £26.95 a week; all my appeals to the Pension
Service to revise the debt of £11.956.70, deduced from my benefits since 2009,
have been in vain (see ‘An urgent request addressed to the Pension Service,’
‘It is all wrong – a letter to the Pension Service’ and ‘It has nothing to do
with Oxford University’ posted on my blog http://juliustominquestions.blogspot.co.uk/ on
June 10, 15 and 19 respectively).
I cannot expect that you or any member of your congregation
would look on my blog and read the suggested posts. I have now re-read them,
and realized that only one of them is relevant, ‘It is all wrong – a letter to
the Pension Service’ posted on June 15, for it explains why I cannot accept the
Pension Service’s explanation of my alleged debt: ‘The overpayment was because of undeclared earnings by your partner’.
I hope that as I shall go on busking at St James, members of your congregation
will join me in demanding that Pension Service justify their statement by giving us the facts concerning the alleged ‘undeclared
earnings by your partner’.
‘It is all wrong – a letter to the Pension Service’ follows:
‘Dear Glyn Caron,
In my letter of 10 June 2015 I asked: “On what
basis have the Pension Service found me in debt of £11,956.70?” On 12 June you
replied: “The deductions are for an overpayment that dates back to 10 October
2008. The overpayment was because of undeclared earnings by your partner.”
Would you justify your statement by giving me facts? I must repeat my question:
“On what basis have the Pension Service found me in debt of £11,956.70?”
Before I get
the facts, let me ask: If the overpayment goes back to 10 October 2008, why was
I charged with the debt of £11,956.70 almost a year later? The circumstances
were dramatic. Let me quote from my letter to Ursula Grum of 7/10/2009:
“In a letter of 08/09/2009 you informed me that my Pension
Credit was overpaid £158.34 for the period 06/07/2009-26/07/2009. I received
the letter on Monday September 14. In the letter you stated: ‘The overpayment
occurred because on 09/07/2009 your circumstances changed and the office that
paid your benefit was not told at the correct time about a change to the level
of earnings in your household.’ This allegation is false. On 23 July 2009 I
sent The Pension Service a letter, in which I informed you of my wife’s
earnings for three days of supply teaching for the period 2 to 14 July, and I
enclosed the three pay slips. I did so as soon as my wife received the pay. I
did not contact you on the day I received your letter of 8/9, for I expected a
visit from the Pension Service Customer Liaison Officer, announced for the next
day, with whom I wanted to discuss the issue.
On September 15 I was visited by the Pension Service
Customer Liaison Officer to whom I showed the relevant documents concerning the
supposed overpayment. At that point she gave me your letter of 11 August 2009
in which you inform me that in the period from 01/08/2005 to 12/10/2008 I was
overpaid £11,688.36, and from 13/10/2008 to 19/10/2008 I was overpaid £75.28,
that is in total £11,763.64. I phoned your department in the officer’s
presence, appealing against your decision.”
Now back to
your letter of 12 June
2015; you wrote: “The
deductions are for an overpayment that dates back to 10 October 2008.” I find
the date intriguing.
Early in Autumn 2008 I informed Classicists and
classical philosophers that I put on my website the first volume of The Lost Plato, which focuses on
nine dialogues of Plato which I consider as written prior to Socrates' death. I
indicated that I was preparing its sequel, a systematic study of the dialogues
written after the death of Socrates. I asked: “In your view, should this work
be undertaken? If so, what can be done that it is undertaken in conditions
worthy of the work it requires? If you think that such work should not be undertaken,
could you tell me why?” Nicholas Denyer's replied ‘no’, which he justified as
follows: “You do not name the nine dialogues you view as written before
Socrates' death. But whichever nine dialogues you were to name, there is no
reason to suppose that your view about their dating is correct. Amplifying a
view which there is no reason to suppose correct is not a good use of your time
and talents.” Nicholas Denyer said his NO without looking at least at the few
pages of the ‘Introduction’.
In October 2008
I wrote to my colleagues: “I should like to inform you that as of yesterday my
questions acquired an unexpectedly grave existential dimension. From the Stroud
District Council I received the following letter:
‘We have been advised that your Pension Credits have stopped, which may affect
your entitlement to Housing or Council Tax Benefits. We have therefore
suspended payment of these benefits in accordance with Regulation 11 of the
Decision and Appeals Regulations 2001. There is no right of appeal against this
decision.’
I phoned the Council, informed the lady I spoke to that my wife, who was self-employed on a part time basis until September is now studying at Cheltenham, taking a year-long post-graduate course to become a teacher. The lady told me that on the information they received from the Pension Service my Pension Credits were disconnected as of July 2008. This surprised me, for when I asked my wife a few days ago whether I was receiving the pension credit as normal, she looked at my account and said ‘yes’. I was advised to contact the Pension Service, which I did. The lady I spoke to at that office told me that my last Pension Credit payment would be sent to me on October 19: ‘Your Pension Credit is stopped because we have been informed that you and your wife are receiving Working Tax Credit.’ I told the lady that they were badly misinformed, for my wife ceased to work, as I duly informed their office at the beginning of September. I pointed to a letter I received from her office on 10 September, which said: ‘Thank you for informing us of the cessation of your partner's self-employment.’
The Pension Credit I have been receiving until October 19 was £62.79 a week.
Since we neither smoke nor drink, and live all in all frugally, we have been
able to survive.
This morning I received a letter from the Pension Services, dated 13 October 2008, which says that ‘from 21 July 2008 you will get £5.10 a week. From July 2008 you are not entitled to Pension Credit.’ The section ‘How Pension Credit has been worked out’ says ‘the minimum amount of money the Government says you must have each week taking account of specific circumstances is £189.35. State pension for Julius Tomin £31.38. Working Tax Credit for Doina Cornell £70.18. Earnings of Doina Cornell [my wife has kept her maiden name] £82.69. Total income £184.25. Your appropriate amount of £189.35, less your total income of £184.25. So your total guarantee credit is £5.10.’
I see a certain similarity between Denyer's NO and the Pension Service calculations. Denyer does not need to look at a single page of The Lost Plato in order to proclaim confidently that there is no reason to suppose that my views are correct and that therefore my question whether my future work deserves to be undertaken in conditions worthy of such work deserves a NO. I may phone and write to the Pension Service as often as I wish, informing the office workers that my wife is now a student, that she has no earnings, that we consequently do not receive any Working Tax Credit - the Pension Credit officers KNOW better.”
You can find
the full text of my email on my website www.juliustomin.org,
where it figures as email No VI in the "Preface" entitled "Eleven emails on The Lost Plato addressed to classicists
and classical philosophers".’
I look
forward to busking with Homer at St James next Sunday, November 29, from 9:45
to 10:00.
Regards,
Julius Tomin
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