A SURPRISE ON MY BLOG

 

Yesterday I looked on my blog, it has a new face, which I do not like. The statistics is curtailed. The old statistics showed the countries in which my blog was most frequented in any given week. But what surprised me most unpleasantly, my post entitled “A confrontation” figured as “(Untitled)”. I clicked on it. I could not believe what I saw. The post was completely mutilated:

“A discrepancy

 

Yesterday I received a letter from the Pension Service 1 in Wolverhampton, which ends with a statement: ‘At 16 July 2020, the amount you still owe will be £ 1755.00’. Today I received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, Debt Centre Nuneaton, which begins with the words: ‘Amount owed £ 6737.78’.

 

Both letters have the same date: 16 July 2020. Both are dealing with the same thing. The Pension Service wrote: ‘We have been asked to take money off your Pension Credit … Start date 3 August 2020, Total amount stopped £ 11.25’. The Debt Centre wrote: ‘We will take £ 11.25 from your benefit every week, starting from the payment you are due to receive on 03/08/2020’.

 

Interesting is the sequence in which I received the two letters: After having digested the debt of £ 1755.00, I am to swallow the ‘fact’ that my actual debt is considerably bigger. But the fact is that

 

On November 22

 

‘On 12

 

This is not true, I was not repaying a penny.

 

Your last question was “Can you recall why you did not choose to pursue this at this stage [i.e. at the initial stage]?” Prompted by your question, I have recalled that I did my best to do so, as my exchange of letters with David Drew, who was my MP in those days, indicates. David Drew wrote to me on 22

 

The letter from the Pension Service of 6 October 2009 that stated “

 

These good intentions on the part of the Pension Service failed to come into effect; I wrote to David Drew on the 10

 

It is good to see that the Citizens Advice Bureau in Stroud is prepared to intercede in a case, which even a well-meaning MP ultimately set aside as hopeless.”

I removed the mutilated text and put the original text in:

“A discrepancy

 

Yesterday I received a letter from the Pension Service 1 in Wolverhampton, which ends with a statement: ‘At 16 July 2020, the amount you still owe will be £ 1755.00’. Today I received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, Debt Centre Nuneaton, which begins with the words: ‘Amount owed £ 6737.78’.

 

Both letters have the same date: 16 July 2020. Both are dealing with the same thing. The Pension Service wrote: ‘We have been asked to take money off your Pension Credit … Start date 3 August 2020, Total amount stopped £ 11.25’. The Debt Centre wrote: ‘We will take £ 11.25 from your benefit every week, starting from the payment you are due to receive on 03/08/2020’.

 

Interesting is the sequence in which I received the two letters: After having digested the debt of £ 1755.00, I am to swallow the ‘fact’ that my actual debt is considerably bigger. But the fact is that I have never accepted that I owe the Pension Service or the Department for Work and Pensions any money.

 

On November 22^nd 2014 I put on my blog the post entitled ‘The Citizens Advice Bureau intervenes’, from which I quote:

 

‘On 12^th November you sent me a letter from The Pension Service addressed to you, in which Glyn Caron wrote: “It must be remembered that Dr Tomin has been repaying this overpayment since approximately 2009 without complaint.”

 

This is not true, I was not repaying a penny. I never accepted that I was in any way indebted to Pension Service. The Pension Service has been taking money off my Pension Credit – now from my State Pension – since 2009. 

 

Your last question was “Can you recall why you did not choose to pursue this at this stage [i.e. at the initial stage]?” Prompted by your question, I have recalled that I did my best to do so, as my exchange of letters with David Drew, who was my MP in those days, indicates. David Drew wrote to me on 22^nd September 2009: “Thank you for your e-mail of 17 September. I am sorry to hear about your problems with Pension Credit. If you would kindly send me your National Insurance number and a few more details of the problem, I am happy to look into this on your behalf.”

 

The letter from the Pension Service of 6 October 2009 that stated “we will not be taking money for Overpayment from your Pension Credit” may have been sent to me in response to David Drew’s intervention.

 

These good intentions on the part of the Pension Service failed to come into effect; I wrote to David Drew on the 10^th of January 2010: “I am sorry to bother you again concerning the alleged debt which I am supposed to pay Debt Management of the Department for Work and Pensions. I know that you are very busy and work very hard on behalf of your constituents, and I, being a Czech citizen, cannot even give you my vote. Still, I should greatly appreciate it if you asked Debt Management of the Department for Work and Pensions and Paul Lewis at The Pension Service in Cardiff, on what basis was the decision originally made concerning my alleged debt, on what basis it was then cancelled, and on what basis it was made again.”

 

It is good to see that the Citizens Advice Bureau in Stroud is prepared to intercede in a case, which even a well-meaning MP ultimately set aside as hopeless.”

I checked it, it was on my blog in the correct way. The only thing I did not know how to do was to remove the “(Untitled)” and exchange it for “A discrepancy.”

About an hour later I looked again on my blog. The text reappeared there in its mutilated form. At that moment I got really angry. If it was Czechoslovakia of 1950s, or if it was China, I would not be surprised. But we are in Britain.  Again, I put in the correct text. Today, 31/07/2020, the correct text is still in.

 

 

22nd August 1978, an accusation of robbery

On 22^nd August 1978 I was accused of robbery. The date is significant, it was the tenth anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In the night from 21 to 22^nd August I was in the zoo doing my night-shift as a night watchman. When I came home in the morning of 22^nd August, my wife told me that I got a phone call from the Reuters News Agency and that I should call them. I did. The man who took the telephone apologised for calling me: ‘Would you go with me to the Wenceslas Square. I phoned everybody I could think of, but they all have left Prague for the day.’ – All dissidents were asked by the police to leave Prague for the day. I did not see any ground for doing so. –  I must confess I was not enthusiastic about the Reuters man's request, but I did not say no. We went together to the Wenceslas Square, up to the top of the Square. There we stood in front of the monument upon which St Wenceslas is sitting on his horse. If anything was to happen, it would happen there. In those days the public toilets were just in front of the monument. After standing in front of the monument for quite a while, we both needed to go to the pissoir. When we were in the toilet, an attempt to mark the anniversary took place. A student from East Germany stood in front of the monument and unfolded a post expressing solidarity with the Prague Spring of 1968 and protesting against the Warsaw Pact Invasion. He was immediately arrested and taken away. It was the only protest that took place on that day.

When I came home my wife told me that the police phoned. She gave me a telephone number that I should call. I did. The policeman who took the phone told me that on that morning a robbery was committed in the workshop situated in the basement of the house in which we lived: ‘The description of the person who committed the robbery fits you.’ I replied: ‘Just listen to your tape-recording of my morning telephone conversation,’ and hung up. I never heard about that robbery again.

A discrepancy

 

Yesterday I received a letter from the Pension Service 1 in Wolverhampton, which ends with a statement: ‘At 16 July 2020, the amount you still owe will be £ 1755.00’. Today I received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions, Debt Centre Nuneaton, which begins with the words: ‘Amount owed £ 6737.78’.

 

Both letters have the same date: 16 July 2020. Both are dealing with the same thing. The Pension Service wrote: ‘We have been asked to take money off your Pension Credit … Start date 3 August 2020, Total amount stopped £ 11.25’. The Debt Centre wrote: ‘We will take £ 11.25 from your benefit every week, starting from the payment you are due to receive on 03/08/2020’.

 

Interesting is the sequence in which I received the two letters: After having digested the debt of £ 1755.00, I am to swallow the ‘fact’ that my actual debt is considerably bigger. But the fact is that I have never accepted that I owe the Pension Service or the Department for Work and Pensions any money.

 

On November 22^nd 2014 I put on my blog the post entitled ‘The Citizens Advice Bureau intervenes’, from which I quote:

 

‘On 12^th November you sent me a letter from The Pension Service addressed to you, in which Glyn Caron wrote: “It must be remembered that Dr Tomin has been repaying this overpayment since approximately 2009 without complaint.”

 

This is not true, I was not repaying a penny. I never accepted that I was in any way indebted to Pension Service. The Pension Service has been taking money off my Pension Credit – now from my State Pension – since 2009. 

 

Your last question was “Can you recall why you did not choose to pursue this at this stage [i.e. at the initial stage]?” Prompted by your question, I have recalled that I did my best to do so, as my exchange of letters with David Drew, who was my MP in those days, indicates. David Drew wrote to me on 22^nd September 2009: “Thank you for your e-mail of 17 September. I am sorry to hear about your problems with Pension Credit. If you would kindly send me your National Insurance number and a few more details of the problem, I am happy to look into this on your behalf.”

 

The letter from the Pension Service of 6 October 2009 that stated “we will not be taking money for Overpayment from your Pension Credit” may have been sent to me in response to David Drew’s intervention.

 

These good intentions on the part of the Pension Service failed to come into effect; I wrote to David Drew on the 10^th of January 2010: “I am sorry to bother you again concerning the alleged debt which I am supposed to pay Debt Management of the Department for Work and Pensions. I know that you are very busy and work very hard on behalf of your constituents, and I, being a Czech citizen, cannot even give you my vote. Still, I should greatly appreciate it if you asked Debt Management of the Department for Work and Pensions and Paul Lewis at The Pension Service in Cardiff, on what basis was the decision originally made concerning my alleged debt, on what basis it was then cancelled, and on what basis it was made again.”

 

It is good to see that the Citizens Advice Bureau in Stroud is prepared to intercede in a case, which even a well-meaning MP ultimately set aside as hopeless.’

A letter to the Manager

Reference number NY221343B

The Pension Service 1

Post Handling Site B

Wolverhampton

WV99 1AL

22 July 2020

Dear Sue Crook,

This morning I received a letter from you, in which you write:

‘We have been asked to take money off your Pension Credit.

Details of money we will take off your Pension Credit each week

Start date: 3 August 2020

End date: 18 January 2032

Total amount stopped: £ 11.25.’

Towards the end of May I received a letter from you in which you informed me that you stopped taking each week £ 11. 25 off my Pension Credit. I cannot give you the exact date, for I kept the letter on the window sill of my room, but it isn't there. I must have received it in the last week of May, for 22^nd May 2020 was the last time I got the reduced weekly pension of £43.46; from 1^st June I have been receiving the full pension, £ 54.56 a week.

May I ask you, who asked you to take money off my Pension Credit?

And may I ask you a great favour. Would you be so kind as to send me a copy of the letter that you sent me in May and in which you informed me that you definitely stopped the deductions?

Yours sincerely

Julius Tomin

A correction, For the Record

I.                    A Correction

In the ‘Encounters with Oxford dons – 2^nd continuation’ published on 26^th July I made a few mistakes, one of which is serious. I’ll give the correction in its broader context, marking the corrected sentence in bold.

In ‘The Pub Philosopher’, published in The Independent Magazine on 18^th November 1989 – i.e. a day after the Velvet Revolution began in Prague – Nick Cohen quoted an Oxford professor who said about me: ‘you can disguise paranoia in the East. There are so many real conspiracies. There aren’t the same excuses when you come to the West.’ Nick Cohen added: ‘How dare pampered Oxford dons condemn a man who has been sent in and out of jail since he was 18 for standing up for humanist values? It sounds scandalous until you hear Tomin happily accuse classical philosophers of conspiring to destroy him because he could expose their ignorance, or of collaborating with the Czech authorities.’ The article is full of gross inaccuracies and distortions [it can be seen on my website] …

I never accused classical philosophers ‘of conspiring to destroy me’, nor did I ever say that they ‘collaborated with the Czech authorities.’ I told Cohen what I experienced in very concrete terms, but he put into my mouth his own generalizations, which were false. He did it so that every reader would agree with the anonymously quoted professor: ‘“I don’t wish to sound East European,” said one, “but perhaps he does need psychiatric help.”’

Let me point out a few things I told Cohen. During the first two years in Oxford I lived with my family in a house hired by Dr Kathleen Wilkes, who was the first Oxford visitor in my seminar; we lived on the ground floor, she on the upper floor. We were often visited by Roger Scruton and Alan Montefiore who discussed with Kathy Oxford activities in Czechoslovakia. They divided them into open activities, namely the visits in Ladislav Hejdánek’s seminar, viewed as a smokescreen that shielded their truly important activities in Petr Rezek’s seminar, held in secrecy. I told them that it was naïve to believe that the secret police knew nothing of Rezek’s seminar. Alan Montefiore asked me how I can say that Rezek’s seminar is not secret, when people in Prague are confident that their meetings are secret. In those days I was receiving an emigrant journal Svědectví, published in France. I showed Alan the issue in which a Frenchman wrote about his visit in Rezek’s seminar. I said: ‘Alan, it is still possible that the Czechoslovak secret police knows nothing about the seminar, but only if the KGB gave a strict order that the department in Czechoslovak Ministry of Internal Affairs, which monitors Svědectví, must leave this particular issue untouched.’ I told Cohen that the Czechoslovak secret police was undoubtedly interested in the secrecy of Rezek’s seminar; that’s what the secret police is all about, operating in secrecy. It made me sad that Oxford dons adopted this myth of secrecy. On another time Alan asked me: ‘Do you think that we have betrayed you?’ I replied: ‘You cannot betray me; you have betrayed yourselves.’

***

II.                  For the record

Let me use this opportunity to bring some light on a passage in Barbara Day’s The Velvet Philosophers (The Claridge Press, 1999, pp. 39-40):

‘The Sub-Faculty of philosophy had agreed, with money from the Literae Humaniores Board, to send as the next visitor the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Thought at All Souls College. On Tuesday 5^th June Wilkes came to Luke’s room in Balliol College to brief Taylor.

Whilst the Oxford philosophers were pressing a normally indifferent British press and public to take notice of the Czech philosophers, a situation was unfolding in Prague which was to influence both the development of the seminars and the future of the Tomin family. It began with one of those incidents which in a police state can either be attributed to malicious brutality or interpreted as a step in a more complex plan [the emphasis is mine, J.T.]. On the same June evening as Wilkes, Lukes and Taylor were sitting in Balliol discussing the Prague seminar, Zdena Tominová was on her way home from a visit to Jiří Gruša and his family. Entering the main door of no. 4 Keramická Street, she was attacked by a masked man. Passers-by rescued her, but not before she had been severely beaten. An ambulance was called and she was hospitalised with concussion. The news reached Tomin, on night duty at the zoo, who visited her at the Na Františku hospital. Returning to work in an emotional state, he neglected his rounds to write a letter to President Husák; he was convinced there had been an attempt to murder Zdena and that he was to have been accused of the murder.’

It is not true that Zdena was severely beaten. She was hit just once, at the back of her head, presumably with a truncheon. The blow made her lose consciousness. The attacker presumably caught her; he did not let her fall, for the only injury she had was form that one blow.

To attack just one of us did not make sense; in those days we stood shoulder to shoulder. Less than a year before the police tried to frame me, accusing me of robbery. So, after I returned to the zoo from the hospital, I went to the office of the director of the zoo and wrote a letter to the President, which I headed with a question: ‘Was it to be a murder?’ I made as many copies as I could put in the typewriter, about eight. Had the blow been fatal, returning from my night shift I would have been the first to find my wife dead. The secret police would have had to find the murderer, and I would have been a welcome suspect. When I finished the letter, I locked the zoo and went around Prague, posting a copy in letterboxes of prominent dissidents. With every letter delivered I felt better; I knew that at least one of them would pass the letter to the West. And indeed, the letter was published in the West German Die Welt.

On the next day I learnt that my conjecture was wrong; for on the night Zdena was attacked I was to be kidnapped during my night round in the zoo. How do I know this? In the evening, on 6^th June, I went to work as usual. When I entered the Reception, there was a new night-watchman sitting with two or three other men, and they looked at me as if I was a ghost. Then they told me that they were informed that I had been kidnapped during my night-shift. About two hours later came the deputy director of the zoo, heavily drunk, and said that on the previous night he was instructed to call the police and inform them that I was kidnapped during my night-round.

Let me now go back to the attack on Zdena. When I visited her on the 5^th June, just after the attack, she told me that before she was taken int the ambulance, she managed to hide her bag with Charter 77 documents into a shrub in front of the house. She was anxious for me to retrieve it, which I did. When we discussed the attack later, Zdena remembered that she was followed by a police car, as usual in those days, all the way from Gruša’s, but that the car drove off just before she entered Šmeralova Street, the street that leads to Keramická Street. On the corner of Šmeralova Street was another car, which looked like a Secret police car, with the crew sitting inside. My conjecture is that we both were to be kidnapped. In Zdena’s case, the kidnapping was prevented by a group of people returning from cinema; the attacker panicked and ran away. In my case, it was prevented by a neighbour, one of that group, who phoned me to the zoo; instead of going on my round, I went to visit Zdena in the hospital. It is a long journey; it must have taken me at least three hours before I returned to the zoo, and then, instead of going on my round I wrote the letter to the President concerning the attack on Zdena.

When I visited my wife the next day, she was very frightened, for the doctor wanted to transfer her to a psychiatric hospital. I signed a document that I am taking her away at my own responsibility, ordered a taxi, and we got home.

In the ‘Encounters with Oxford dons – 2^nd continuation’ published on 26^th July, I speak of the two attempts by the Secret police to get me into a psychiatric hospital, and of the persisting ‘information’ both in the British and in the Czechoslovak press about my having been hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital. In view of all this I must ask, was it not on 5^th June that the first attempt to hospitalise me – and Zdena incidentally – in a psychiatric hospital took place? Wasn’t rescuing us and bringing us to Oxford one of Charles Taylor’s tasks?

Digression 5, Meno and the Meno, Xenophon and the Meno

In Digression 2 and 4 I argued that Plato wrote the Meno in 402 B.C., before he learnt that Meno decided to take part in Cyrus’ expedition as a general in charge of mercenaries. On this dating, there is little doubt that Plato sent the dialogue to Meno as soon as he wrote it; he had great hopes in that young man, which marked his dynamic portrait of him in the dialogue. If so, then there are good reasons to believe that Meno read the dialogue before he decided to join Cyrus’ expedition, and that it played a role in his decision to do so.

Consider Meno after his return from Athens. He could have hardly refrained from talking about his conversations with Socrates and Plato. In the Meno, Meno is confident of his intellectual accomplishments, for he has appropriated Gorgias’ teaching, believing him to be the wisest man of his day. Socrates emphasizes this: ‘if you and Gorgias prove to have knowledge of virtue’ (an phanȇs su men eidȏs kai Gorgias, 71d7), ‘what Gorgias and you with him say virtue is’ (ti auto phȇsi Gorgias einai kai su met’ ekeinou, 73c7-8). And we learn from Meno’s mouth that he made abundant speeches on virtue on countless occasions to various people, ‘and made them very well’ (kai panu eu, 80b3). The opening section of the dialogue presents us with much that Meno could report to his listeners, and do it so as to excel. He could even talk without embarrassment of the difficulties in which Socrates involved him – thus highlighting his brilliant retort to Socrates when the latter wanted them to enquire jointly into the nature of virtue: ‘And how will you enquire (Kai tina tropon zȇtȇseis), Socrates (ȏ Sȏkrates), into that which you do not know at all what it is (touto ho mȇ oistha to parapan ho ti estin;)? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry (poion gar hȏn ouk oistha prothemenos zȇtȇseis;)? And if, at the best, you hit upon it (ȇ ei kai hoti malista entuchois autȏi), how will you ever know (pȏs eisȇi) that this is the thing (hoti touto estin) which you did not know (ho su ouk ȇidȇstha;)?’ (80c9-d8) In connection with it he could narrate to great advantage his likening Socrates to the flat torpedo fish both in his appearance and in other respects (80a).

But could he ever speak of the profound change he himself had undergone in the hands of Socrates? The change that Socrates initiated by skilfully interrogating one of Meno’s own slaves? How could he admit that he then practically turned his back on Gorgias? True, before the end of the dialogue there was still something which he professed to admire in him. When Socrates asked him whether he thought that the sophists, who promised to teach virtue, could really do it, he replied: ‘That is a point, Socrates, for which I admire Gorgias: you will never hear him promising this, and he ridicules the others when he hears them promising it. Skill in speaking is what he takes it to be their business to produce.’ (95c1-4, tr. W.R.M. Lamb). But even that admiration was proved to be hollow. For when at the very end of the dialogue Socrates painted a picture of a man who could teach political virtue, and thus ‘might fairly be said to be among the living what Homer says Teiresias was among the dead – “He alone has comprehension; the rest are fleeting shades.” In the same way he on earth, in respect of virtue, will be a real substance among shadows,’ Meno replied: ‘I think you put it excellently, Socrates.’ (100a2-b1, tr. Lamb).

Could Meno face any of his friends, enemies, any of those who ever had heard his speeches on virtue, afraid that they might have read the Meno? The possibility of joining Cyrus’ expedition must have appeared to him to be a godsend.

And what about Xenophon? František Novotný, the Czech translator of the dialogue, says in his ‘Introduction’: ‘Xenophon’s description of Meno is so negative that it raises a question, whether it does not stem from personal enmity.’ In the Anabasis Xenophon does not shy of speaking freely of his encounters with those he despised or those who were hostile to him. In the case of Meno he does not mention a single personal encounter with him. He was simply curious what this Meno, so brilliantly depicted by Plato, was truly like. He therefore avoided any personal encounter with him that might bias his opinion of him. He wanted to be as objective as possible.