Scientology should not get rate break - Birmingham Councillor (Update)

Charities - legitimate charities - can have big incomes as long as they spend the cash for the charity's purpose.

they're not allowed to hoard cash in bank though

or sepnd it on lavish gifts for TC, buy hand tailored suits, custome "rugs" for the mulligan or live off it in a lavish life style?

right. lavish gifts for Top Cat are right out.

Any Brumanons contacting local Brum press with this?

BrumAnon is dead. It's at the stage where if you think something needs doing, do it yourself or nothing will happen. That probably goes for most other UK locales as well.

Re: press just be aware that this isn't a straightforward case of "Birmingham City Council tells cult to GTFO." A number of other organisations were also refused discretionary rate relief for the same reason (available finance), which possibly makes it less of an attractive story (details are up-thread and in the linked documents). But IMO given the splash made last year with the issue nationally, it does definitely deserve a follow-up in the national press. There was a little mention in the Guardian in April (again, posted previously), but so far that's it.

"...if you think something needs doing, do it yourself or nothing will happen."
It has ever been thus. There is a serious lack of minions here.

I haven't had time to go through the dox in depth, but I notice that in section 11 they claim the "Church of Scientology of Birmingham is a branch of Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc (A charity registered as an incorporated association in South Australia)". We know that this isn't the case and that the CoS has specifically refuted it themselves, despite claiming the same thing in accounts filed with Companies House.

The rest is probably no less mendacious (e.g. the charging of fees). It'd be great if we can collectively pick all this stuff apart (and analyse the financial statements), since there's a chance the Council will listen to a complaint. To quote their discretionary rate relief policy (PDF),

This is what I'm referring to, from http://forums.whyweprotest.net/threads/is-cosreci-a-charity-in-the-uk.60130/:

To make them more accessible, here are the financial statements from the application PDF.

Title page
Contents

Note the "gifts from individuals for new building". I wonder what sort of loans they got to raise that money if it had no security behind it and was just "gifts". How can you get a "loan" to give somebody a "gift"? Also, who does the building belong to if it is on the Scn books? I thought another company owned it.

The 'Out Exchange policies' works one way only...

Well, surely the criminal organization known as the "church " of $cientology wouldn't coach its members on how to obtain loans under false pretenses? Just because they've been caught once (in Poole) doesn't mean they'd do it again?? Inconceivable!!!

Best regards
Jens

COSRECI has owned Pitmaston since 25th June 2009, according to the Land Registry.
Prior to that (from 7th September 2007), it was owned by Woodview Properties Limited, a subsidiary of COSRECI according to the recently-released 2008 audited accounts.

There's much more to it though, see this and other related threads. It really needs a decent summary, but in brief: it was bought by another Scientology-controlled company (Centrepoint Ltd) for "office use", then sold on the same day to Woodview. The CoS denied owning it, made all kinds of dubious statements to councillors and local press, tried soliciting donations from a local school, and almost 4 years on are still regging to complete their "ideal org crusade".

I don't see how it counts as "Income" if the money was collected to buy a new building and it was not yet bought. I think they miscategorised that money on their accounts and lost their rates relief because of it.

I hope it goes the Northumbria Ideal Org route. Has anyone gone there to photograph it recently?

Maybe, but they were also showing accumulated funds of over £1million in both years. Arguably they should've been providing the accounts for COSRECI rather than the Birmingham Org 'branch' anyway, since COSRECI was the legal entity actually applying for the relief, and is in fact the nominal rate payer.

I'm not sure the figure makes a lot of sense anyway. I guess it simply refers to money received via a gift form like this one:

However, the fundraising 'honour roll' was leaked with the above form and a newsletter. As of around August 2008, based on this we estimated they'd accumulated around £1.3 million in donations, obviously far more than the 2008 'gift' income on the statement despite being only 8 months into the year. I suppose the roll includes money from other sources.

In April a local mentioned that the building and grounds were looking neglected, and it's not the first time I've heard that either. They may have tidied up lately - last month the CoS had an OT activity day which was apparently due to include "Pitmaston gardening and renos". Because, you know, nothing says you're OT like having to rally round to spend a couple of hours doing what would be routine if you had any sense of civic pride or responsibility. I haven't seen any recent photos.

Anyway, I think they actually intend to occupy Pitmaston one day, pending money for the refurb and a possible change of use along with any required planning permission. As such I don't expect we'll see anything like the extreme level of neglect that's going on in Gateshead.

Sorry, this is the correct link for the honour roll: http://i34.tinypic.com/9ljzbk.png

Why is it not "Income"? If not then what is it?

A planning permission proposal, you say? Which has to have approval from the local community and the councillors? Cue Anonymous!

It's not "neglect", in the usual meaning of the word, I was hoping for. I was hoping for "neglect" along the Northumbria Ideal Org lines.

There's an interesting write-up of this on www.scientology-cult.com by T.Paine (Haydn James), who with his wife ran the Org through the '90s until 2005.

See http://www.scientology-cult.com/t-paine/475-the-fall-of-birmingham-org.html.

http://www.scientology-cult.com/t-paine/475-the-fall-of-birmingham-org.html

Rate relief:

On the idle org:

He claims the income from services in 2004 was £650k, compared to the £170k or so shown in the dox for 2008/9. More at the link.

^^^
Good news about staff attrition.

If somebody is being "professionally" audited for an extended period then they will be paying £1000 per day so that £650K is just the equivalent of 2 people on average being intensively audited by this <ahem> charity.

A big Thank You and a round of applause to David Miscavige for wrecking Birmingham bOrg for us

This whole story just makes me happy. As does the followup posted.

Best regards
Jens

Not a religion. Excellent OP!

More like a serious lack of shit giving and time. Jobs, education and general moving on due to age are the reasons. Some of us still see each other, but to be honest the ground level street work was done ages ago. Brum has been fairly well innoculated. Anything else...just flogging a dead horse really.

T Paine is a Scientologist? Wow that sucks.

This was all compiled in research from 2010 confirming the relation of entity X

Lacking dox of Centrepoint ltd.