Plymouth (which covers the whole of the South-west of England) has 30 Scientologists (confirmed by the 2011 census and inside information). Only one or two of them can make substantial donations – and nowhere near the million pounds that the place cost.

That figure might seem impossibly low – but somewhere between a third and two-thirds of UK Scientologists are clustered around Saint Hill – if it were for the historical accident of Hubbard buying and moving into that place, I’m sure membership would be nominal.

The Plymouth Ideal Org building had been a Naval ‘refuge’ designed to give Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel a place to stay close to their ship and away from the fleshpots. When it was sold, it failed as a hotel because of it’s location (a ‘deprived’ area and right up against the dockyard wall). It had already started to rot, having been left empty for years.

When you subtract the money that went into organising the fund-raising ‘events’ the orgs are running hard just to pay the local taxes and the upkeep of the shop which is their present org. Plymouth Org could not have get enough to buy their own premises in a million years – they struggle with the rent on it, as it is.

The money comes from ‘super-regs’ who are given exclusive access to UK whales (e.g. John Mappin) and get a 15% commission for their efforts – and from stripping less prosperous people of all their assets. As the property market stands in this crowded country, if 10 Scientologists could be persuaded to re-mortgage modest houses, that would have bought the ideal org building.

There are complex property deals to be made, too. If a tract of land comes with a building purchase, it can be sold for development, and that money typically disappears in various devious ways – it does not go towards the org.

The CofS can’t open them here, any faster than they do. There’s one undergoing professional work at the moment. Another on the stocks (but in a terrible state) and Plymouth is the last in the queue, because there’s relatively little money, here and no land came with the building.

E-mails to NYPD Community Affairs & my Councilman. Tweeted to NYPD News.
As of early Tuesday morning, no response!

And for me, 2+2 does not equal 4.
What does this stuff even mean? If something’s a statement of fact, there’s no “for me” involved.

I have to say, I’ve loved reading all the comments I’ve gotten in this conversation and have enjoyed everyone’s views. But this comment blew me away. It’s really hard as an outsider looking in, to understand how simple tasks like sitting still and staring at someone and talking to inanimate objects could cause actual changes in a person’s emotional state. But you’ve illustrated exactly how that can (and does) happen and explains to me the WHYS that I’m always asking. Why don’t people go running for the hills when they see/hear this stuff? Why don’t they think it’s as crazy as I do? Why do they stay for so long? And a million more. Thank you for this.

I think a lot of what’s going on is just making the best of a probably chaotic and deteriorating situation that Scientology’s management is dealing with. They’re left with the orgs that don’t really have enough fundraising resources to get the job done on their own – but many of which nonetheless managed to get as far as buying empty old buildings that are an ongoing financial drain. Nonetheless, they’d probably prefer that the orgs continue to accumulate as much money as possible – though it might not even be keeping up with inflation in construction expenses – until it reaches a point where management is finally ready to step in and arrange some outside money to finally get the job done, which seems increasingly to be the pattern. They seem to have settled on a pace of opening about 4 of these a year, which gives them enough of a backlog to work through to keep everyone distracted and busy for the foreseeable future.

It looks to me more like crisis management than strategic planning. Though strategically, accumulating too much cash is actually a problem for them, particularly in the US and with the IRS, and their outside advisers have reportedly told them to have their assets in real estate for which they can claim some use related to their religious tax exemption.

A claim of reaching billions would have to encompass some web-based content from SuMP. Who knows what they have planned for their cable channel – if they’ve even figured it out.

They promised to deliver to billions. A members-only subscription service will fail to deliver that promise.