Church and State blog: I am assaulted on our patch

Saturday, November 18, 2006

I am assaulted on our patch

Despite Declan's phone call to St Mungo's CEO Charles Fraser's office yesterday (he left a message for Fraser on his PA's voice mail), no St Mungo's Contact and Assessment Team (CAT) visited us last night with the referral we need to get into a night shelter. Rather, I was assaulted on our patch whilst I was sleeping.

Early in the morning I am woken by some guy shouting aggressively some distance from our patch. As the shouting becomes louder, I know he is heading towards us. (Our patch is located down a relatively quiet, well lit side street. It is a porch that serves as a side entrance to an office building, and is also well lit by hall lights that shine through a glass door. Anyone passing by can see us, even in a car.)

I stick my head out of the sleeping bag and open my eyes. Declan does the same. As the guy walks past, I can see he is stocky, in his thirties, and shouting at a mobile phone. He keeps walking down the street and Declan and I go back to sleep. However, about an hour later I hear the same voice, still shouting – although not as loud. Then, all of a sudden, he sits on the right hand side of my face. (I am half-asleep on the outside, on my back). By the time I realise what has happened, the guy is gone. There is no shouting, no noise, just silence.

The guy actually had to negotiate two steps before sitting on my face; meaning, as far as I am concerned, that he knew exactly what he was doing. My head was well inside my sleeping bag (protected by it), but if he had got his landing wrong, he could have done me quite a bit of damage - either to my nose or my neck. The incident woke Declan. He turned around on the inside (where he protects all our belongs) to ask me if something had happened.

Declan also left his glasses in the Idea Store Whitechapel library yesterday afternoon - just before it closed at 6pm. We were convinced that if the staff had found them, he would never get them back. Ever since our first day at this library, staff and security guards have let us know what kind of instructions they are getting. For example, when a member of staff books us a computer, it's not uncommon to find that we can't use it because the mouse or something is not working; or we are given a computer on floors other than where we are so that we end up having to negotiate all four floors with all our belongings before the day is out. Yesterday at 5.30pm we were told to remove our bags from the spot we had them because they were blocking the heat. After we removed the bags, I put my hand on where the heat was supposed to be coming from and there was nothing. There wasn't even air!

So when Declan lost his glasses, we were convinced they were gone and that he would have to go to the Whitechapel Mission to see if there would be any way he could get another pair. I just can't imagine the obstacles we would have encountered. I can't even get a pair of jeans from the Mission; and, according to their website, they run "the largest clothing store in London available to the homeless".

However, we were lucky. Declan got into the library as soon as it opened at 9.00am, and went straight to the 2nd floor. There, on the corner of the table, were his glasses. The staff hadn't spotted them at all! To celebrate the happy ending, we bought a few donuts in Sainsburys and took a walk around the nearby market.

Tower Hamlets has the highest Muslim population in the country, 36.4%. The new London Muslim Centre, an extension to the East London Mosque, can hold 10,000 worshippers. In Idea Store Whitechapel, 95% of the staff are Muslim; almost a whole floor is dedicated to the Islamic religion; and when you fill in their membership form under "Ethnicity", white is the last option. Not that I have much of problem with it, really. I quite like all the Muslim stalls along the Whitechapel Road, where you can buy cheap stuff (notwithstanding that most things don't have a price tag).

My only point is that the Islamic religion is becoming a force in the UK. And if Muslim leaders are to get the same special treatment as their Christian counterparts, homeless organisations may find a shift in the reasons for homelessness. They may find that the reason some homeless provide for their predicament is that they are no more than campaigning for secular government. I'm being facetious, of course. But only partly.

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.

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

I am assaulted on our patch

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