Church and State blog: Third visit by the police

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Third visit by the police

Last night, Declan and I were visited by the police a third time. Our NAC website was also suspended yesterday, so we were not expecting a quiet night. And we sure didn't get one!

We arrived at our patch - a porch that serves as a side entrance to an office building - at about 11.00pm. It was like a disco! The whole building was lit up; and the porch alarm flashed a blue light without a sound. We had a bet. Declan reckoned we were going to be visited by the police. I reckoned we were being threatened by a late-working employee who doesn't like homeless people sleeping on the porch of the building in which he works, and that it was his intention to summon the police if we didn't move on promptly.

Plausible as my theory was, Declan was right. Between 11.00pm and 11.45pm, a police car passed us six times. The fourth time it actually stopped for a few seconds. We were then no sooner in our sleeping bags than a police officer turned up on foot. He points his baton at the alarm and asks what is the story with the flashing blue light. Then it was question time. Have either of us ever been arrested? Are we leaving the spot clean in the mornings? Are we having any problems with people from the buildings around? How long have we been sleeping rough on the porch? These were just some of the questions. Before leaving, he asked to see the tickets the two police officers issued us last Saturday night.

At about 4.00am, the same police officer returned. This time he is in a police car. He shouts to wake us up and asks if anybody from the building has left. I say no and he leaves, but only to return a few seconds later. When I look up, he is talking from inside the police car with a security guard – both looking with great interest at the flashing blue light. Then they leave. Declan slept through all of this bit! I had to tell him about it in the morning.

So although Declan won the bet (now I have to give him my next free McDonald's coffee), my theory stands for another night. We are expecting an increase in police activity as we approach our High Court judicial review renewal hearing against the Department for Work and Pensions on 11 December. This follows the termination of our unemployment benefit from 19 September because Declan did not sign on two days before he was actually scheduled to do so.

The Whitechapel Mission didn't have any clothes to give me today either; and this, despite the fact that yesterday was women's clothes day. I was told next Wednesday it will be women's clothes as usual.

Today at 1.30pm, when I accessed a computer in our local library, I found an email from Bravehost about the suspension of our NAC website yesterday. It was a problem with their servers, they say. That cuts no ice with me. How can a problem with servers result in a suspended website? Anyway, NAC is back!

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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Thursday, November 16, 2006

Third visit by the police

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