Thursday, February 15, 2007

Back to sleep deprivation techniques

For the last two nights the Metropolitan Police have been using some of their usual sleep deprivation techniques against us: alarms close-by (although this time none of them came from the medical centre across the road) and cars parking by our porch at all hours of the morning despite that both sides of the entire street were free for parking, with drivers and/or passengers banging doors.

The police are so desperate to shake our world – well, the one we have been reduced to – I wouldn’t be surprised if next they turn up and ask us to leave the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November (save a brief period in WLCHC rolling shelters), that they have received complaints. That is going to be a difficult one to pull though. We sleep at the side of an office building, and leave at 5.30am every morning – hardly the material for a complaint.

The Whitechapel Mission is the best place to measure the temperature, so to speak, of the whole situation. Yesterday morning it was piping hot ... we hadn’t even sat at a table and this homeless guy approaches holding some pastry he wants me to accept. When Declan declines the offer, he starts hurling abuse at him. We were actually close to walking out of the building, even though it was only 6.10am and we had nowhere to go. The last thing we are going to do is wait around for an assault. (On Sunday morning there were five different fights in the Whitechapel Mission within the space of a half an hour. As I mentioned in my last blog, the police were called after a guy had apparently been head butted.)

This lunch time, while I was selling The Big Issue at Liverpool Street station, this old homeless appeared out of nowhere and started selling some plants for £1 each to passers-by just two metres away from my pitch. He was there for 45 minutes and was not removed by the police for selling in the street illegally, despite that Liverpool Street is heavily patrolled by police … they are so concerned about a terrorist attack that there is not a single bin inside the station. Needless to say, I did little selling while he was there. Anyway, I have told Declan that if he is back tomorrow, I am going to Chelsea library to buy 30 of their 10p books and I am going to sell them beside this homeless man – obviously this is a spot where street traders need not to worry about Council approved vendor ID badges.

Two days ago we went to another journalist – do the Metropolitan Police think that we are going to take a trip to the River Thames and jump into it? In addition to pertinent documents in the case of Heavey v Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Declan again enclosed some pages from our NAC website so that the journalist can see where everything is emanating from. We know that when our story breaks domestically, we are going to get a tremendous amount of local support. After all, England is a secular country and most people have little time for religion. Add to that the serious threat that the Vatican and the Christian Right present for progress and secular values, and the best cards are with us.