Church and State blog: In danger

Saturday, October 20, 2007

In danger

On Friday 12 October, I narrowly avoided again being assaulted in the porch we sleep in at night. This time Declan woke to noise only to find a guy with one foot in the porch coming straight for me (I sleep on the outside so that Declan can sleep with our well-tied bags). Declan actually stopped the guy from stepping on me with an outstretched hand, shouting "What do you think you are doing?" To this day we still do not know if this guy had intended standing on me, probably breaking a few of my ribs. Then a few hours later Declan had to sit up again to another guy who also wanted to have a go at me. Oh I forgot, the next morning we woke up to an empty can of Red Bull, only to discover that someone had thrown the contents of it all over our sleeping bags and ground sheet.

Friday appears to be the day of the week when I am particularly at risk. The last time I was assaulted – a guy that didn't like "f****** tramps" repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders – was on 21 September, er, a Friday. And on 4 May, oh another Friday, I was assaulted twice (a guy dragged me out of the porch by the ankles and a few hours later I was kicked in the back). And although not just directed at me, on 7 September (yet another Friday) somebody threw a glass of beer all over us as we slept.

So mindful that the next Friday (that is, yesterday) Declan might not wake up in time to prevent me ending up with something fractured, both he and I spent all week working non-stop on a petition to the United Nations in relation to human embryonic stem cell research. This petition was posted yesterday evening in one of these online petition sites and we will next be contacting prominent scientists and academics who might be interested in the petition's proposal, and perhaps put their name to it. (Last night in the porch was pretty quiet: with the exception of a guy who at 5.00am on the button – the time we get up Monday to Friday – passed by the porch roaring something at us, there was nothing else. Even the porch's floor, which I have to clean with water and paper every single night, was clean.)

On Thursday evening Declan's pitch – where he sells The Big Issue magazine – was taken over again by The London Paper, a free tabloid owned by News International of Rupert Murdoch's New York-based News Corporation. Under the Big Issue code of conduct a vendor can't argue with another street trader over pitches, so Declan had to leave. We didn't sell much last week and now find ourselves with 15 magazines which we bought but were unable to sell. Oh, well.

Declan phoned the Big Issue and also emailed the Big Issue outreach manager. There isn’t much more Declan can do, having been told by John Bird, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue, in a letter of 10 September, to more or less stop bothering him. This is his email on Thursday:

Subject: The London Paper

Dear Paul

Further to the graphic telephone message I left for you this evening with David (surname unknown), please find below copy of my email of even date to the Executive Chairman of News International, Mr Les Hinton, regarding the takeover again this afternoon of my Big Issue pitch by The London Paper.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

------------------

Dear Mr Hinton,

I refer further to my letter and enclosure to you of 31 July 2007, a copy of which I sent by fax and registered post to the Chairman & CEO of News Corporation, Mr Rupert Murdoch, and wish to confirm the takeover again this afternoon of my Big Issue pitch outside McDonald's on Liverpool Street by The London Paper.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

cc Mr Nick Hallett, Distribution Manager, The London Paper
Mr Paul Joseph, Outreach Manager, The Big Issue

The main problem with selling so few magazines is that this weekend we can't for example put together a few pounds to buy food for Saturday and Sunday, never mind a cup of coffee. I wanted to spend a couple of hours begging on Friday afternoon – yes, I am afraid that on top of everything else, I also have to beg people for some change, which is illegal by the way – but we realised that it was more important to get the petition posted before going back to the porch for the night. Last night when we were walking to the porch we were both so hungry we decided to walk back to Sainsbury and buy a cheap packet of biscuits for 33p.

The subject-matter of the weather is currently on the verge of replacing the hunger though. According to the Met Office’s website, next week temperatures will be “below normal with overnight frosts”. Temperatures now don’t go above 12C or 13C, which would be fine if a person wears a jumper, a coat and a cap. Admittedly I do have an autumn coat, which was given to me by a customer who normally buys the Big Issue from me, but underneath all I have to wear are light long sleeve tops. When I asked the Sisters of Mercy nun who is in charge of clothes in the Dellow Centre (the only centre we can now attend for showers, coffee and a cereal breakfast since the minister’s wife of the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission barred us on 18 June due to concerns about our safety) for warm clothes on 8 October, she didn’t even give me a cap.

So my feet are usually cold, and so are my ears (I found a scarf a few days ago) and when I stand in my Big Issue pitch, especially between 7.30am and 9.10am, I totally understand the meaning of the expression “cold to the bone”. At night I am also cold and would be colder if Declan hadn’t found me a very big plastic sheet, which I use to wrap around my sleeping bag once I am inside it – I have to punch holes in it to try and stop my sleeping bag from getting damp, defeating the purpose, I suppose. If we ever get off the streets, and it won’t be thanks to the helping hands of those organisations whose purpose it is to help homeless people with whatever they need, Declan and I intend working for NAC 24/7, if only to avoid being put back on the streets.

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, October 20, 2007

In danger

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