Saturday, April 07, 2012

Our case against the Home Secretary for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, had Kidd Rapinet Solicitors serve us with a Section 21 Notice requiring possession of our flat by the 26th of last month despite that she does not have a valid signed Tenancy Agreement (archived here). According to legal websites, it can take between 8 weeks and 12 weeks, a few weeks longer if the property is in London, to get the court to issue a possession order. If there is a problem with documentation, it takes longer because the landlord cannot use the accelerated possession procedure. It remains to be seen how long it will take the court to move on us: in this email today, Declan spells out our case against the Home Secretary for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:

Click to enlarge
Belinda is not your usual 60+ landlady. I cannot list all the causes she is involved in, there are so many (see blog of 14 January for a photograph of Belinda speaking against child abuse in Trafalgar Square last June). She is active in groups dealing with issues as far-ranging as abuse in the church and anti-war activism, and has been involved with the Iranian community for more than 20 years; she is even described as a "noted philanthropist". As Declan points out in the email above, MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived for a couple of years in one of the rooms below us, until 2007. It is indeed unfortunate that Shayler then declared he was the Messiah and became a squatter. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Belinda and Shayler talking about 9/11 gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with Shayler explicitly shows he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007.
BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)

According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair". In 2002, he was jailed for seven weeks for breaking the Official Secrets Act.