Church and State blog: Carrying around all our belongings

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Carrying around all our belongings

7.30am. We are at the Whitechapel Mission drinking some coffee and waiting for breakfast. I find myself listening to the weather forecast on Sky News as intently as if I was listening to the result of the general election. I can’t think of anything more important to a rough sleeper than the weather – unless, of course, you have an addiction.

A few days back, a Whitechapel Mission worker told us that in the 26 years he has worked in the mission, the low temperatures of the winter have killed thousands of homeless people and that the average life expectancy of the homeless is 44. However, I don’t think it is going to be an easy task trying to stop us from accessing one of the several rolling shelters that open yearly at the end of this month. These rolling shelters (luckily for us) accept self-referrals and therefore our St Mungo's CAT can’t stop us from accessing one.

Declan is desperate to get a haircut. We brought a hair clipper from Birmingham but Declan put it in the bin a few days ago. No point in carrying stuff you can’t use. Neither the Whitechapel Mission nor the Dellow Centre offers a hairdressing service. No wonder homeless people stick out, even in presentable clothes.

A group of polish rough sleepers we see in the Whitechapel Mission and the Dellow Centre are quite a resourceful bunch. They have their own hair clipper and yesterday started cutting each others’ hair in the Dellow Centre – despite it not being permitted – in the room used for watching TV or simply chilling out. Soon they had a queue of homeless guys, all wanting a haircut. By the time we realised what was going on, the queue was too big for Declan to join. If it wasn’t because homelessness is not a laughing matter, I would have found the spectacle hilarious. It shows how many homeless people are desperate to be discreet in public places like libraries, pubs, shops etc, and pass as normal people.

Declan and I are still carrying all our belongings along with us, including two sleeping bags. This is because neither our St Mungo’s CAT nor the Missionaries of Charity are willing to provide us with shelter for the night and therefore there is nowhere we can leave our stuff. That, of course, is a powerful reason to keep us sleeping rough. Our movements are seriously restricted and predictable – making surveillance extremely easy.

All the food handouts take place in central London (Trafalgar Square and Lincoln’s Inn, among others) but they are inaccessible to us. So, we keep the cheese sandwiches that the Dellow Centre gives us for breakfast until lunch, and then buy something for £1.50 between the two of us in Sainsbury for dinner. When in the library, we have to tidy all our things every time we have to move from one floor to another to use a booked computer.

Our day is very simple: early morning in the Whitechapel Mission for coffee and breakfast, from 9.30am to 11.30am in the Dellow Centre for another breakfast and shower, then it is to the library to type my blog into Microsoft Word, then we walk to Crisis where we can use a computer and have some coffee. Between 7.00pm and 8.00pm we go to Sainsbury to buy our dinner. Our last stop before returning to our patch is an internet café to update my blog.

12.30pm. Update

Before leaving the Dellow Centre at 11.30am, Declan asked at reception if the centre would put in another referral on our behalf to be visited again by our St Mungo’s CAT. He was informed that our case was raised by the centre in discussions with our CAT yesterday and that the centre would not refer us again because the CAT had said that there is nothing they can do for us. It appears our St Mungo’s CAT did not provide any reasons. The centre then confirmed that the Missionaries of Charity are the only ones accepting self-referrals. The centre could not confirm, however, that the rolling shelters that commence every year at the end of this month will also accept self-referrals.

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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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Carrying around all our belongings

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