Church and State blog: The singing bird

Monday, November 06, 2006

The singing bird

This morning I was woken by Declan at 3.50am. I was actually deep in sleep when I felt his hand and heard his voice. For a split second I didn't know he was calling me to get up. That is of course very good news – I am getting some quality rest. Still no Contact and Assessment Team (CAT).

Later this morning we are going to the Dellow Centre to ask for a sleeping bag for Declan. There shouldn't be a problem – it was the Dellow that gave me the military sleeping bag I've got. The Catholic Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow is a modern and spacious place, with big and formidable front gates. You don't get to just walk in, there's an intercom check first. From 9.15am to 11.30am registered rough sleepers can get some free food, watch a bit of TV if they want, or just hang about in the courtyard sipping coffee or tea. The centre closes at 11.30am and opens again for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Over the weekend, it's closed. We don't know yet where the local homeless get their lunch or dinner from Monday to Friday that does not involve a walk for us of hours.

While I was putting stuff into our rucksacks back at the porch, Declan was moving the cardboard to a nearby skip. Having finished my own task, I walked the remaining cardboard to the corner for him. Suddenly a bird broke the silence with a short song. I was quite amazed. All there was in front of me were two young trees in the middle of a small square in a built up business area. Nobody could say this bird wouldn't have had an easier time in one of the city parks. It actually gave me hope. No bird under the weather there! And his situation wasn't that much different from our own. He has to find food, maybe some water, and has to be warm at night – and in adversity.

Declan and I were making our way to the Whitechapel Mission when we took an underground walkway to cross the main road. There, off the walkway below ground, was a patch that some homeless guys had made for themselves. Declan doubled back to check it out and then told me to see it for myself. It was definitely a smart patch, with their beds protected by a wall of well-placed cardboard. And then I saw a small teddy bear on their make-shift table beside a couple of apples!

I immediately saw connection between this small group of homeless guys and the bird. All were in a bad place but getting something out of it. These guys were not stupid and you don't get to keep a teddy bear like that unless there's hope. And the same with the bird – he doesn't sing at 4.00am if he doesn't have hope. But that hope is only possible in these sort of circumstances with resilience. Then I knew I had it: the magic word for us on the street is resilience. We must make the best of our situation, learn to be resilient; think resilience, all the time, in every circumstance. We will then have hope.

Not only are we not going to be broken, but if it is decided that no CAT will ever come to visit us, let them. They are not going to break us.

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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Monday, November 06, 2006

The singing bird

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