Church and State blog: Surviving

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Surviving

Cold again. Declan doesn't have a military sleeping bag like mine and woke up at 3.30am, freezing and unable to get back to sleep. I, on the other hand, was (relatively) comfortable and warm. I could have slept until 5.00am. To sleep, I now get into the sleeping bag wearing double socks, cheap thermal long johns, all my clothes, coat, cap and gloves. I find it quite reassuring that we are quickly adapting to the elements. Declan must get a military sleeping bag, though. Also, we must decide what to do when the weather gets colder or it starts raining. Declan must avoid pneumonia at all costs. I should mention that no Contact and Assessment Team (CAT) came by. Also no police car!

As we made our way to the Whitechapel Mission yesterday, I found myself measuring places against each other as to which one would be the warmer inside. My favourite is the London Muslim Centre ... so big, new, empty and bright in the early hours of the morning.

I am now sitting in my sleeping bag on cardboard Declan got nearby, writing this blog and waiting to make our way to the Mission, which opens at 6.00am. Declan is fast asleep in my sleeping bag. There are some rough sleepers (Poles) bedded down around the corner. There seems to be quite a number of Eastern Europeans living on the streets. This government is very keen to have cheap labour from Eastern Europe but these people have few rights (if any) and often find themselves laid off by their employers.

Finding free food during the weekend hasn't turned out to be a walk in the park. Few day centres are open, and those that are open are too far away. Yesterday we walked all the way to London Bridge to get some free lunch before 1.30pm; which turned out to be some mash potatoes, mash meat and beans. There and back we must have walked three hours with our rucksacks and sleeping bags. It was hardly worth it. We were not in the mood to walk later in the afternoon an even longer distance to get some sandwiches for the night. Instead, we went to the library. We bought a roll, a tin of sardines and two bananas in Sainsbury's for a night meal, which we ate nearby.

Having uploaded our blog post in an internet café, we were back at our patch by 11.00pm with nothing to do except protect ourselves against the wind and cold. Being rough sleepers makes everything a lot harder because we are constantly walking from one place to another with everything we own, being challenged by the elements. We're not at all surprised rough sleepers are generally so worn out and sick. I have to stop myself thinking about it when I pass an empty public building. Anything is better than the open cold and concrete.

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.

Church and State blog

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Surviving

About me

My Picks

Church and State

Blog Archive