Church and State blog: What are you going to do about it?

Monday, November 20, 2006

What are you going to do about it?

Another quiet night. However, it was very cold and rainy and I kept waking up with pain in my legs from the cold. I don't have any more clothes to wear, but, even if I had, I wouldn't be able to put them on. I can hardly move in my sleeping bag! Declan also brings lots of cardboard from a nearby skip. We're still waiting for the night when all the cardboard has been removed and he has go for a long walk to find something to buffer us from the cold of the hard tiled floor of the porch we bed down in every night.

This morning Declan insisted we do a laundry. I wasn't that keen because it meant leaving the Whitechapel Mission before 8.30am (breakfast starts at 8.00am) to be the first in the queue at the Dellow Centre when it opens at 9.15am. Lately, we have experienced difficulties doing our laundry. Either the washing machines are booked or we have to wait until 10.45am. When it is the latter, we can't wash our jeans and have to return to the centre to collect the washing from the dryer at 1.15pm. That's pretty much half the the day shot and lots of walking... for no washed jeans!

While waiting outside the Dellow Centre, there was a homeless woman in the queue with a dog. (There is a homeless guy in the Whitechapel Mission who also has a dog. The other day somebody untied it from where it was and there was almost a fight.) The dog in the queue reminded me of the dog we had for over 9 years. We were forced to put him down two days before leaving Dublin for England. It was made very clear to us that he was never going to survive in this country.

This morning Declan spoke to Linda Lockyer, PA to St Mungo's CEO Charles Fraser. Further to the message he left for Fraser on her voice mail last Friday, Declan informed her that: I was assaulted in the early hours of Saturday morning where we bed down at night; that it's getting cold and rainy; and that having been sleeping rough for over two weeks now, we would appreciate a visit from our St Mungo's Contact and Assessment Team (CAT) for the referral we need to get into a night shelter. Her response was "OK". Having actually spoken to Fraser's PA, it remains to be seen how he will deal with us now, if at all.

The Missionaries of Charity are the only ones that do self-referral in London. We are not phoning them again until we have saved £10.00. The last time Declan phoned them was on 15 November. Not only did we spend an additional £2.50 phoning their two night shelters, but when Declan phoned back the female night shelter to establish when was the latest time they could meet me (both shelters had confirmed we each had a place), a nun told him there was no vacancy. We are concerned the next time they are going to have us travelling across London (each to different locations), only for one of us to be turned away at the door. These nuns are behaving very much like, "What are you going to do about it?" Perhaps they feel very confident that they can get away with just about anything on the back of their founder.

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 20, 2006

What are you going to do about it?

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