Fourth visit by the police. High Court hearing tomorrow

I haven't posted anything in the last week, the reason being that Declan and I have been training to become authorised vendors of The Big Issue magazine. The Big Issue was launched in 1991 and is a well-known publication. The inspiration for the magazine came from Street News, a newspaper sold by homeless people in New York, which Gordon Roddick of The Body Shop saw on a visit to the States. It is sold by the homeless on the streets of numerous cities – not anywhere, but at specific locations known as vendor pitches. In London, homeless people train for four days in Covent Garden (an initial contact and assessment period). It is a lovely and trendy area in which to work, after which you become an authorised vendor and a pitch is registered to you in your area of choice. An authorised vendor can step into somebody else's pitch anywhere, but only if the pitch is empty.

The Big Issue is sold for £1.50 – the vendor pays 70p for it – although most people give £2.00. There are basically two approaches a homeless vendor uses to sell the magazine: passive and/or active. With the passive approach, the vendor holds a few magazines as visibly as possible for people to see as they pass by. This approach works, but only to a limited extent. The other approach, being active, is more rewarding and faster. The vendor asks people directly if they would buy the magazine. And I mean asking all the time, saying the words "The Big Issue" literally hundreds of times – there are homeless vendors that are exceptionally good at it.

So who buys The Big Issue? Chinese people never buy it, and I mean never – they totally ignore you. Muslims, men and women, don't buy it either. Very posh people don't buy it – a vendor told me it's because they look down on us. The Spanish fare the worse; and there are plenty of them to be found in Covent Garden, as well as around Liverpool Street Station where we are authorised to sell at two pitches. They actually find it quite impossible to pass you without giving some attitude – even their children.

Declan and I have come to the conclusion that the Spanish attitude towards the homeless has to do with the infuence of the Catholic Church in Spanish life. I am from Madrid, and I can say that the Spanish are brought up in a thicket of dogmas and prejudices and are more rigid in their judgements. To those who would say that the Spanish are not that religious – given that Spain allows for gay marriage, etc – I would respond that the Church can still draw millions to a Papal mass or to a march on the streets of Madrid to protest against government plans to do away with the likes of religious education in public schools. The profile that most fits those who have bought The Big Issue from us are white Londoners, probably more women than men, and educated. Declan thinks this is because these people are more acquainted with the advances of a modern age. Anyway, many people that don't buy the magazine are friendly - the vast majority being white Londoners.

To buy The Big Issue is a good thing because it allows the homeless vendor to make some money and therefore to have some degree of independence. Declan and I have been able to pay for weekly bus tickets (£27.00 for two), some cheap winter clothes and food. For example, in St Martin's there is the small charge of £1.50 for a full meal including desert – that is £10.50 weekly for one person. How are you supposed to pay it if you are not earning some money?

Homeless people that have been on the streets for many years are at a particular disadvantage and have no means whatsoever of earning some money legally other than selling The Big Issue (begging is illegal in the UK). This especially applies because virtually all of them are missing a large number of teeth. NHS dentists are quick to remove the teeth of the poor and the-down-and-out!

Before we started selling The Big Issue the Metropolitan Police had us exactly where they wanted us: we were unable to get any free food after 11.30am, were not getting clothes from either the Dellow Centre or the Whitechapel Mission, and had no money to pay for transport. We guess the money that we are earning selling The Big Issue has basically spoilt their fun – but there's been little or no let up from them, quite the contrary!

For the last week at our patch we have been subjected to their sleep deprivation techniques (notwithstanding that we sleep in a quiet business area): alarms from up and down the street; cars parking alongside us at all hours of the morning with music blasting (in one instance with the passenger door wide open); people talking loudly beside us at all sorts of strange hours; and police cars frequently driving by us. Three days ago a guy came to us from the medical centre across the road - they have a particularly loud alarm - to ask us if we had seen who took the milk that had been left outside their main door ...

Last night the the police dropped in on us a fourth time. I was getting ready to put on my seven pairs of socks (two of them woollen) when an unmarked police car stopped by our patch and out popped a policeman. The questions started again: how long have we been sleeping there, what are our plans, etc. We have our High Court hearing against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) tomorrow morning at 10.30am and we know the officer is questioning us because of it. His last word to Declan is "see you around", after Declan had informed him we are looking for a mandatory order that has the DWP reinstate our claim for unemployment benefit, pay us the arrears they owe us (£1,081.20 as of tomorrow), and transfer our claim from Birmingham to our local jobcentre in Tower Hamlets here in London.

It seems to us that Judge Walker – the third High Court judge so far involved in these proceedings – has no intention of issuing such an order. We then will only have two ways to go, either he gives us permission to apply for a judicial review or we appeal his decision to refuse us the permission. Either way, I will blogging what happens tomorrow.