Church and State blog: Scabies and the WLCHC

Monday, January 22, 2007

Scabies and the WLCHC

The director of the West London Churches Homeless Concern (WLCHC) Michael Athienites has put a message on Declan’s mobile today to the effect that although he is in and out of his office today he is hoping that Declan and he can talk.

Well, that is nice. Declan is going to be able to further inform him that the same scabies sufferer that scratched his back over Declan on Thursday unceremoniously bedded down next to Declan on Saturday night, with 30 seconds to lights out. He is also going to ask Athienites which of the two instructions the WLCHC homeless were given about two weeks ago should we follow in the event we catch the highly communicable mite: burn all our clothes or boil them.

Understandably, we were not overjoyed when we were given either of these two instructions. Declan (while still recovering from his pneumonia) and I spent most of the holiday period in December and early January selling The Big Issue in Covent Garden so that we could buy the clothes that the Dellow Centre and the Whitechapel Mission haven’t provided us with – but provide the rest of the homeless that attend their respective establishments.

Last night in the Sunday rolling centre at Barnes Methodist Church, Station Road, two of the homeless women I sleep with let me have a piece of their mind, although not in actual words. In the middle of the night, I woke up to find that one had moved her chair - and herself - so close to me that I couldn’t stretch my legs without bumping into the chair. The other woman had done a 40 degree right-turn and had her feet right up against my stomach. It just so happened that I had taken precautions before I went to sleep and had left some space between myself and the wall I was sleeping alongside, which I was able to use to move away from the two of them.

Because our savings have been somewhat depleted as result of Declan’s dealings with the Civil Appeals Office in the Royal Courts of Justice (more about that in the next blog), we have been selling The Big Issue at our two pitches outside Liverpool Street station between 7.30am and 9.00am, in addition to the other hours we usually sell it at. We don’t sell much so early, but £8-10 when you are homeless means a lot.

This morning after 9.00am Declan went to the Whitechapel Mission to wash while I went to the Dellow Centre to do a small laundry and have a shower. Things are even worse there than before. I waited for 20 minutes in the queue in the freezing cold and rain, when there was only 11 homeless in front me when I first arrived. I wasn’t able to do a laundry – maybe tomorrow, I was told – and the TV has been covered with a blanket and turned around so that it now faces the wall. I heard a volunteer say to one of the homeless, who was inquiring as to why he couldn’t watch TV anymore, that the management doesn’t want the TV on … management being, of course, the Sisters of Mercy.

It is an indictment, I think, of how little Tower Hamlets Council is doing to improve the conditions for homeless people that we have to queue for so long, in the heart of winter, for the little and erratic services we get from the Dellow Centre.

No comments:

Post a Comment

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

Monday, January 22, 2007

Scabies and the WLCHC

No comments:

About me

My Picks

Church and State

Blog Archive