Church and State blog: Back to sleep deprivation techniques

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Back to sleep deprivation techniques

For the last two nights the Metropolitan Police have been using some of their usual sleep deprivation techniques against us: alarms close-by (although this time none of them came from the medical centre across the road) and cars parking by our porch at all hours of the morning despite that both sides of the entire street were free for parking, with drivers and/or passengers banging doors.

The police are so desperate to shake our world – well, the one we have been reduced to – I wouldn’t be surprised if next they turn up and ask us to leave the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November (save a brief period in WLCHC rolling shelters), that they have received complaints. That is going to be a difficult one to pull though. We sleep at the side of an office building, and leave at 5.30am every morning – hardly the material for a complaint.

The Whitechapel Mission is the best place to measure the temperature, so to speak, of the whole situation. Yesterday morning it was piping hot ... we hadn’t even sat at a table and this homeless guy approaches holding some pastry he wants me to accept. When Declan declines the offer, he starts hurling abuse at him. We were actually close to walking out of the building, even though it was only 6.10am and we had nowhere to go. The last thing we are going to do is wait around for an assault. (On Sunday morning there were five different fights in the Whitechapel Mission within the space of a half an hour. As I mentioned in my last blog, the police were called after a guy had apparently been head butted.)

This lunch time, while I was selling The Big Issue at Liverpool Street station, this old homeless appeared out of nowhere and started selling some plants for £1 each to passers-by just two metres away from my pitch. He was there for 45 minutes and was not removed by the police for selling in the street illegally, despite that Liverpool Street is heavily patrolled by police … they are so concerned about a terrorist attack that there is not a single bin inside the station. Needless to say, I did little selling while he was there. Anyway, I have told Declan that if he is back tomorrow, I am going to Chelsea library to buy 30 of their 10p books and I am going to sell them beside this homeless man – obviously this is a spot where street traders need not to worry about Council approved vendor ID badges.

Two days ago we went to another journalist – do the Metropolitan Police think that we are going to take a trip to the River Thames and jump into it? In addition to pertinent documents in the case of Heavey v Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Declan again enclosed some pages from our NAC website so that the journalist can see where everything is emanating from. We know that when our story breaks domestically, we are going to get a tremendous amount of local support. After all, England is a secular country and most people have little time for religion. Add to that the serious threat that the Vatican and the Christian Right present for progress and secular values, and the best cards are with 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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Thursday, February 15, 2007

Back to sleep deprivation techniques

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