Church and State blog: Will there be a police visit tonight?

Monday, February 12, 2007

Will there be a police visit tonight?

Yesterday morning the Whitechapel Mission became the scene of five different fights – all of them in the space of a half an hour. The first was between two women; the second between two Poles. We didn’t see number three, four or five because Declan thought it more appropriate to drink our coffee outside the building. A homeless guy that left the establishment by the back door fed us the news.

The eventful breakfast finished with the arrival of the police – we did see that bit – after apparently somebody got head butted. This morning another fight was averted after one homeless guy manhandled a troublemaker out of the mission, the floor staff happy to remain in the kitchen. The troublemaker later turned up in the Dellow Centre to be promptly shown the front gate by the cook … the Sisters of Mercy don’t tolerate aggressive behaviour even if they themselves are infamous for it.

In relation to the fights that took place yesterday in the Whitechapel Mission, one of the workers who was unable to establish order was in his element when a half an hour earlier he gave me one of the smallest towels he had and a sachet of conditioner instead of the shampoo I asked for.

Anyway, we don’t know if there were more fights in the mission this morning because we left at 7.30am for the Dellow Centre so we could do a laundry. Although the Dellow Centre starts letting people in after 9.15am, if we don’t stand outside their gates well before 8.00am we run the risk there will be no washing machines left … that didn’t happen at the beginning though.

With this arrangement we only do one laundry a week. You would think that one laundry involving one dryer is a pretty straight forward business: you press one button and then another until the clothes are dry. Not in the Dellow Centre. Last Monday, the worker in charge of laundry wanted Declan to take our clothes out of the dryer despite the fact that they were not dry, and when Declan wouldn’t do that we returned to discover that the dryer had been turned off unknown to us … this morning Declan stood beside the dryer the whole time, although the same worker didn’t seem too happy about it.

In relation to me and the Dellow Centre, well it is more or less the usual, except that now I have to also deal with some women that are coming from the women’s hostel down the road from the centre. At 9.15am one of them almost ran over me, she was that desperate to enter the building before me, despite that I had been there for an hour and 15 minutes before her. Then in the women’s toilet, they took turns showering in the only shower available – why would they do that when they have showers available in their hostel? I was actually lucky to sneak a quick shower almost at the last moment. Like the men’s Booth House, this hostel is also run by the Salvation Army for those who are in receipt of benefits, which we are not. But even if it was free, after my experience with some of these women, they would have to bring me in a straightjacket for me to even put my foot in it.

In the past when the Dellow Centre and the Whitechapel Mission were going at us that extra mile it usually meant that the Metropolitan Police would pay us a visit at night – they have visited our patch in Whitechapel four times so far. I mean we are the ideal homeless: we don’t drink or smoke; we leave the porch we sleep in clean; and we leave at 5.30am. What reason have the police to harass 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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Monday, February 12, 2007

Will there be a police visit tonight?

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