Church and State blog: Letter to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Big Issue Foundation

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Letter to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Big Issue Foundation

Yesterday Declan sent a registered letter to who we thought was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Big Issue Foundation (and Chief Executive of The Charity Bank), Malcolm Hayday. The Big Issue Foundation’s “Who’s Who” webpage is in need of an update: Hayday emailed Declan at 10.00am this morning stating: “I am no longer Chairman of the Foundation, having retired a couple of months ago but will ensure that your letter is brought to the attention of Ian MacArthur at the Company and my successor at the Foundation, Steve Round.“ (Ian MacArthur is the Managing Director of The Big Issue Company.)

This letter that Declan sent to Hayday (see below) was in relation to the pitch we lost in Covent Garden two Saturdays ago because an outreach worker found that neither Declan nor I had worked it for two and a half weeks, an allegation we have been refuting ever since. Anyway, today we learnt that we have our Convent Garden pitch back as before (to be worked by either of us on Tuesdays pm, Thursdays pm and weekends), but were informed that we have no security of tenure whatsoever in relation to our respective pitches at Liverpool Street Station, as they are in fact “training pitches”.

So all the work we have been putting into our Liverpool Street pitches since the beginning of December, thinking it would pay off in the coming months, may not actually pay off at all – or at least not for us. Mindful of The Big Issue’s code of conduct, and in particular the company’s responsibilities to vendors, Declan has sent another email this afternoon to the founder of the Big Issue, Dr John Bird (his fourth email to Bird to date, see titles), which I will publish in my next blog.

In the email Declan is seeking to determine whether the Liverpool Street pitches we have been developing as (self-employed) vendors are training pitches or not. We always understood that these pitches were ours, which is why we have been working them on full weekdays from 7.30am until 7.30pm (with breaks, of course). Frankly, I would like to know how many Big Issue vendors work with such dedication, and so personably.

The ramifications for us, should it be established that these two pitches are indeed training pitches, could not be more catastrophic, particularly as we have been additionally informed that our Convent Garden pitch may become a training pitch unavailable to permanent vendors should the volume of new vendors increase. It would mean that we could end up with either pitches that don’t work for us or pitches registered to other vendors.

Take what happened to us the last two weekends in Covent Garden (during the weekend our pitches in Liverpool Street just die): somehow we ended up losing money instead of making it: two weekends ago we had to return 41 magazines to co-ordinators (19 of which we are still waiting to be paid for), and last weekend we dumped 15 unsold magazines into a bin. The question is: could we end up dumping magazines every day of the week?

In relation to the Methodist-run Whitechapel Mission and the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre, these are the highlights: a homeless woman knocks loudly on the mirror I am using to wash myself, determined that I answer her question: do I have a spare cigarette (Tuesday at 6.15am, Whitechapel Mission); I am called a whore and a slut by some homeless guy that sat at our table after I told him that I didn’t have a light (Wednesday at 6.45am, Whitechapel Mission); the nun in charge of clothes gives me a pair of jeans that might have been fashionable 10 years ago: plenty of homeless go around the establishment wearing a fine pair of jeans, thank you very much (Wednesday at 10.30am, Dellow Centre).

Anyway, this is the letter Declan sent to Hayday yesterday:

Dear Mr Hayday

Re: The Big Issue Company

As Chairman of The Big Issue Foundation, I enclose for your attention copy of my registered letter of 2 April to the founder of The Big Issue Company, Dr John Bird together with my email to Dr Bird of 31 March therein referred to.

In reference to the loss of our day-pitch in Covent Garden on 31 March, the finding that neither my wife nor I had worked the pitch for two and a half weeks is worrisome. As stated in my email of 31 March to Dr Bird, either my wife or I had been working this pitch for the period in question, as agreed with head office, on Tuesdays pm, Thursdays pm and weekends, bar Tuesday, 27 March (as I had informed head office) and Thursday, 29 March (it was raining).

I can confirm that I have yet to receive a reply from Dr Bird or anyone on his behalf.

Yours sincerely

Declan Heavey

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, April 12, 2007

Letter to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Big Issue Foundation

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