Anything goes

Having endured a torrid month – you can read the draconian measures we were treated to for the whole of August here – we are now witnessing an enthusiastic “anything goes”.

If Declan’s urgent request for expedition of 8 September to the European Court of Human Rights was granted (Declan’s main application of 8 September can be read here), it is not beyond the realms of possibility that things could be resolved in just a few months. For example, the case of Papon v France was expedited by the Court under rule 41 of the Convention because of the advance age and ill-health of the applicant in prison. The case was lodged on 12 January 2001 and on 23 January the Court asked the respondent Government to submit information and comments about the applicant’s conditions and regime.

However, the British government must be too busy at the moment – no time to fix a loophole in the law relating to jobseeker’s allowance either – and so why not take us out instead of having to dilly-dally with a response?

We need not speculate about where we are supposed to be in a month’s time. For example, yesterday afternoon I had just arrived at my pitch (where I sell The Big Issue magazine everyday) when this worker comes along with a ladder and tells me – in as provocative a manner as possible – that I have to leave. With some difficulty I establish that I can come back in ten minutes, which I do, only to find that he has left two ladders behind him on my pitch. I can recognise skulduggery when I see it, so I squeeze myself and my bags inside the small space I’ve got between the two ladders. Of course, I didn’t sell a single magazine and had to leave in the end. Declan also had trouble: the regular London Lite distributor was apparently trying to be as antagonistic as possible, despite Declan’s most recent letter of complaint to the head of The London Paper and also to its owner, Rupert Murdoch. What was the objective? Well, we think that if Declan had said something to him, the London Lite may have put in a complaint to The Big Issue and Declan could have been de-badged. Eventually Declan too walked off his pitch, having sold, well, nothing.

Later on as we were passing the Salvation Army’s men’s hostel on Whitechapel Road – a horrendous building with more than 200 homeless sleeping in it (a non-option for Declan anyway, since his benefit was terminated) – I saw the homeless woman that assaulted me in the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission on 18 June for the first time since that day. I actually didn’t recognise her at all until she and her mates began screaming like they were sitting in a Roman amphitheatre watching a gladiatorial combat. Apparently they were screaming at me. Oops.

Anyway, things today are not improving. For whatever reason Declan didn’t sell any Big Issues this morning – perhaps it didn’t help that some homeless with one of these supermarket trolleys was sleeping on the ground just to one side of him. I only made a few pounds, which means that tomorrow I could very well be starting a new career as an (illegal) beggar.

Whether it’s hunger or cold (this morning at 5.30am we were the only ones walking the street without coats) that will finish us off is anyone’s guess. Oh, Declan was informed by a very high profile humanist yesterday afternoon that he found Declan’s invitation to become an honorary associate of NAC in his spam box. So there: we can’t even reach out for support.

I may as well come straight out with it: I am no fan of religion. In fact, it is my opinion that by the time you are into adulthood you really ought to have mastered your relationship with the outside world to the extent that you don’t pine for soft clichés and fuddy-duddy rules. Nonetheless, yesterday Viennese people, who had congregated outside St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, had the exciting experience of hearing the Pope urging them “to create oases of selfless love in a world where so often only power and wealth seem to count”. No wonder public turn-outs during his three-day visit to Austria were lower than expected.