Church and State blog: Arrest is inevitable

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Arrest is inevitable

Yesterday morning at 7.00am I had to beg in Liverpool Street Station (see previous blog), so that Declan and I could buy a few Big Issue magazines – sold by homeless people throughout the UK. I wasn’t stopped by police (begging is illegal in England) and by 8.15am I had been given enough money to be able to afford several Big Issues. Nevertheless, I had to go back to the station early in the afternoon after neither Declan nor I sold anything during lunch – those who pass by our pitches are mostly city workers from the finance and banking industry.

In the evening Declan’s pitch was again taken over, this time by a street distributor of a free edition of The Times newspaper. A Times distributor also did his best to put me out of business when he began passing his papers almost beside me. At 6.30pm I left him by my pitch and again went to the train station to beg – after standing in my pitch, in the rain, for well over two hours, all I sold were two Big Issues.

It really is inevitable that I am going to be arrested, having been issued two tickets last week for begging. Declan and I are in fact resigned to it. We are already living in extreme poverty – I am actually lucky I didn’t fall ill last night sleeping in a wet coat – and it now only takes a rainy day or a street distributor to send me to the train station to beg. (As result of the problems last week with street distributors of London Lite and ShortList, over the weekend we didn’t have the money to buy food, nor the fare to take a bus to the West End where we might have availed of a soup run, resulting in both of us starving and feeling overall very weak.)

We also have little doubt that eventually I will have to do prison time, perhaps sooner than later. Still, I prefer being the one that is doing the begging because I believe Declan is better equipped to survive the street alone – although for how long it will prove possible for him to do so is anyone’s guess.

For the record, this is the email that Declan sent this afternoon to the executive chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s London-based News International, which owns several newspapers, including The Times:

Subject: The Times

Dear Mr Hinton,

I refer further to my letter and enclosure to you of 31 July 2007, a copy of which I sent by fax and registered post to the Chairman & CEO of News Corporation, Mr Rupert Murdoch, and wish to confirm the takeover yesterday afternoon of my Big Issue pitch outside McDonald's on Liverpool Street by The Times.

I can also reconfirm in respect of my numerous complaints to you on this issue that I am in receipt of a letter of 10 September from Dr John Bird, Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Big Issue, stating:

I have employed many people over the years to do jobs related to the running of The Big Issue. I have never employed them to do my job; likewise I do not do their job. Please bear this in mind when you are composing your letters. You do not need to address your letters to me, as it is not my job. I would only get involved if you were utterly and totally let down by those whose job it is in The Big Issue. I hope this assists in your deliberations in pursuit of your claims.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey
BI badge no. 1163

cc Trevor Jones, Circulation Manager, The Times
Paul Joseph, Outreach Manager, The Big Issue

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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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Arrest is inevitable

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