Church and State blog: Washing in the street

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Washing in the street

All this week Declan has been walking for almost five hours with his bags. A round walk of over two hours to the Manna Centre to get some free lunch – where last Saturday, a big homeless Pole booted him hard in the calf. Then two or three times to his Big Issue pitch where he attempts to sell a couple of Big Issues (a magazine sold by homeless people) – on Tuesday afternoon he shouldn’t have bothered: the Big Issue vendor he found on his pitch informed him he was working on it. And he also meets me in the Idea Store Whitechapel library – the same place we regularly run into difficulties with internet access (see previous blog for Declan’s email to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council). It is quite exhausting for him but it has kept us in the game.

In my blog of 26 March “We are seeking to raise £4,000” I wrote that on 17 March Network Rail effectively barred us from the public toilets in Liverpool Street Station (we had been forced to wash there after we were barred in June from the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission due to concerns about our safety), and that Declan would have to further bullfight the homeless in the men's washroom of the Sister of Mercy-run Dellow Centre. Well, he is getting so much hassle there that this morning he had to shave in a park – last week he experienced serious harassment from one homeless and had to inform staff that he was on the verge of calling the police, and two days ago another homeless was shouting so loud while shadow boxing and kicking about the place that twice staff had to put in an appearance.

Human-animal embryos have caused controversy in the UK

The Christian Legal Centre (CLC) and Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core) launched a legal challenge yesterday against the legality of licences granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) that allowed the creation of Britain’s first human-animal hybrid embryo. It wants the licences granted to scientists at Newcastle University and King’s College London to be revoked so that no further experimentation is carried out. They made the move after Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced last month to give Labour MPs a free vote on the Government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (legislation currently going through Parliament), which has faced condemnation from Catholic Church leaders. According to Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, the bill would lead to the endorsement of experiments of "Frankenstein proportions".

(Cardinal O'Brien doesn’t mind to disagree with many eminent scientists, including Lord Naren Patel of Dunkeld, chairman of the UK National Stem Cell Network and chancellor of Dundee University, who has said that the legislation would improve regulation of research that could help diabetics and those with Parkinson’s. He probably wasn’t impressed either with the headline on the front page of today’s Times “Scientists win public support on embryo research”: a poll for the newspaper reveals that the creation of human-animal embryos enjoys broad public approval, with 50 per cent backing new laws that would permit it and only 30 per cent opposed.)

Unlike Gordon Brown, President George W Bush scored points with the Christian Right in his final State of the Union address on 28 January. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) stated: “A high mark came when the President explained how advances in science have made embryonic stem cell research obsolete and then called on Congress to pass a comprehensive cloning ban, ensuring as he put it, ‘that all life is treated with the dignity it deserves’.” Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the US bishops' Office of Pro-Life Activities: "We certainly welcome the president's emphasis on increased funding for ethical stem-cell research, and we agree that passage of a ban on human cloning is long overdue." In response to the speech, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (established in 2004 with the passage of Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act) promptly disagreed with President Bush’s stance: “Tonight, in his State of the Union address, President Bush distorted the scientific facts on stem cell research and did a disservice to the millions of patients suffering from chronic disease and injury for whom stem cell research holds great promise for future therapies and cures.”

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 10, 2008

Washing in the street

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