Church and State blog: Our sleeping pitch is soaked

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Our sleeping pitch is soaked

As I reported in the previous blog, yesterday The Big Issue
Head Office – The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches – confirmed that our pitches have been terminated, after two years of us surviving on the streets of London by selling the magazine from the same registered pitches and despite Declan’s email letter of complaint to the chair of The Big Issue Foundation (see blog of 11 November “Letter of complaint to the chair of The Big Issue Foundation Charity”). This is an extremely serious situation for me in particular, in that I am facing possible prosecution for begging.

Then last night we arrived at the place we sleep at night – since 7 September we have been sleeping tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a building, down some twelve steps; prior to that we slept for almost two years in a porch – to find it had been hosed down with water (this is a first for us in over two years of sleeping rough). It has only been a few days since we found out that dim bulbs in the spotlights above us had been replaced with very powerful ones (see blog of 15 November “Our sleeping pitch is targeted”), and two weeks since we were at the other end of a cleaner with a hose as we were about to leave at 5.00am (see blog of 3 November “State Stem Cell Policies Deserve National Attention”). Anyway, equipped with a scrubbing brush and a shower curtain, we stayed put because the night we decided to sleep elsewhere, on 10 September, I was arrested for refusing to move on as a result of having nowhere else to sleep (see blog of 11 September “I am arrested for breach of the peace”).

A matter of particular concern to us is how many of the emails I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells are actually getting through: we are under no illusion that the vast majority are being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”). Yesterday, I only received seven out-of-office autoreplies from 226 emails. Hardly surprising we only got one signature (last week it was two signatories from 640 emails; three weeks ago, one signatory from 1,072 emails). Back in February I expressed concern that my emails were not getting through (see blog of 16 February “Declan’s petition to the UN is being brought to a halt”). In fact, on 29 February Declan emailed the Home Secretary, Jacqueline Smith, regarding interception of communications; the Home Office replied on 5 March denying that any such warrant was issued; and on 8 March the NAC website was suspended due to spam as reported via SpamCop (see blog of 14 March “SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer”).

Although the NAC website will not be uploaded again – as I announced in August, we are trying to raise the £450 we need to buy a laptop to build a website for an international campaign in support of human embryonic stem (hES) cell research and therapeutic cloning – this is a snag of what the “Recent News” page looked like before it was suspended (the NAC website was built long ago, around the beginning of 2005, and what was then termed “liberal reforms strongly rejected by the Vatican and the Christian Right” has become “the scientific perspective on public policy issues”):

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 18, 2008

Our sleeping pitch is soaked

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