Letter of complaint to the chair of The Big Issue Foundation

The previous blog contains Declan’s letter to the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre of the Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity belongs. This morning when he went to collect our new Big Issue badges - The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people on registered pitches throughout the UK; we have been selling it since December 2006 - he was informed that my name was not on the Big Issue “List of vendors” and that I could not be rebadged. Below is Declan’s email letter of complaint to the Chair of the Big Issue Foundation, Steven Round.

Issue Foundation is the registered charity arm of The Big Issue organisation. According to the Foundation website, The Big Issue Company Ltd publishes the weekly magazine and sells it to Big Issue vendors (wholesale) “for the purpose of giving them the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, rather than having to resort to criminal activity such as begging and theft”. This is an extremely serious situation for me in particular, in that I am facing possible prosecution for begging.



In an unusual gesture L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, carried a front-page article by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 19 February. John Hooper, who reports for the Guardian from Rome and has spent more than two decades abroad as a foreign correspondent, writes: “The fact that a son of the manse [a minister’s son] should have been allowed to write where no statesman has written before says much about the unexpectedly close links between Brown and the Holy See. What has brought them together is a common concern for the developing world and what sources close to the prime minister say is his keen appreciation of the Vatican’s global influence.” Also in the Guardian, Michael White, a former political editor, comments in a piece entitled “PM is in the hands of the pope, even in relatively godless country”.

For the record, this is the email that Declan sent this afternoon to Round (it was written very much with my defense in mind should I ever be prosecuted for begging; even on appeal, if necessary):

Subject: The Big Issue

Dear Mr. Round,

I am writing further to the email I received from you on 4 November 2008 in your capacity as chair of The Big Issue Foundation regarding my complaint that if my wife and I have not purchased a minimum of 40 magazines each week for the four weeks commenced 6 October, from 10 November we would no longer be able to have a registered pitch - we would be allowed to carry on selling as long as we move on without complaint when the vendor who has registered the pitch arrives.

In the absence of a reply to the aforementioned complaint from the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue, Mr. John Bird MBE, you wrote: "I am currently out of the country but have copied the chief executive of the Foundation". Nonetheless, and despite my reasons as to why my wife and I had been buying small amounts of magazines and our concerns about this matter, our pitches were made available to other vendors to register as from 18 November. On 10 September 2007, Mr. Bird wrote to me as follows:

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.

I wish to bring to your attention that this morning, following my own rebadging to the end of August 2009, I was informed that my wife's name was not on the Big Issue "List of vendors" and that she could not be rebadged. I have brought this matter to the attention of the Big Issue Company by email, and await clarification.

I should again point out that I wrote to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights on 21 August further to my second application for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, as follows:

As explained in previous applications, my wife and I survive on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches, and I have lodged numerous written complaints with The Big Issue Head Office in respect of my wife and myself being walked off our respective pitch by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors. You will note from my email and attachments to the Court of 16 August that not only may my wife be forced into begging (a criminal offence in England), but faces debadging by The Big Issue for so doing.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

New NAC website is gone

We haven’t heard from the web host obxhost.net, but the new NAC website that I have been building in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning at http://network.obxhost.net/index.html is very much gone – since yesterday evening. When I try to access the home page, I am directed to a site that says:

ERROR 404 - PAGE NOT FOUND
Oops! Looks like the page you're looking for was moved or never existed.
Make sure you typed the correct URL or followed a valid link.

Later yesterday evening we were also informed by email from the US that the same applied there. I had a new graphic on spinal cord injuries added to the home page to upload (see below), and also a section titled “Spinal cord injuries” under treatments and cures in applications of embryonic stem cell research on foot of the US Food and Drug Administration’s landmark decision on 23 January to approve the first clinical trials using the products of human embryonic stem cells. (“This is a great time for stem cell science,” said David Scadden, co-chair of the ISSCR Clinical Translation Committee, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine, and co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. “The FDA has signaled that the safeguards are now in place to begin testing embryonic stem cell therapies. If the White House follows through with lifting restrictions on federal funding, we could see a great flowering of new research and an opportunity to see if these cells can deliver for patients.”) But I haven’t been able to upload anything: my username, password and email are no longer recognised by the host.

This is what the homepage of the website looks like now:



The new (black) banner in the left-hand column reads: “Spinal cord injuries: Green light for US human ES cell work. The patients who stand to benefit.”