Check out our news website Church and State to find out about our writers and read some amazing stories: http://churchandstate.org.uk. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the site; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State".
We moved into a Family Mosaic Housing Association (Rough Sleepers Initiative) flat on 15 May. More about this in the next blog because it appears to me that we are not supposed to have a flat at all. We have no water, gas or furniture... there wasn't even a spoon! According to British Telecom's website, our four-flat block is also the ONLY property on the entire street that is not eligible for fibre optic broadband. We have a long-standing history with internet-based services (see, for example, blog of 14 December 2012, "We lose home access to the Internet"), so this is Declan's email this morning to our Single Homeless Project housing officer regarding BT's denial of service, which Declan has copied to BT Chairman Sir Michael Rake:
Not only have we been sleeping in night buses since I was threatened by two City of London Police officers with arrest on 22 April for rough sleeping, but Declan was diagnosed on 14 April with asthma and chest infection. In fact, Declan has been using a reliever inhaler several times a day and particularly during the night for over two weeks now, which is concerning us both. Yet Haringey Council continues to refuse us a review of their decision of 16 April not to provide us with temporary accommodation. Declan lodged this case against the Council in the High Court this morning:
33. ... The next morning, on 14 April, after providing the Metropolitan Police with a statement and photograph of the suspect, the Applicant attended Charing Cross Hospital and was diagnosed with asthma and a chest infection. He attended the Royal London Hospital the following night, the discharge summary stating: “Was assessed and advised to continue with current treatment, but if situation worsening to reattend as chest infection could worsen to pneumonia. If possible should try to find accommodation off the street.” Nonetheless, the following day, on 16 April, Haringey Council refused the Applicant temporary accommodation on the grounds that he did not have a priority need. Later that day, the Applicant requested a discharge summary from Charing Cross Hospital to ask for a review of the Council’s decision but was told by the head of the emergency department that not only would he have to wait at least two weeks for it, but he would have to pay £50 for information the Royal London Hospital issued immediately upon request and free of charge (see Annex 29, Charing Cross Hospital: Email re discharge summary, p. 77). Fortunately, the Applicant’s discharge summary from the Royal London Hospital also states: “Diagnosed with asthma and a concurrent chest infection on 14th April at first attendance to Charing Cross Hospital”. As a result, on 17 April, the Applicant was able to ask for a review of Haringey Council’s decision without a discharge summary from Charing Cross Hospital, but he has yet to learn whether he will be forced to submit an application to the High Court for a judicial review into the Council’s decision to refuse him temporary accommodation despite his particular circumstances and medical condition (see Annex 13, Haringey Council: Pre-action letter re temporary accommodation, pp. 36-39).
In paragraph 34 of the complaint below to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Declan explains that we are living in well-founded fear of the police. Since 14 April, when the West London Churches Homeless Concern closed its rolling winter night shelter programme, we have been back sleeping rough, first in the Barbican (see blog of 1 May, "Declan's formal complaint to the City of London Police PSD after I was threatened with an arrest on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer"), and now in night buses save a couple of hours at Heathrow Airport for the last few nights. Paragraphs 31-32 deal with the Single Homeless Project's offer of a flat for us, first tabled on 21 January, that still comes across as pie in the sky to me. And this despite that Declan was diagnosed last month with a chronic asthma condition that can be life threatening; not to mention that he has had a claim, albeit dismissed, in the High Court for judicial review against Commissioner of Police for the City of London Adrian Leppard and Home Secretary Theresa May following the refusal of the former to ask the homeless charity Broadway to help us with our welfare or accommodation (paragraph 29-30). Paragraphs 46-52 outline why the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored.
Declan has been using a reliever inhaler for his asthma several times a day and particularly during the night for over a week now, which is concerning us both. I took this photo of him fast asleep in a bus last Sunday at around 6am:
On 14 March 2013 we were evicted from our previous flat because according to our then live-in landlady's ex-husband, Dr Nigel McKenzie, a consultant psychiatrist in Highgate Mental Health Centre, our flat was needed for somebody with a mental illness. As Declan states in paragraph 8 of the complaint above, MI5 whistleblower David Shayler also lived with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie in the same house for a couple of years until 2007. It is indeed unfortunate Shayler then declared that he was the Messiah, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Shayler and Belinda gives no indication that Shayler believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with Shayler explicitly shows he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007.
The Esquire article below* is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It is an eye-opener, highlighting the monitoring and surveillance that Shayler had to live with back in 2000, and the contradictory briefings and slanders that were coming out of the British establishment and the media. The author, Dr Eamonn O'Neill, is a lecturer in journalism at Strathclyde University.
*On 2 May 2013, Issuu removed this pdf from my Issuu account following a copyright complaint by Hearst Communications. I had uploaded the article to my Issuu account in December 2012. In March 2013, when last I checked, the article had been viewed more than 15,000 times. It can be viewed here.
BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)
According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair". In 2002, he was jailed for seven weeks for breaking the Official Secrets Act.
This afternoon Declan complained to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate (PSD) about the behaviour of PC 667CP and PC 602CP of Bishopsgate Police Station when stopping us on the night of 22 April for sleeping rough. These two officers threatened that two female officers were going to arrest me later that night on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer (see previous blog, "Barbican security guard calls the Police to have us removed... and I am threatened with an arrest on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer"). Since then we have been reduced to sleeping in night buses, even though Declan was diagnosed on 14 April with asthma and a chest infection that "could worsen to pneumonia", according to the discharge summary further below from the Royal London Hospital. This is Declan's initial email of complaint to the PSD, upon which his forthcoming complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will be based:
I am a former social psychologist from Madrid. My husband Declan, a former physical education teacher, is from Dublin. We came to England in 2003 from Ireland with the then-aim of forming a network organisation for those abused by church. We were twice forced, through no fault of our own, to live rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total, from November 2006 to July 2009 and from April 2013 to May 2014. Declan established Network for Church Monitoring as a nonprofit company limited by guarantee in 2011. We are currently living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' Section 21 eviction notice from our landlord, Peabody Trust housing association. This notwithstanding that our tenancy is a flat that falls under the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (see paragraph 3 under "Church and State" below). We have no children.
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
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[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).
[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.
