Church and State blog: Our dispute with the Mayor of London's St Mungo's service over enforced joint visits rages on. St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair remains vague on the issue.

Saturday, August 04, 2018

Our dispute with the Mayor of London's St Mungo's service over enforced joint visits rages on. St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair remains vague on the issue.

Our Church and State website has no less than 40 Nobel Prize winners on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

The Central London County Court is located in the Royal Courts of Justice.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms formulates what is the core of free speech. "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression." In an important interpretation of this article, the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. UK (1976) indicated that this "freedom of expression" should be construed as follows. It "is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population." Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no "democratic society" (see Cliteur, 2010).

Heavey v St Mungo's (2016)

St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson successfully had Declan's claim for £400 (in costs alone) dismissed by writing in a Witness Statement to the Central London County Court that St Mungo's were "keen to work with Mr Heavey to ensure that he remains securely housed and does not face homelessness again". (He also maintained and argued the point in two court hearings before two different District Court judges.) It took the scheduling of a preliminary hearing in October 2016 to have case notes from two meetings rectified by Williamson as Declan had requested all along; and that rectification only took place after a failed attempt by an international firm of solicitors, Osborne Clarke, to have Declan's claim struck out on the papers. The judge at the preliminary hearing dismissed St Mungo's application to strike out Declan's claim for compensation, and District Judge Avent's order dated 11 March 2017 does not state why he dismissed the claim.

20 February 2017: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

Declan and I are tenants of the Clearing House, which is run by St Mungo's on behalf of the Mayor of London; see my blog post of 14 July, DAY 59 living in limbo (threat to life): Declan has worked inaccurate personal data into his claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's for filing in the Central London County Court (WITH UPDATE 3/8/2018). Declan's claim against St Mungo's in pursuance of Article 8 (protection of family life and home) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) remains active, albeit in a different form. For over two months we have been battling this charity to stabilise our tenancy. First it was problems with the renewal of our tenancy, which took 62 days and the threat of immediate court action to resolve. For over a month it has been problems with inaccurate personal data that got even more serious this week - St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson is knowingly (since Declan voicemailed him on 1 August) holding against me data he assured the court last year had been rectified by him as someone with "senior responsibility in St Mungo's for information security and governance". And for over a week it has been enforced joint visits (see here). In the continued absence of a reply from Williamson on this issue, Declan will write a second pre-action letter to St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair under the same two articles of the HRA.

25 July 2018

Dear Mr Heavey,

Thank you for your email and your related phone message.

I am arranging to talk to the relevant staff in the TST [Tenancy Sustainmant Team] to see how we can resolve the issue and give you the clarity you are seeking.

I will come back to you as soon as I can.

Best wishes,

Dominic Williamson
Executive Director
St Mungo’s

cc Howard Sinclair, CEO, St Mungo's

Last May St Mungo's made the international press for all the wrong reasons. They are accused of helping to get rough sleepers arrested and deported. When the story came through my Russia Today (RT) news feed on 14 May, it left Declan gob smacked. He has spoken with Diane Taylor, the journalist who is covering the story for the Guardian. This is her update article on the scandal:

EU freedom for rough sleepers infringed - shock horror. https://t.co/RuJKrSEiTm
— Andrew Martin (@devonprof) May 14, 2018

***

We were evicted from our previous flat in March 2013 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 his recent updated complaint to the United Nations, former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler also lived with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie in the same political 'safe house' for a couple of years until 2007. According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair"; he was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act. It's unfortunate that Shayler declared himself the Messiah in 2007, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article published in 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 him the following year reveals he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. He has never regained his normal self.

"The MI5 Messiah: Why David Shayler believes he's the son of God" (15 August 2007) https://t.co/nTqlqxonnS
"Call me Delores, says MI5 whistleblower David Shayler" (16 July 2009) https://t.co/tu7yvdh2ko pic.twitter.com/Jl7HsIvUyu
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) August 20, 2021

"Cross-dressing MI5 whistleblower David Shayler is evicted from farmhouse" (20 August 2009) https://t.co/HuegWpZrbB pic.twitter.com/FlAMSfVYBb
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) August 20, 2021

The Esquire article below* is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It's 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 read here.

BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)

Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair", according to BBC Panorama. He was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act.

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.

Church and State blog

Saturday, August 04, 2018

Our dispute with the Mayor of London's St Mungo's service over enforced joint visits rages on. St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair remains vague on the issue.

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