Fifth visit by the police

On Friday night we had our fifth visit by the police. Imagine the scenario: a policeman goes up the two steps of the porch we sleep in; he wakes Declan, who is sleeping on the inside with our bags, by kicking the end of his sleeping bag; checks that the porch door is closed; and then asks Declan: “Are you OK, mate?”

I think it was just to wind us up because of what happened to me a few hours later in the Whitechapel Mission. When I enter the washroom, this middle-aged homeless woman who is always running into difficulties with other homeless – once, a guy threw two packets of rice over her – is also there. She always splashes water all over the floor, although her bags are nicely aligned against the wall at the other side of wherever she is and protected above and below with newspaper.

Anyway, this time she is splashing water in style: she is having a shower with the door fully open and the floor resembles a baby’s swimming pool, even the floor of the toilet cubicle I go into has been covered in water. So I soak up the water with toilet paper and I change my clothes; and then I go to a sink and soak up the water around my spot; and as soon as I have soaked up the water from the floor underneath the sink (where I put my rucksack and toiletry bag), from behind me she comes out of the shower, naked and dripping water, and passes straight by my dry spot.

Declan had some troubles of his own next door: he had to tell – quite aggressively and three times – a homeless not to use his sink, that he was at it.

The day before, Friday, was more of the same. When I arrived at my pitch outside Liverpool Street Station around 7.30am to sell The Big Issue, I found mushy food had been smeared all around it. After last Friday, when a guy with a placard and fliers tried to put me out of business, I was kind of expecting it and this time had my hair washed in the Whitechapel Mission at 6.05am (oops, I will not get a sink next Friday morning) just in case I would have to miss my shower and breakfast in the Dellow Centre in order to type my blog in the City of London Camomile Street Library – like I had to do the previous Friday. (The two only computers that accept a USB Flash Drive in this library are now back working again but because they only give a meagre free one hour a day, Declan and I have to go to the Bishopsgate Institute Library (£1.00 an hour) to finish the job and upload it. Problem is that since last Monday the eight computers in the library have been either occupied or out of order during our mid-afternoon break. Which means we have to take a bus to the nearest internet café … it just never finishes.)

The reason why there are plays on my pitch on Fridays in particular is because Friday is the working day of the week that vendors make the most money selling The Big Issue – fancy holding down a permanent job!

Anyway, my pitch has now become like the Whitechapel Mission: there is always something happening. I have three (motivated) beggars passing by me all the time: one of them sells The Big Issue – he is not a vendor, so I don’t know why he is so keen to pass by me when I could report him to my co-ordinators across the road; the other two are friends and pass by me like the police are chasing after them and they are desperate to get lost.

These two beggars, they are in their twenties, are quite something else. Every Friday evening, as we eat our dinner outside The Hamilton Hall in Liverpool Street Station, these two are going around stealing glasses of beer from people drinking outside the pub, drinking beer left over by others, and hassling passers-by for money, cigarettes, whatever.

I have other homeless passing by me too, some of whom I recognise from the Whitechapel Mission and the Dellow Centre – what they are doing in the heart of London’s business district, I don’t know. The thing is, I don’t smile at them, as I do at everybody else, in case they think they can start a conversation with me.

There are two events though that stand out in particular: the first involves the police and a nun; and the second, a Big Issue vendor. Ok, the first event. On Monday afternoon – I am at my pitch – a police van pulls up in front of me. And just in case I don’t suspect that it is on my case, this policewoman comes out and gives me a long look. At that very moment who is turning the corner to walk past my pitch but a nun in full dress, which I have never seen, not in the business district, not at a rush hour.

Five minutes later, a Polish guy on a bicycle stops to ask me how many magazines The Big Issue sells, that he is selling them as from the next day ... when he is gone the police van drives off. So what is it? Do I have to be nice to nuns? Or befriend homeless Poles? Or both? Resourceful perhaps, but the police are no slaves to logic.

The next morning at 6.00am in the Methodist-run Whitechapel Mission things become more apparent. There are notes all about informing the homeless that at 9.30am that very morning there is a prayer meeting and also some meditation and we are all invited – a first since we started visiting the mission on 3 November. Who are they kidding? I think at this stage we all know our differences are irreconcilable.

Declan says that the police are getting more desperate because though we have not greatly advanced since coming to London, a Lord Justice can’t just ignore Declan’s amended appellant’s notice of 17 January to seek permission to appeal Judge Walker’s decision of 11 December to dismiss our claim for judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions (which Declan initially filed on 24 August).

The second event. Thursday morning at 8.30am, in the heart of the morning rush hour, a Big Issue vendor approaches me. He wants to buy some magazines and asks me if I know of anybody around who is selling them. No, sorry, I say and go back to selling my magazines to the passing crowd. He doesn’t go away though and asks me again: who is selling in the area. I tell him that I don’t know and ask him if I can get back to my job, to which he retorts in a loud voice that there is no need to be “rude”. He must have repeated that word at least three times before he eventually took off.

Declan had a similar experience on Thursday also: he went to our pitch in Covent Garden only to have the vendor we share it with (and who Declan had to threaten with a complaint the last time he encountered him) going on to a former vendor about how unfriendly Declan was.

Yesterday morning while selling The Big Issue in a pitch in Covent Garden (well, Strand to be specific), I see this guy in the coffee shop I am facing surfing the internet on his laptop; and it got me wondering about my own laptop, which I had to sell when we knew for certain the DWP was making us homeless after terminating our unemployment benefit on 27 September because Declan, as stated in his Grounds of Appeal, did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September.

Has a Lord Justice ruled?

Declan eventually got the two Westminster vendor jackets from the Big Issue head office yesterday – after three visits to the office to sort it all out. It means that we can now sell The Big Issue in the City of Westminster after 6.00pm. We might as well, because after the difficulties we ran into last weekend with pitches in Covent Garden, not to mention our loss of earnings yesterday, we have been hit financially.

To receive letters from the Royal Court of Justice, Declan has the Whitechapel Mission as a care of address. However, since last Monday there has been no listing for post received by the mission for the homeless appearing on the monitor installed in the breakfast area. Monday and Tuesday Declan had to return to the mission mid-morning, to be told through the intercom that there was no post for him. Yesterday, because Declan was in and out of the Big Issue head office well into the afternoon, he had to phone instead. And all he repeatedly got was a voice mail.

This morning he established with a member of staff that all post is sorted for certain by 1.00pm and that he should phone after that time – he still could get a voice mail, nothing he can do about that – and if he has post he has until 3.30pm to collect it. So if he is selling The Big Issue at his pitch in Liverpool Street and there is post for him in the Whitechapel Mission, he will have to pack his bags and, in the heart of London’s traffic, take a bus to the mission to collect his post. The thing is he has no choice in the matter, especially now that he is waiting for a Lord Justice in the Court of Appeal to rule on whether or not we can appeal Judge Walker’s decision of 11 December to deny us permission to apply for a judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions. Perhaps he has been called to a hearing to determine the matter, and we don’t know.

On Monday also, Declan found out that three of the four sink stoppers in the men’s toilet in the mission had been removed. All the homeless now use bits of toilet paper in an attempt to contain water – how do you shave otherwise? More than once, Declan has walked into sinks full of dirty water with clumps of toilet paper strewn everywhere. Declan wanted to buy a stopper for himself – he even had the one remaining stopper measured up – but he was told this morning by a member of staff that he couldn’t and that they would fit stoppers when they can. I have seen one homeless guy shave himself in the breakfast area in one of their foam cups for the coffee.

This morning also, while I was in the women’s toilet in the mission at 6.10am (we now wake up at 5.15am), a homeless woman came in. Without minding that I had my mouth full of toothpaste, she wanted me to give her something of mine – I assume some of my toiletry. She was so pushy and aggressive that I went into one of the toilets and locked the door – toothpaste and all.

This is not the first time I have ran into a homeless woman, or to better clarify, a homeless woman has ran into me. A few weeks back another homeless woman hassled me while we were both queuing outside the Dellow Centre after I wouldn’t get into conversation with her.

Still waiting for a Lord Justice to rule

Well, I have to say that there is nothing I miss from the WLCHC (West London Churches Homeless Concern) rolling shelters: the food was bearably eatable (with the exception of their Monday shelter at the Chelsea Methodist Church); the women’s rooms were of late unheated; homeless were catching scabies off blankets and mats; and the women had to usually share toilets with the men. Then, of course, there were some of the homeless themselves. I wonder if faith-based initiatives can provide anything other than half-baked services.

From now until April, our biggest challenge is going to be the weather - apart from the usual police harassment. It snowed two nights before we had to quit the WLCHC programme on 28 January.

We have bought high quality thermals (top and bottom) for the both of us with money we earned this week selling The Big Issue. Other expenses were two seven-day bus passes (£28), plus food (lunch and dinner, sometimes breakfast). On Friday, the base of my left foot was swollen as result of all the standing around I had been doing. Anyway, if you take out the cold, and people are sauntering, we both enjoy selling The Big Issue.

Covent Garden is where we have been going on weekends – our pitches at Liverpool Street station just die for us on Saturday and Sunday. And up to last weekend we had been getting two pitches in Covent Garden that worked very well for us, while at the same time keeping our bags safe. Not any more. Yesterday, one of the Big Issue coordinators in Covent Garden informed Declan that both pitches are restricted. When Declan asked for two other pitches that have also worked for us, he was informed that one is restricted and someone had just been sent to the other.

Our new pitches turned out to be almost a washout. We didn’t know where to put our bags and passers-by were not buying the magazine. In regard to the bags, the majority of Big Issue vendors – we get on with a number of them, especially in Covent Garden – carry only a small rucksack. The reason is that they are either in temporary accommodation or hostels. But you need benefits for such placement and our claim for unemployment benefit was terminated on 27 September.

On the subject of benefits, Declan lodged his amended appellant’s notice (to include transcript of judgment) in the Civil Appeals Office in the Royal Courts of Justice on 17 January, and still a Lord Justice in the Court of Appeal has to give us the go-ahead to appeal Judge Walker’s decision of 11 December to refuse us permission to apply for a judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Funnily enough, when Declan first lodged his application for judicial review on 24 August, he did so with an application for urgent consideration. I don’t know why they bother providing such an application when it can be so easily disregarded.

Our case certainly casts a shadow on the whole idea of the integrity of the Court, especially when the DWP can so blatantly deny us the right to the internal review process prior to irrationally terminating our claim on 27 September (because Declan did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September), and we are still waiting – having been forced to sleep rough – for the Court to rule on permission to appeal.

Nelson Mandela, in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, writes: “I went from having an idealistic view of the law as a sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used by the ruling class to shape society in a way favorable to itself. I never expected justice in court, however much I fought for it, and though I sometimes received it.” I can’t think of anybody more qualified to make such an assessment, so I am happy to go with him.