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.
