Agenda to put us back to the street?

Of the last five blogs I have posted, two of them have been about our home internet access. Since 3 November we (Declan and I) have either had our internet connection cut or have had bandwidth problems ranging from just about being able to go about our business to being 'squeezed' to death. We don't know what is going on because our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie (see photo below), told me before Christmas that she had access to the internet and was aware we had none. We have no idea what we are looking at for internet access over the next 2/3 weeks, notwithstanding Belinda's backdated notice for us to vacate our flat by 26 January. This evening I emailed Belinda to let her know that it will not be possible for us to vacate in as little as 3 weeks time:

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As Declan points out in paragraph 10 of his application to the European Court of Human Rights concerning the interception of our communications and directed surveillance, we are also not immune to having our bandwidths 'squeezed' in public libraries including in the British Library, the no.1 library in the UK. Declan and I are taking all this extremely seriously and remain totally focused on our N4CM Survival Appeal Pledge Scheme (for more about this scheme, see blog of 30 November I am prevented from sharing new articles on Facebook).

Belinda is not your usual landlord: apart from being involved in a variety of causes from abuse in the church to involvement in the anti-war movement and the Iranian community for more than 20 years, she had MI5 whistleblower David Shayler living in one of the rooms below us for a couple of years, until 2007 more or less. According to the BBC, 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. By around 2007, he had been successfully neutralised: he changed his name to Delores Kane, declared himself to be Jesus, and became a squatter. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Belinda and Shayler gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with Shayler explicitly shows that he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. This photograph comes from the Daily Mail (Shayler is the one sitting on the chair):

When we lost our television reception before Christmas (it's back now), Belinda told me we will “get rid” of her house soon.


Human rights activist Belinda McKenzie speaking at the UK Rally Against Child Abuse, 4 June 2011, Trafalgar Square

Open Letter to the Irish Prime Minister

This evening Declan received confirmation from the Irish Embassy in London that his application for a passport "will be processed in approximately 3 weeks". Nothing unusual in that, except that in Declan's case it has taken a complaint to the British Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), two letters to the Irish Ambassador to Britain and this Open Letter to the Irish Prime Minister (the letter Declan refers to from the Papal Nuncio concerning the Irish Sisters of Mercy is archived here):

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This afternoon Declan had to send this email to Ambassador McDonagh's PA via the Embassy's website:

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Never before has an Irish Prime Minister attacked the Vatican so virulently as Taoiseach Enda Kenny did last July, when he said: "The Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day." As Ireland is a 90 per cent Catholic country, you might assume that there could be some political risk in so eviscerating the Holy See. Yet, says the Catholic Herald, Kenny was in fact playing to the gallery: his speech merely reflected the ferocious public anger at the Catholic Church.