Church and State blog: NAC website suspended

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

NAC website suspended

Last night at our patch, while Declan was out collecting some cardboard, a guy came to me and gave me £1.00.

I only know of two ways homeless people can make a bit of money: begging (which is illegal in the UK) or selling The Big Issue magazine. There is also, of course, stealing, mostly used by drug users. When it comes to The Big Issue, we don't see how we can sell it. Are we supposed to drag all our belongings, including our sleeping bags, along to The Big Issue office, collect a bunch of magazines, and then head off to two pitches where we leave all our belongings beside us as we try to sell them? It seems so unrealistic in our current circumstances, especially in London.

Our first choice when we came to London was to stay around Central London, where we would have easier access to alternatives for food, and even The Big Issue office itself. We also thought it would not be too difficult to get into a night shelter, where we would not only have a bed but a place to leave at least two sleeping bags and our clothes.

After the Dellow Centre sent us to The Passage near Victoria Station (a day centre run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and Westminster Cathedral), and they told us more or less to return to Birmingham, it occurred to us that we may very well be left sleeping rough. Thinking that Central London may be too dangerous for that, we decided to move out to Tower Hamlets, close to the Whitechapel Mission – the only day centre in London that opens at 6am.

So here we are now, still sleeping rough. Our St Mungo's Contact and Assessment Team (CAT) refuses to visit us at night with the referral we need for a night shelter. And the only self-referral shelters are run by the Missionaries of Charity - one for men and one for women - but they do not appear to have the slightest interest in sheltering me.

Declan phoned the Missionaries of Charity again this morning. The nun in charge of the women's shelter tells Declan there is a place for me. He then phones the men's shelter and a nun there tells him there is a 6-week vacancy. When he phones the women's shelter back to ask what is the latest they can meet me, he is told there is no vacancy. Did they intend dragging me across London only to then turn me away with Declan sheltered somewhere else? Either way, it was outrageous. There was less than five minutes between Declan's two calls to the women's shelter, and he had already been assured that my place was secure.

I feel so fortunate that Declan phoned the women's night shelter back. What a absolute nightmare I could have been looking at tonight, on my own in an area I am completely unfamiliar with. That last phone call cost us £2.50. In total, we spent well over £5.00 dealing the Missionaries of Charity in a public phone box - and all for nothing.

And then there's the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre, which will not phone our St Mungo's CAT again for the referral we need to get into a night shelter. Declan also had to spend money phoning the CAT himself, leaving a message to the effect that we are still at our registered patch and waiting for them to visit us.

Our escapades don't finish there. Wednesday is women's clothes day in the Whitechapel Mission. The few homeless women who turn up every morning at the Mission are all quite well dressed by establishment. So today I decided to ask for some clothes. The old blue jeans that the nun in the Dellow Centre gave me last week are already in bad shape, plus I need a belt and few other items of clothing. I am told they have nothing. When Declan asks the same worker what day is best for me to get the clothes I need, he is told to wait 20 minutes, that somebody will give me a pair of jeans or he should ask him again tomorrow. It turns out that he has to ask him again tomorrow.

I don't know how a non-religious organisation would behave in relation to us, but I don't believe even a non-religious organisation goes far enough. Crisis, a national charity we have been calling into in the evenings, is non-religious. And yet, whilst we were queuing outside the Dellow Centre this afternoon to collect some laundry, one of the Crisis workers walked straight into the centre and stayed there for almost the whole duration of our visit, which turned out to be well over 15 minutes.

What Declan and I need is an organisation that doesn't have the slightest interest in religious groups, an atheist organisation. But, of course, no such entity exists. Also, we are not naive enough to think that even if such an entity existed, everything would be plain sailing for us with them. But at least it might offer us some bit of respite.

8.30pm Update

This afternoon our NAC website was removed from the internet. All we get is that our site is a "Suspended Website", that it's "currently not active". We have emailed Bravehost for an explanation. I tried to upload the site all over again (the 1,938 files, including images), but I'm prevented from doing so. NAC hasn't been deleted, though. I can still access all the files in the server through my Bravehost Website Manager. I just can't view them.

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.

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

NAC website suspended

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