Church and State blog: Has a Lord Justice ruled?

Friday, February 09, 2007

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.

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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Friday, February 09, 2007

Has a Lord Justice ruled?

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