A review of the National Theatre's play Kerry Jackson - critiquing the critics...

 There was something telling about the National paper reviews that were published around the National Theatre’s play of Kerry Jackson, it was as if all the reviewers were white and middle class and had an expectation of what a play should be when performed at the NT and concluded that this production was most definitely not that.

Now I’ve just used the term “white and middle class” which doesn’t really mean anything does it? But, I can safely say you’ve got something in your head that I intended you to see. I don’t need to give you any more depth or explanation than those brief words, because it’s a stereotype, something that we all know, but equally something that actually exists. Do all white middle class people conform to this stereotype? Of course not, not all of them are white to start off with, but are there enough who do, to create one? Absolutely.

Somewhere in the 21st Century, the word and notion of stereotype has been corrupted to mean myth or legend. Something that was based on conceivably a smidgen of truth that has been corrupted so far from its true meaning to make it now just pure storytelling, think Robin Hood, there was a place called Loxley, but after that, who knows?

But that’s not what a stereotype is, our world runs on the dependence of stereotypes and their behaviour, they exist, it’s what enables marketeers, advertisers, public relation experts and even AI social media coders to earn their keep.
 

First it was straight forward stereotypes, based on economic wealth A,B,C1,C2,D & E. Then it evolved into sub groupings, the Yuppies (Young Upwardly Mobile) and the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and today we can go even deeper to the Nano & Micro-Influencers, but these are all stereotypes and yet they exist in real life as their behaviour is observable and predictable.

In the race to be inclusive, which in truth normally just means being inclusive with ideas and literally nothing else i.e.” think like I do then I don’t care what sex, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability you have, you’re all welcome here” but “if you don’t think like me then you’re a privileged, racist, homophobic, ableist, even if you do happen to be Working Class, Poor, Black, Gay & Disabled.”

I watched Kerry Jackson at a preview performance, purely by chance, next to the Walthamstow Village Tapas restaurant owner who inspired the play. I did not see the play the way the critics did, because I’ve lived a real-life and unlike them, I’ve been in every experience in that play, except in the main, in the reverse.

You see I’ve been homeless for thirteen years, but I am emphatically middle class. I was sitting in the National for crying out loud, how could I be anything else [joke..ish]. I have a special dispensation to pay in cash (could you see someone working class insisting on that), now that they only take credit-cards and I know more about theatre, having started going when just 14 years old, beginning with Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, than most people who attend any Central London performance. 

Even though I grew up in a small Welsh mining community my white mother would take me, the only black in the village, to the Welsh Capital once every two months to see a play there.

So the criticism of the situation being unbelievable only comes from people who’ve had myopic lives. I’ve run pubs filled with working class people in Wales, who’ve mocked me for “speaking proper” and been a cleaner in one, when living in Butlers Wharf near Tower Bridge, the Anchor Tap pub, where the Landlord used to love telling his punters he had the only toilet cleaner in Britain who turned up in real Armani (true story).

And as for her characters not having depth, that to me seemed to miss the whole point of the play. They were obviously all stereotypes, That was precisely its purpose. Those stereotypes weren’t as solid as you’d think though. That “think like me” drive was strong here. As soon as our character experiencing homelessness turns out to support Capital Punishment our lead character throws out the notion that he’s workshy and he is now instead, misunderstood.

The times I’ve had conversation with Remain Voters (see again, a stereotype but I don’t need to add anything here, you know I mean the British public who voted to Remain in the structures of the European Union in the 2016 EU Referendum) who would get annoyed, and say to me, I hate debating this with you Paul, you keeping bringing facts into the argument, is a perfect reflection of that.

Nearly everyone who voted to Remain, didn’t vote in the EU elections, yet nearly everyone who voted to leave, did. It was why UKIP had over a third of our elected MEPs. Would anyone like to explain the depth in that thinking? Explain why this would, or even, could be the case? 

Because sometimes people are just idiots, they do what they think is the right thing to do and follow their prescribed stereotype, it is that, afterall, that marks out their tribe. There is no depth or meaning to their behaviour; it's just how they feel they need to be to fit in. The 2.1 Kids, Volvo, dog & semi-detached house to mark middle class success, may have disappeared but it’s been replaced with the eco-warrior, vegan eating, poop cleaning and cycling. It's not the characters that are meant to learn anything in this play, it is us.

Becuase here, as in real life, pragmatism beats sensitivity, nobleness is killed by ego, concern is replaced with performance, youth acknowledged as being naive, loneliness trumps values and it all happens under the overriding notion that reality doesn’t wrap up into nice neat explanations. I thought it reflected our vacuous nonsensical 21st Century life perfectly.

We live in a world of stereotypes and Kerry Jackson delves and explores them very well indeed. Let’s hope the critics find more depth in their criticism next time they can’t find the nuance in something, simply because it doesn’t spell it out for them in the way they need it too, elsewise they should wear their Disney’s Ratatouille's critic stereotype with pride.

The Queen And I... one of her homeless citizens...

 I visited the Queen lying in state at The Palace of Westminister last night. I'd missed the funeral procession in the day but managed the three hour wait to get in through the disabled access queue due to my MECFS, so I was able to bow in front of the Queen's coffin at 10pm Wednesday 14th September 2022. 

As someone who is homeless and has been for the past 13 years, I couldn't help reflect on the dichotomy of my situation. I was fully aware that the Metropolitan Police had used their powers to move many of my community from the streets in the area to enable mourners to take their space instead. This was not something I agreed with, but I felt it had little to no bearing on the monarch I'd come to pay my respects to.

These were Council, Mayoral and Police decisions and as far as I am aware the monarch have no powers over any of these institutions to tell them what to do. 

The clash between republicans and monarchists online over the events as ever took a binary arguement and one that didn't further either sides position. No right thinking person would believe that free speech should be quelled, by arresting people with "Not My King" signs, but equally no right thinking person would see it acceptable that a family funeral should be interupted by the yelling of a single individual ruining it for the many who were stood respectfully in silence, but somehow in this "pick a side" world, nobody could agree on this. 

The usually arguemnets of colonisation reared it''s head too, but as ever, the argument felt hollow. There's an odd notion that Britain created colonisation, which of course we didn't. The first modern record of it was with the Italians and the Roman Empire. But Africa was the originator of the idea, then Asia, then Greece etc.

The thing that makes it so prevelant was that the British Empire was the biggest, the longest and the last; at least where country empires come into things. The reality, is of course in the 21st Century, the Empire builders are now corporations and they behaviour hasn't differed from the behaviour of the City Empire builders 2,000 years ago.

Slavery, as we all know, is still it's basis. Every battery of every technological device in the world is mined from the Congolese Cobalt mines, which uses child slavery to drag this valuable ore from the ground. Meta's Instagram is the new slave trading platform for all types of slaves from Sex slavery to manual labour slavery. 

So it seemed strange to me that the very platofrms people were complaining about colonisatoin on, already owned the user under colonisation, but this time, seemingly with their total compliance and unababted acquiesence.

And that uniquely 21st propersriouness was what drove me to acknowledge one of the most unique moments in British history last night. As a scout I'd met the Queen, as a receipient of the Princes Youth Business Trust with a grant for my lingerie delivery business in the 90s when I was in my early 20s  "A Touch Of Silk", my name and Prince Charles's would always be immortalised in the Sun Newspaper headline, "Charle's props up Naughty Knickers".

Just a few months ago in the Tortoise Media Newsroom, I had facilitated friend and Royal Correspondent Richard Fitzwilliams to join me to defend the monarchy following the Duchess of Sussex's Oprah Winfrey interview.

As a person that grew up in the small coal mining viallge of Ystrad Mynach in South Wales, I remembered the unity she brough to our community through the Silver Jubilee. How the Queen Mother was loved by the Working Class, she smoked, drank gin, and loved a flutter on the horses.

The Queen stood as something above politics, above division, above petty family squables. Probably the most famous person in the world, she never fawned over publicity, duty was her intent and duty was her outcome. To give one's life to her citizens is something few, if any could ever understand.

It is not a life you chose, but one you are born into, the responsibilities are immense and the job never ending, as Queen Elizabeth proved, right up to the point of her death, having acknowledged our new Prime Minister Lizz Truss just days before.

So when I was stood in front of her coffin last night and gave her my final bow (unbeknwnst to me at the time) in front tens of thousands onlookers through BBC iPlayer and Youtube. I acknowledged the passing of the only thing that had ever remained a constant in my life.

Prime Ministers had come and gone, my biological mother had left, my mother, who was born the same year as the Queen and who's Birthday was on the Queen's official one had died in 2014.  So in solace and in solitude I said goodbye to Her Royal Highness with both sadness and happiness.

The thing that I admired most about her was the ability to bring the best out of Britain and witnessing the queue afterwards, it did just that.

Rest In Peace your majesty... you deserve it.



 




 

For those who are asking, why?

 Suicide is never far from my mind these days. I mean how many times am I prepared to throw myself at systems over and over again knowing the outcome, after nearly a decade & half of doing it, isn’t ever going to change.

But a few weeks ago I found myself on Vauxhall Bridge staring into the water and thinking of what solace could come next.  

I was there because I was walking to my doctors, because after having discovered beau’s lines on both thumbs a few days after having a barrage of tests for cancer, which all came back clear, I’d emailed to discover if I should be concerned (they usually appear after a severe illness like diabetes or Vascular problems occur) but after months of chasing, I had received no response and they were about to grow out. I don’t have access to a phone so I walked to the practice in Vauxhall, in the building where I used to live.

I couldn’t help but smile that I knew exactly where to stand for the optimum chance of success in my quest, because of a sign.

A sign very generously placed there by the Samaritans. I loved the exquisite ironiy of an organisation designed for the prevention of suicide, becoming the guide for those who were considering it.

The sign read:

“SAMARITANS

Talk to us, we’ll listen
Whatever you’re going through,

You don’t have to face it alone.

Call free day or night on

116 123”

It was clearly placed there, at the highest point on the bridge, as this is where people most successfully end their lives. The occurrence is now so familiar that every bridge in London is dotted with them.

Now, what really struck me, was the fact that three decades ago, that probably was the main cause of suicide, a lack of feeling a member of society a sense of isolation and the resulting depression that only loneliness would force you to pick up pills or head to the underground.

Today, though, calling someone to talk wasn’t going to help anything.  I wasn’t lonely or isolated, I had many people to talk to, many friends on whose shoulders I have and could cry on and a myriad of families to reach out to in desperate stakes. Including those I know through the Museum of Homelessness.

So no, talking wasn’t going to help or prevent me from jumping at all.

In fact talking was the fundamental problem and the reason I was standing there.

All Third Sector and Public organisations do these days is talk, they talk about race, about gender, about disability, they talk about change and hope and innovation and revolution, but they do absolutely nothing whatsoever. 

We live in a world of how not to do something, not in a world that says yes, let’s do that..

Got a complaint, there’s a process, nobody is interested in addressing your complaint, they want you to fill out of masses of forms, make you give up at the first hurdle, drown you in paperwork, just the notion of you complaining should be treated with derision and hostility and if that doesn’t put you off,  if that process doesn’t reach the conclusion they can slither out of, they’ll simply ignore it altogether anyway.

I was stood there looking into that invitng water, because all the people who are paid to support us in the UK are utterly corrupt and totally incompetent. I was going to caveat that to say not all, but I can emphatically and without hesitation say I've not met a single useful person anywhere in the sectors that has been useful in over a decade. In all the 100s of people I have had dealings with, not a single one.

I was thinking about ending life on the bridge because Arts Council England had created a situation whereby I was going to lose £30,000 I’d invested in storage fees, every possession I’d ever owned, crashed a project I’d been working on for 5 years and then lied about it.

The lawyers I’d reached out to seemed, as ever, enthusiastic and then just as quickly failed to continue with fervour. Friend Adam Hemmings, who has been the only stalwart battling me with every step of the way with absolutely everything, succumbed to illness and so to my MECFS is taking me out just when I need the most energy.

Groundswell had fired me as a Volunteer because I had complained that they were censoring those with Lived Experience of Homelessness on a project that they’d raised a £1/2 Million on the back of mainly my journalistic contributions and thus I had raised it as a concern with Comic Relief, that they were not only falsely advertising to the public but also to the individual contributors. 

As ever stupidity reigned large and instead of Comic Relief getting in touch with me to ensure they understood fully the problem they simply told Groundswell, who then fired me. Not concerned that they were losing contributors hand over fisti, but because.

The Local Authority were trying to house me in Brent with no finances set up, no care package and so far away from the places I reside they may well have sent me to the outer hebrides.

Paypal has stolen over £1,000 of my money, having got wrapped up in it’s own algorithms and not a thread of human decency could be found anywhere.

The Trustee who stole my son’s Trust Fund is due in court again in 2 weeks, having waited 6 years to get this to trial. The last time I was there last month, was literally a chapter out of the Secret Barrister’s 1st book, with the CPS having lost the paperwork for the trial.

THe DWP had managed to get away with another two years of not paying me what I was rightfully owed in Disability Benefits of both Employment and Support Allowance and Personal Independence Payments,

Which wasn’t enough to pay for my goods in storage and hence why I was thinking you know what, that water doesn’t half look tempting, one step, a rush of air and then hopefully the shock of the cold water puts you into unconsciousness and that’s it.  No more suffering, no more battling with intransigence and stupidity, no more

And here’s the real killer, if you’ll excuse the pun, I reached out to tons of journalists I know, masses of politicians I’ve worked with, CEOs of Charities I’ve supported asking for help, but not one and I mean out of hundreds here, not one, was able to assist.

To put that into context my wheelchair bound, 30 years homeless friend, Bullringbash who is dying in appalling palliative care, who is having to fight absolutely everybody, every single day, instead of  getting to enjoy his last period of life, when he got a back payment of incorrectly stopped benefits bought me a Google Chromebook, knowing I’d be writing everything I’d had published on a the broken screen of a Samsung Galaxy A6 Tablet. He just did it, no ask, no inference. He looked at my life, saw a problem and fixed it.

Imagine if that’s how the entire public & Third (Charity) sector worked. Looked for problems and fixed them, rather than create them and then compound them.

But this is the reality for everyone in Britain, the people with power, money and influence never assist. The people who have absolutely nothing always do. I reconnected with Jack Monroe the other day in the Tortoise Newsroom, a single mother blogger, suffering from depression and who was surviving on the equivalent of DWP benefits, she had done more to change the perception of poverty, than any journalist, politician or charity. 

So I have just 7 days left before a point of no return, everything I own, every personal letter, every video recording of my son, his toys, all those luxury items that I’d hoped to return to a residence after I first lost my home due to a credit file error back in 2009, but never found a resolution to the problem.

Those luxury items, the Bang and Olufsen Television, the Savile Row Suits, the Wedgwood Crockery, the Denson Stereo, the handmade John Lobb shoes, the Lock & Co. Hats, the Gucci watch were all set to be converted into an on street London Citywide Art Project Entitled Paul Atherton’s Displaced: Dispelling The Myths of Homelessness.

This was the project that ACE agreed to pay me to trial, that said they would organise a bank account for me to achieve it, granted me the money, paid it to a Charity 3rd party of their chosing, but realised they’d screwed up in paperwork, asked me to amend, which would completely change our agreement so I declined, they then persuaded the third part to illegally return the money and have done nothnig to fix the problem since. Instead they lied and ignored evidence to such an allarming degree that I felt it was impossible for them to get away with... I was wrong!

I was hoping one person would do the decent thing, accept responsibility and step in… but nobody did.

And if that’s not enough to make you quit life, then you’re a way better person than me…

James Breed, the head of homelessness prevention in Westminster City Council, is the cause of my homelessness and my demise….

If you're a journalist, after reading the below blog, I am sure, like me, these are the questions you'll want to get answers to:

1. Why hadn't James Breed (or anyone at WCC) attempted to get accommodation for me until just a couple of weeks ago, having had 2 years to do so?

2. Why are there absolutely no consequences for him utterly failing to do the only job he's paid to do?

 
3. Why did it take him a month (when first asked what the contingency would be if they hadn't found more permanent accommodation on the eviction of 1st March 2022 which was extended on that day to the 14th March 2022)  to book a cab and a hotel room and why did he wait to tell everybody at 3:10pm last Friday afternoon when it was too late for anybody to sort anything out?

4. Why is James Breed still in a job?

The contact details of those concerned are

James Breed, 

(and yes this really is his title, I didn't make it up for comic relief, as unbelievable as that sounds)
Homelessness Prevention Strategy Manager & NSAP PRS Project Lead

Westminster Council – Housing, Division for Housing Needs, Support and Safety jbreed@westminster.gov.uk

Susan Scott,
Mental Health Supported Housing Commissioning (not making this one up either),  

sscott@westminster.gov.uk

Katie Taylor
North Complex Manager
Adult Social Service 
ktaylor@westminster.gov.uk

Westminster Council Press Office
Telephone: 0207 641 2259 

email: mediateam@westminster.gov.uk.

Switchboard Number:
020 7641 6000

I have to keep asking, as probably the highest profile person in Britain experiencing homelessness why isn't this failure headline news yet?

If nobody cares what happens to me as someone in the public eye, what of the 100,000s who aren't?

I'm writing this on Saturday 12th March 2022. I'm exhausted and indeed the very process of writing this piece I know is going to take all day, with regular breaks and many tears, but it is essential that it exists, that people know what has really happened.

I genuinely don't think I'll make it through to Monday 14th March 2022 alive, as that is the day that once more I get turfed back to the streets. 

Even though Westminster City Council (WCC) have had two years to assist me to finding more permanent accommodation fit for my needs, they have chosen to do absolutely nothing whatsoever to work with me in all that time and have now been forced by circumstances, into a position where they needed to have something to offer me and don't.

Those two years began on the 1st April 2020 when I was brought inside as part of Everyone In  the housing of those street homeless during the Covid lockdown (the only thing Boris Johnson got right in his entire premiership) and was in essence guaranteed three months of safety inside, in what was basically an AirBnB apartment just off Edgware Road. In July 2020 the financial assistance stopped and things started going downhill fast, as I could no longer afford to eat properly.  I was there until May 2021 when I was moved to Tyburnia which in essence was a studio with no workable kitchen and not accessible to my Wheelchair when I needed it, where I have been ever since. 

Since October 2020 WCC have had me under the constant threat of eviction every four weeks. Only telling me they were extending my stay on the day I was actually due out. In normal life that is straight up torture. It was totally unnecessary and yes, it was evil.

Six weeks ago, Anthony the Hotel Manager who has been nothing but a stalwart and protector of me during this entire process, whilst treating me to dinner, informed me that the Landlord of the accommodation I am currently in, requires his property back on the 1st March 2022 and sadly he has no other accomodation to offer me and that he had informed the council of such.

WCC didn't notify me though!

Not even after I chased them incessantly by email to find out what was going on or indeed when other organisations like the Museum of Homelessness or Citizen State joined in the pursuit to find out what Jame Breed was going to do to resolve the problem, not one of us got a response.  

In fact James Breed's contact number on his email was cited as Westminster Council's Switchboard number, but when people reached out on my behalf by telephone, they discovered nobody on the switchboard had ever heard of him and he couldn't be tracked down anywhere in the institution.

Was James Breed even a person? Is this some elaborate staging of AI (artificial intelligence)?

Well a quick Google search can only find a single record of him anywhere. Nothing on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Linkedin. I mean, seriously what are the odds he isn't in some public document of Westminster Council's if he does exist, I would suggest, none!.

I found one mention of him in a Crisis report associated with the other well known harbinger of doom for those experiencing homelessness, Jeremy Swain, former CEO of the despised Thames Reach (those experiencing homelessness at Heathrow where I was, all immediately refused to engage with the people who initially reached out to get us into hotel rooms, when they discovered that they were attached to the organisation), but James had no title, no organisation, no nothing attached to his name in that report and this is the only mention I can find of him anywhere on the internet.
https://lmgtfy.app/?q=%22James+Breed%22+%22homeless%22+%22UK%22

What makes the situation even stranger, is that I have an alleged Adult Social Worker by the name of Katie Taylor, who has been copied into every single piece of correspondence after she was appointed in March 2021, with anyone I correspond with at WCC. She was meant to assist with finding carers for me, to assist with dealing with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MECFS) but failed at every turn, hence the term alleged. 

This failure of hers almost resulted in my death in August 2021 when I was trapped in bed with an MECFS crash and couldn't get to water for four whole days and as I'd lost my vision couldn't email for assistance and as I didn't have a working phone couldn't call for help. I just lay there wondering when exactly it is that you die of dehydration? 

It's sheer luck that I'm here today. 

Even though there were supposedly at least six people on five figure salaries at the Local Authority involved in my case, I was dehydrating to death, in the fifth richest economy on the planet, with what was once considered the best welfare system in the world.

Yet even she had made no mention of James Breed's existence either.  Has she met or spoken to him, or like me, has she only communicated with him through email? Is, as I suspected, James Breed a Bot?

What we do know about him, is his "intelligence" was only prompted into action, when he'd gone on his fourth break of the year and an email found its way to a colleague of his Susan Scott and we did finally get a response, with they were going to start looking for a place for me to stay. This was nearly two years and masses of communications.

But I said, what about the fact that I have barely any money coming in from the disability benefits that I'm entitled to from the DWP. They can't possibly expect to put me into a tenancy, can they? Knowing I wouldn't be able to buy food, pay for Council Tax, Water, Gas, Electricity, Television Licence, Wifi, they wouldn't do that surely?  Well yes, that's exactly what they were going to do.

A guaranteed failure that a four year old could spot.

There was, for a second, talk of placing me in Brent. Even though everyone involved knows I am an Emerging Writer at The London Library on St, James Square which is just off Piccadilly, a Fellow at the RSA (The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufacture) on John Adam Street just behind Strand, both of which I use regularly to base myself to work when I'm able and all my support networks are based in Zone 1 Central London, where I've lived for the past 22 years.

Now here's the real kicker.  I have a Public Relations career in my past and I learnt pretty damn quick in my life, if you want anything to change in this country you have to do it though the press.
So since becoming homeless that's all I've done.

Time and time again it's the press's involvement that has assisted me in getting state organisations to do what they should have been doing in the first place. It didn't matter that I had DWP regulations, Justice and the law on my side the last time the DWP incorrectly stopped all my benefits, nope, none of that mattered, it was only when Heather Mill's covered my story in Private Eye Magazine, did they finally admit their error and put it right (sort of).  

And be under no illusion, the only reason I managed to remain inside currently, was that my story had been covered in The Guardian, The Metro, The BBC, The Pavement, The Big Issue Magazine, MyLondon, Times Radio, Greatest News Radio, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Guilty Feminist Podcast, even some Spanish publications. 

In the last few months, just like Jack Monroe (whom I crossed paths with at Channel 5's Big Benefit Row when the evil Edwina Currie attacked her Father's name and made her cry) I've been submitting to Government Departments, with Expert Link, been advising the DWP on form changes and advocacy services.

When you start counting up the numbers who have known about my plight since this all happened you'd think it would be in the tens of thousands. Yet not one person could assist? Think about that for a minute. Not One Person Could Assist.

I'm the guy that since being homeless performed for 23 minutes in the opening of the closing ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Put together a £Million film through in kind production against the misogyny of women in advertising. Became the only person to premiere a short film in the Leicester Square Odeon Cinema thanks to the manager Chris Hilton,  In two weeks time a play that was part inspired by my story, that I was commissioned to write a workshop play and workshopped with Reaction Theatre Makers which is having a one night performance in The London Vaults Theatre, 27th March 2022. Yet I can't get a Local Authority Officail to do the job they are paid to do?