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.
Thursday, 15 September 2022
The Queen And I... one of her homeless citizens...
Monday, 23 May 2022
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…
Saturday, 12 March 2022
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?
Friday, 31 December 2021
Happy New Year - A 2021 Update....
Happy New Year Everyone!
So here we are again, another end to another year and as ever, I always love to share what I achieved over the past 12 months, especially as sometimes I completely forget what I've done until I go back over diaries and posts.
Often I barely believe I've done anything at all through out the year then I begin writing and researching and discover that 365 days of life I've been gifted again did indeed get filled with some amazing moments and good news, when often it's just the failures I'll recall.
January 2021
The year started brilliantly, we were still in lockdown and I pretty much had London all to myself, a far cry from the end of the year, this year, with hacking tourist jammed into tube trains and buses cheek by jowl... Ew!
But January 2021 I'm centre attention for the campaign to save the Crobar in Central London as I appear in the documentary film alongside rock legends like, but it's the trailer that gets everyone excited... as it's just me!
https://totalrock.com/documentary-to-save-soho-venue-crobar-announced/
My first appearance on Eddie Nestor's Drivetime Radio Show on BBC London discussing why Westminster Housing is utterly failing at it's job.
https://twitter.com/londonerslondon/status/1354016320963174401?lang=bg
February 2021
The Kings Fund Podcast comes out with me, Dame Louise Casey former Government Tsar for Rough Sleeping discussing what went wrong with the Everyone In Scheme and how the Government are both the cause of the problem and the block to solving it.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/podcast/sleeping-rough-covid-19-public-health
March 2021
My first ever virtual Birthday Party which meant I could unite friends from all over the world including dear friend Patrcik Savage, from London first violinist for the Musical Hamilton who gave me the absolute pleasure of watching the show sat next to him in the pit last year. Rob Schwimmer who played the Theramin for Paul Simon in New York and Logan Sparks in Los Angeles, who co-wrote the last script for Harry Dean-Stanton's last ever film, the best send off an actor could ever ask before shaking off their mortal coils – Lucky. All hosted in a virtual Phoenix Artist's Club built in SpatialChat.
It was also awards month. I was part of the pitching team that secured the Museum of Homelessness the Gulbenkian Prize for Civic Arts Organisation.
https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/recipients-announced-for-the-first-150000-award-for-civic-arts-organisations/
My performance, along with Peter Tatchell & others was nominated for an Offie (Off West End) Award as part of Jeremy Goldstein's Truth To Power Cafe at Conway Hall and achieved a commendation.
https://offies.london/oncomm-awardees-2020/
April 2021
Make my 4th appearance on Men's Radio this time with Russ Kane & the fabulous Phil Dave having already been selected as their Emotional Well Being Champion in 2019.
https://mensradiostation.com/november-2019-paul-atherton/
May 2021
My & Private Eye Cartoonist Mike Stokoe unveil our first collaboration and my first ever cartoon strip with the 2 part serial of The Best of Times... The Worst of Times... a Hogarthian inspired journey to what really happened during Everyone In against what should have happened.
Outside In, the Theatre piece by the Malvern Reaction Theatre company that I was commissioned to write a workshop play for and that was inspired by my story, is premiered to sell out audiences in the Malvern Cube.
https://www.slapmag.co.uk/theatre-review-outside-in-at-malvern-cube/
Make the 5th of our 10 subjects for my and Chris Harvey's Paul Atherton's Greatest Londoners, Black Female Talent now scheduled to take place in 2022. The follow up to the show we did at the Oxo Gallery last year.
https://coinstreet.org/whats-on/paul-athertons-greatest-londoners
https://twitter.com/LondonersLondon/status/1398195387274563584?s=20
My Arts Council England grant funding was issued for the first round for Displaced, but because of bureaucratic incompetence it remains unpaid.
https://www.thersa.org/blog/2019/09/a-societal-shift-in-thinking-to-solve-homelessness
Planet Radio – my 1st appearance, this one talking about the rise in homelessness expected later in the year.
https://planetradio.co.uk/hits-radio/london/news/calls-for-law-which-criminalises-homelessness-to-be-scrapped/
June 2021
Over the moon to be able announce that I'd secured the British Library as producer for Amy Kingsmill's fabulous memorial and performance piece Lighstource, to host an entire day's event as the finale to 12 months of lectures.
http://www.light-source.co.uk/contact/
July 2021
My Letter from Lockdown is accompanied by Paul McCartney's, Ed Sheeran, Nicola Adam's in a compilation by former news anchor, Natascha Kaplinsky's bbok, published to raise funds for Barnardo's Children'ts charity.
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/natasha-kaplinsky/letters-from-lockdown/9781526364555/
My film review of Nick Broomfileds latest documentary Last Man Standing is published in Tortoise Media's Sensemaker.
And I make my second appearance in Nouvara Media talking about the time I was given the choice between having my disability benefits stopped or going to my mother's funeral.
https://novaramedia.com/2021/07/13/jobcentre-staff-were-taught-to-inflict-psychological-harm-on-the-unemployed/
Meet Bianca Nugent-Smith.
August 2021
September 2021
I'm invited to be one of the main speakers the Museum of The Home's first ever Festival Of Home having only been open for (this used to the Geffrye Museum and exploted the history of the room before closing in 2018 for a majoy refit.
https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/explore/museum-in-action/festival-of-home-2021-all-about-belonging/
October 2021
Massively overjoyed to be asked to be a part of the Museum of Homelessness, immersive, verbatim theatre, the Secret Museum an event that last just 11 days, with 3 shows each day and reached an audience of over 1,200 we also made Time Out's Top Ten Things To Do in London that week.
https://tinctureofmuseum.wordpress.com/2021/11/08/the-secret-museum-museum-of-homelessness-nov-2021/
November 2021
My first ever academic work gets published by Oxford University Press in the British Academy's “Representing Homelessness†index, a 10,000 word chapter entitled The Power of One: The media and homeless stereotypes.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/representing-homelessness-9780197267240?lang=en&cc=us
I was incredibly fortuitous to be the only person able to collect my copy from the venerable British Academy building
December 2021
On the 1st December I premiered my & Owain Aistle's documentary 90 Days of Hope: Why Britain Chose NOT To End Homelessness at the Genesis Cinema on the Mile End Road in London. This was a fundraiser for the Museum of Homelessness and as ever we surrounded it wtth an afterparty where friends Paul Wiffen played keyboard and Julia Sterland painted Prima Verta portraits to all raise money.
The coverage came in The Big Issue Magazine & Times Radio and we were even listed on the online Radio Times.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/this-man-was-sleeping-at-heathrows-terminal-5-when-covid-hit-now-hes-made-a-film-about-it/
https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-3rbxkn/90-days-of-hope-why-britain-chose-not-to-end-homelessness/
This was followed up by some local coverage when the National Lottery talked about its successes and included the Museum of Homelessness,
So by no means great, but by no means a disaster.
Happy New Year Everyone.
Much Love.
P.
Friday, 9 April 2021
The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils - Could change everything for me... but probably won't!
I've never been this nervous... possibly the minutes before my first professional theatre performance a few years ago, acting in Human Mating dance, came close, or maybe my driving test in Cardiff in 1986 where my nerves couldn't be placated with alcohol.... but they only come close to the tension waiting for the Long List announcement of the Orwell Prize on Twitter in 15 minutes.
As ever, something massive always happens on a day I'm waiting for life changing news.A person was mauled at London Zoo when the press were carrying a big news story about my newly launched Lingerie delivery company A Touch of Silk when I was twenty one in 1990 & my story got pushed from page 2 to 13.
When I won the case to be finally legally recognised as my son's father, my barrister was surprised I wasn't overjoyed, but I had an overwhelming sense of unease and rushed to phone my mother... she didnt answer... the answerphone didn't pick up... rationality usurped intuition and I put it down, unreasonably to a catalogue of coincidences.
I left the court uncomfortably, met friends in the pub to celebrate, then I get a call from the hospital... Mum had, had the stroke that would end her independent life for good.
As it is too today, stomach churning, breathless, eager to rush to the toilet repeatedly, constantly checking the clock... waiting for the tweet that could my impending eviction back to the streets, national news breaks on my twitter stream
The Queen's husband, Prince Phillip, had died.
You couldn't make it up.
Today of all days. He's been seriously ill for weeks. He came out of hospital last week. He's had a great innings almost making it to a century, but he picked today to die.
Then unbelievably, the owner of the residence, totally unexpectedly, comes to tell me, that he's not be paid the rent for the past 6 months by Westminster Council.
I've been residing in his residence since being picked up from Heathrow Airport where I'd been sleeping for the past two years, as part of the cohorts who were housed under Boris Johnson's "Everyone In" in hotel rooms (mine is a hotel apartment) since April 3rd 2020 and explaining he's going to have to evict me.
All this, ironically, would normally make me feel like I had a good chance of making the cut for the Orwell Prize, but learning this news didn't change the sense of forboding I had, that I had sensed for the past 3 days, that the news was not going to be good.
Why the nerves, I can feel you thinking, what difference does it make if a homeless person is given an acccolade for his writing.
Well to begin with it acknowledges the fight. Unlike paid journalists, citizen journalists write purely for the intent of change. Unlike their staffed counterparts doing their job the personal journalist exposes themsleves fully and unashamedly to public gaze, to be scrutinised for their every decision by complete starngers and indeed, those who do, or think they do, know them well.
Everything you write is about your own experience, your own emotions, you at your most vulnerable. You don't have the buffer of speaking on someone else's behalf as many other writers do.
No nice MS Word or Apple Ink. If you have Wifi you may get access to Google Docs but more often you'll be using the body of an email to compose your work and hoping editors and others will understand, the lack of word counts, garmmar and the errors caused by a cracked screen, which makes typing almost impossible.
But the biggest reason for the nerves is the accolade of a homeless man being in the running to winning a writing prize is newsworthy. It would be talked about in reverant terms and with it the power of the media to assist my plight.
Being in the limelight forces politicians to listen, local Authorities to act, lawyers to engage, social services to be put on notice, MPs to engage where they haven't, the DWP to be investigated.
So the award isn't an ego thing, it's a survival thing... with days bedridden this past week due to my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome trapping me inside unable to move or speak, I need something to give me hope to keep me going to help me win my Kafkaesque battles...
Just making the shortlist could have done that...
But while I've been writing this...it's been announced... my intuition as ever was on the money...
I wasn't selected.
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276441989534420993?s=19
Day 1
11:00 - 26th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276455218956427264?s=19
16:59 - 26th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276546649083478017?s=19
Day 2
11:00 - 27th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276817591345065987?s=19
17:00 - 27th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276908176760283138?s=19
Day 3
11:00 - 28th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277180003692818432?s=19
17:00 - 28th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277270395960340481?s=19
Day 4
11:02 - 29th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277542882249895937?s=19
16:55 - 29th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277631847732830210?s=19
Day 5
11:11 - 30th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277907548528611328?s=19
17:13 - 30th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1277998617874378752?s=19
Day 6
11:17 - 1st July 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1278271393587699712?s=19
17:15 - 1st July 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1278361495840215043?s=19
Day 7
10:58 - 2nd July 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1278629114228944896?s=19
17:01 - 2nd July 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1278720406220951552?s=19
End.
Friday, 19 June 2020
Racism - The confusion of identity - A Personal Response to Black Lives Matter by Paul Atherton
Being the only "Black in the village" with a 70s afro made me an obvious target.
But I was brought up white (whatever that actually means)..
Being fostered by a White Family in the small village of Ystrad Mynach in the South Welsh mining Valleys from pretty much birth in 1968 (a year after the National Front was established) to 1984 (a year before the Brixton Riots) meant they were the only family I've ever known.
My father, a former naval officer, based in Trinidad in the 2nd World War was working class and racist (when I was 15 he admitted he didn't want a fuzzy wuzzy in the house to begin with, but I'd done alright - but that's a whole story in itself).. My mother, the youngest of 13 had escaped her blitzed Coventry home and was as Middle Class as they come.
Having attuned myself to the onslaught of name calling. by the time I hit junior school, they were easily assuaged, that was,until Alex Hayley's "Roots" hits the BBC in 1977 and a whole new raft of epithets were suddenly found to call me from Chicken George to the ever popular Kunta Kinta.
But nothing bothers me more to this day as much as "Jungle Bunny" two words that have no reason to be put together other than for the benefit of an insult. Just writing the words has the hairs on the back of my neck going up and putting my whole body into fight mode.
A fact shared with comedian Reginald D Hunter when discussing what was to become of the film I was producing on race Colour Blind (2009) and why we decided to end it with the actor in Blackface to kick start the debate we were looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Racism was clear when I grew up..
Name calling was just name calling. I was just as likely to be called the above names as the fat kid being called Piggy or the Ginger haired amongst us being insulted with the moniker of Duracell (the copper covered top).
Being beaten up for the colour of your skin - well that clearly was racist.
But the Robertson's Jam Jar Golliwog wasn't racist. How could it be there was no context to it. The Black and White Minstrel show was mainstream BBC Saturday night viewing (1958-78) and in stark contrast the racist Alf Garentt (played by the Jewish Warren Mitchell in Till Death Us Do Part 1965-75) was mocked mercilessly for his ignorant and idiotic viewpoints.
I never thought about race. Sure I'd been beaten up for the colour of my skin on the streets of Cardiff but that was both ways... White Racists in Rhwbina for being black and Somalians in Tiger Bay for not being black enough (all because I was hanging out with some white friends in the Custom House pub at the top of Bute Street).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
When I was still in nursery school some of the parents, within my earshot, would tell their children not to play with "the little blackie boy" because their children may catch something.
And as Lenny Henry had experienced himself and would often recall in a joke, I'd find myself offered a banana as a treat (now it should be noted these would be expensive and not easily accessible in the early 70s in Wales) as a genuine effort by friends' parents to be nice and welcoming.
However the one thing I'd been brought up not to do is be defined by the colour of my skin. My closest friends by the time I was 17 would refer to me as the most White Middle Class person they knew, because I went to the Opera, the theatre, enjoyed independent cinema, was well read, loved wine above beer (sacrilege in the Welsh Valleys - but a burgeoning trend in the Welsh Capital where I'd acquired my first flat to rent the year before) and would prefer good food like the Lexington Burger on Queen Street as opposed to Wimpy or McDonalds in Cardiff (my elder brothers have a lot to answer for)..
I loved being the only black face in a room, in a job or at a party. It held me out to be different, not the same as everyone else.
And why wouldn't I want that, my and all my white friends' heroes were Black, we just didn't see them that way.
Everybody had a copy of Richard Pryor's Here And Now, seen Stir Crazy and considered him the funniest man to have ever lived. Through television Floella Benjamin (Play School) had taught us in Nursery, Derek Griffith (Play Away) in infants school, Lenny Henry on a Saturay morning kiiling us with laughter on Tiswas and Trevor MacDonald in solemn severity read our news.
Eddie Murphy was the Bevery Hills Cop, Denzel Washingon had played Steve Biko in Cry Freedom, we'd seen Missipi Bruning, the Cosby's were mainstream on the newly launched Channel 4 and Wil Smith's the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was the biggest watched BBC2 show of all time just as I turned 20
Not to mention the likes of athletes Dayley Thompson, Booker WInning author Ben Okri and fashoin designer guru Bruce Oldfield and of course the greatest black role model of all time, the World Champion boxer, Muhammad Ali, who often graced the sets of our chat show hosts in the UK to inspire generations with his intelligence,wit and fabulous oratory skills. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ui9mTPMMY
But boy did I have an awakening when I came to the world's most Multicultural City, London in 1997. I was still, in the main, the only black face at the National Theatre or The Royal Opera House, the British Museum or the British Library, but many areas like Brixton were predominantly populated by black communities.
Very quickly, I realised how fortunate my upbringing had been. At no point was I told the colour of my skin would ever hold me back, but the traditions of African or West Indian culture were suddenly brought into sharp focus as I made more and more black friends.
A dear black female friend had been awarded the best family lawyer of the year and the first words her Jamaican mother uttered to her were "well that's all well and good but when are you going to get serious, find a good man and give me grandchildren" my friend's crest-fallen expression was soul destroying.
A Nigerian black couple had sent their son to Private School and were astounded to discover that he challenged their parental authority by questioning the validity of their requests. "I would have been beaten to within inches of my life if I answered my mother like that" the wifre said as she struggled between her middle classe status and her cultural heritage.
If you didn't define as Black you were a Coconut, if you did, you were politically ostracised. This was an entirely different world to what I was expecting. The likelihood of being punched in the face by a white person in the middle of a busy street as had been my experience in Wales - wasn't conceivable in London then or now.
Yet it borught more complications than I could ever imagined.
The more I understood about the oppression of Black people in London the harder it was for me to understand their position. They were surrounded by people who looked like them in their droves.They had unity yet the infghting was as laughable as the Judean'People Front and the People's Front of Judeah.
They didn't seem to be hindered in anyway, if they escaped the crime ridden areas they often inhabited. I remember a Black Ghanaian female friend who was ostricised by her own family for doing a degree as they felt she thought she was better than them and was working for the "whiteman" as a respected Government Lobbyist.
What else could she do in a 93% White country?
What made matters worse for me, is that I'd never failed to get a job on interview. This means that everybody who employed me did so knowing the colour of my skin. That was from education to the civil service, the licence trade, retail, telesales, Public relations and media and a whole lot more.
As time went on Black friends started to use language like "you don't know your roots"... I didn't, so I started to learn and the more I learnt the more I realised that at the height of the race industry, just before Atyon Abectu interrupted the service by standing up and shouting in Westminster Cathedral during the apology for the Slave Trade, most of my Black friends didn't either.
It was never more aptly demonstrated with the corruption of the Mary Seacole story. An incredibly heroic woman who'd come to Britain to share her knowledge as a medicine woman during the Crimean war.
Seacole nursed, Nightingale invented nursing.
But if you'd listen to the history today, you'd think the two women were of equal significance to the development of the.nursing profession. All the way down to the Statue of Seacole being placed in the grounds of the namesake of the Hospital that Nightingale established the World's first Nurse Training school in, St. Thomas's Hospital, which Seacole had no connection with whatsoever.
Black friends used to tell me she was written out of history because of racism, but when I asked if that was the case, why her Book The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, had been in the Birtish Library since its publication, the response was always "Is it, I didn't know?".
What they actually meant was, they didn't have this balck story pre-packaged in a easy to consume form that didn't require any effort in obtaining the information. Not that it didn't exist.
Seacole was heroic not historic. I'd ask anybody to name any of the 38 White nurses that Nightingale took with her who'd be the equivalent of Seacole but I've yet to find one person who can name a single one.
And so I found it strange on Wednesday being surrounded by a vast array of people in Hyde Park for the Black Lives Matter march. There was a strange kind of unity but one that felt mildly fake.
When John Boyega delivered his heartfelt speech it wasn't clear what he was saying about his own career. He'd reached the heights of Hollywood success and therefore his voice hugely amplified the experience - but what was it that had held him back?
He'd just bought his parents a house, he'd reached the pinnacle of financial and artistic success. He's primed for a similar journey as Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Oyelowo, David Harewood and others had already taken.
Sometimes to the discomfort of Black American actors.
https://www.newyorker.com/
Watching a generation who haven't had the fights of the Black-Shirts, the National Front or even the BNP with just the last remnants of the EDL barely a footnote (UKIP being too diverse to be considered a racist organisation - jingoistic undeniably with racists in it but so do Labour & the Conservatives) somehow lost any intellectual validity. The whole thing was clearly an emotional response but to what, was unclear.
The killing of a Black Man and the subsequents riots is a regular thing both here in the UK and in the USA and has never changed anything as yet again we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing.
So we know we can't rid ourselves of racists but is it possible to balance the scales for ethnic communities in a predominantly white society?
Or is just suffient to take to the streets every couple of years to remind people racism is alive and well?
My mother always told me I'd never meet an intelligent racist, she's yet to be proven wrong.