From #FreeSatpalRam to funding racism

Born and bred to Indian Parents settling in Birmingham in the 60’s, Satpal Ram, aged 20 in 1986, went to a local Indian restaurant with friends. When six white people acted to provoke a situation using verbal and racist abuse, Ram reacted firmly. One of the abusers, Stuart Pearce, stabbed him in the face with a broken glass, he self-defenced with a knife, accidently killing Pearce.

Until July 2000, journalists were not allowed to interview prisoners serving life sentences for murder, regardless of any claims of wrongful conviction; The Guardian published a disturbing story after visiting a 34 year old man who had spent 13 years in prisons around England.

Prior to 2000, the only method Ram’s family had to get his voice heard due to miscarriage of justice, racism and physical abuse in jail, was to make big noise in the nascent British-Asian music scene of the mid 90’s while All things Asian were also emerging. London born and bred but signed to Virgin France, Asian Dub Foundation dedicated a song Free Satpal Ram; other artists like Primal Scream or Irvin Welsh spread good vibes in favour of the unfairly judged man. As a London based journalist and photographer going to Swaraj, Anokha, 333, Blue Note and so on, I was contacted by Free Satpal Ram campaigners to provide photos of DJ nights supporting their campaign – making myself a small version of Molly Dineen’s Being Blacker of the British-Asian sound business. I must have rubbed shoulders with a young solicitor specialising in Human Rights Sadiq Kahn, now Mayor of London.

Six months after joining my local community garden  in Hackney opposite the Walthamstow Marshes in between COVID lockdowns, I met, in January 2021, a very young Eritrean man who left his country as a teenager and managed to reach London almost 10 years after departing his homeland.  He didn’t give any details of his long haul struggle, except that of his family having had to sell their basic homes for him to complete his ‘lonely’ march. Only last week, after watching Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano, in a non-aggressive yet so disturbing scene, did I jigsaw-up the full picture. Arriving in Libya following a never ending trek in the desert, the West African Senegalese protagonist and his fellow travellers faced a dilemma: a smartly dressed man with a friendly-manipulative discourse told them repeatedly he was here to help... they had to trust him as their friend among a backdrop of heavily armed Human Rights abusers, some of them pouring burning liquid on migrating men torsos. Exhausted and terrorised human beings of all ages were asked to give him their family numbers in order to be freed and spared of torture. Puzzled by the number of years it took the East African man to arrive in East London, I was equally shocked when the community garden manager and her German friend said heartlessly he must have been naïve!

Leaving home, being a prisoner, being homeless, injustice.  Fear, anxiety, mental health issues, harassment, brutality.

I have voted Sadiq Khan twice, but in the recent months I have been disillusioned by him, his team and his Labour Hackney satellite promises. Some of their late March and April Tweets / X are about “private sector housing” “affordable housing” “rent control” “housing strategy” “council homes” “defending renters rights” “fighting rogue landlords” “no fault evictions” “tackling homelessness” “ending rough sleeping”.

After years of being ignored by flat agent regarding repairs to be done in my flat - heaters working sporadically, no bath, no shower etc – I sent a letter to landlord in June 2020, searching to trigger a direct solution, wanting to be humanised in a Western country. What landlord did next was contacting flat agent who denied anything, treating me as a psychotic / inventing stories / being a tantrum woman! Vexed by my determination to sort out a situation, flat agent contacted my Benefits and Housing Needs Officer revealing I was not paying my rent – I did warn him via email I would do so.

On 28 July 2020, when Labour Philip Glanville was Mayor of Hackney, she emailed me about losing my home… I’m in real trouble! Five (5) minutes later, I emailed back “… I have no heaters, oven, bath and shower. The landlord has not done any repairs and I have been waiting, so I have held up the rent. Can we meet. This is a very stressful situation”. 10 minutes later, she replied “I will ask my manager if I can visit you. We are restricted on what we are allowed to do at the moment because of COVID19 but I am sure I can find a solution. In the meantime can you send me any communications, email etc, that you have had with the manager or agent concerning the issues you have raised?...” She goes on telling me I’ll have to pay the rent arrears once the work is done… She has no issue with me being dehumanised, rotting in a derelict flat for six years despite reading my forwarded emails, my letter sent to landlord + travelcard proving I asked for the work to be done for years. 

Landlord replied via email on 3 July 2020:

“Thank you for your letter dated 27 June... I am sorry to hear that you are having problems with some of the appliances in the flat... As you know, D K is my agent and is responsible for repairs to the flat... I have left a message with D...”

On 29 July 2020, she magically convinced flat agent and landlord “who were willing to meet all my requirements” but she e-stressed I had to adhere to the dates; I can’t refuse workmen to enter my flat or I’ll be charged for it; I have to cooperate! [In July 2023, at the trial, flat agent said I shouted at all electricians and plumbers who were hired to do the job; I was aggressive to them at my door; I refused entry to the flat (after giving dates I had agreed with) etc; Prior to the trial, my barrister told me that if I had ‘misbehaved’, flat agent would have issued me with a warning as the law allows him to do so; also in the court documents, none of the plumbers / electricians wrote a note confirming his blame against me; none of them filmed me with their mobile phone showing off my unpredictable behaviour; nor did the workmen come to the trial to testify against me…]

Still 29 July 2020, she sent me a CAB link because I’m a very bad person for withholding rent for repairs as it put my tenancy in jeopardy especially where the landlord was happy to do the work [Landlord and flat agent are good men again! I can end up in the street for not paying rent. Private renters on benefits are penalised for being bad, therefore are not offered access to Council flats; Landlords / landladies not meeting standard living to renters is a newish trend not on Tiktok... yet!]. She was waiting for a reply from her manager to see if she was allowed to visit my flat. [She never came; nobody from the Council bothered either! If they had, surely I wouldn’t have gone to court because they would have seen how my flat was not meeting basic living standard and perhaps they would have acted against rogue landlord and flat agent?]

On 4 August 2020, she praised landlord and flat agent for not taking action against me for not paying the rent, adding “... they are actually being very lenient.” [Again, they are good men! Prior to the trial, barrister told me that by law, they should have told the Council straightaway I was not paying my rent instead of letting things escalate; my understanding is both landlord and flat agent are at fault for waiting so long before reporting me.  Both of them were very happy to read to the Judge Benefit Officer’s emails praising them and how stupid I was for not realising how lucky I was to have them!]

My mental health issue was also constantly being challenged as my French aggressors and journalists / colleagues from Les Inrocks had set-up Twitter accounts detailing how I was mentally disturbed 30 years after I resigned for ongoing humiliations / sexual harassment; they sent threats and insults via emails, snail mails, social networks... Mid-August 2020, I joined Robin Hood Community Garden by the Lea River in Clapton, Hackney, to help with my depression – GP / mental health grass-roots were totally out of reach!

In September 2023, the Judge gave her verdict: my rent arrears were erased + they owed me compensation + she refused eviction order. On paper, I won and both my solicitor’s office and my barrister have successfully fought against homelessness. In reality, I’m a prisoner because I can’t go anywhere for lack of money; I have no energy to look for a place – pack my stuff – no money to hire a wo-man and a van.

By early November 2023, I had received a huge amount of disturbing emails from the landlord including a 40% rent increase. I forwarded them and complained to my Benefits and Housing Needs Officer how unsafe I felt hoping she would offer a Council flat now I was being a good girl...

From mid to late November, she wrote:

How very concerned she was at the amount the rent has gone up; wanting me to give details of my disability, so she could see if there is anything she / The Council could offer me (Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – The Council has some experts on the PIP application process who may be able to help me); my rent increase seemed to be very excessive; she sent a CAB link asking my Labour ward Councillor (also a lawyer) if she could look into it; she then advised my landlord I might need to go to the tribunal as it is a large increase - I will not be able to afford to pay it from my benefits and that would make me potentially homeless. She stressed that despite no rent increase have been asked for 10 years, it was not my fault it wasn’t implemented.

Then, a whole new world opened up to me as if I were standing up facing a closed cavern full of hidden gems: she offered landlord that treasure otherwise called ‘incentive’ which encourages landlords to allow the tenant to stay in the property at an affordable rent. A one off discretion payment of £2000!

THEN... mid-December 2023, she performed a wild radical U-Turn as if one millennium she was raving illicitly across Europe open fields with Ed Rush; the next she surfed on the Brexit's wave with Nigel Farage: in an email she qualified as ‘very good news’, she glorified some excellent achievements from the Council ‘Incentive Team’: 

The Council negotiated (without my consent, but who am I to consent?) with my landlord a two year fixed term contract without a rent increase [Do I feel good about being ‘forced’ to stay another two years in a derelict flat with an harassing landlord?] on the following basis: the rent increase is an extra £70 per month instead of £350. The Council pays a £2000 incentive to him - non refundable - on the condition I allow my landlord to keep my compensation money from tribunal. In other words, I have to participate to the Council incentive scheme – non refundable – in order to contribute to ‘affordable housing’... I went to tribunal to dispute my case, not to the casino! The Council is simply gambling on my fate as if I were their royal subject! She carried on lecturing me on how good the landlord was because he is losing a lot of money by accepting that deal... She added I must understand a couple of things: The rent that the landlord initially requested is not unreasonable [what a switch from her initial narrative!]; I have not had a rent increase for a considerable time [what a switch from her initial narrative!]; my Housing Benefit will be reassess to a lower account [I guess]; normally a landlord increases the rent every year. 

She hoped that I will give this proper consideration and accept the offer because there was no guarantee that the Tribunal would find in my favour if I appealed the rent increase.

Panicking by such horrific news and refusing the ‘package’, Benefits and Housing Needs Officer and my ward Councillor asked if they could visit me.

On 19 December 2023, Benefit Officer repeatedly said she was here to help me and acted as if we were long term friends... Eventually, both menopaused women sat on my sofa telling me that if I refused to let my landlord keep my compensation money, I would make myself homeless almost parroting Suella Braverman on my lifestyle choice; they tried a solution; I was being unreasonable; they can’t do anything else for me... upon lecturing me, a menopaused woman as well, how to shower in order to avoid water all around because... the bath my landlord changed is not well fitted and I can damage myself easily... Is there mould-leak and is the ceiling tearing off and the wall being blackened? You bet! 

October 2023:

January 2024:

These ladettes don’t care. They both knew I didn’t intend to rob benefits money. Benefit Officer knew I initially kept the money (how does she know that?).They both knew I didn’t spend the money until I was told (by a neighbour) that the Council would cut benefits if randomly checking my bank account and I would have more than the law requires to be on benefits (it is one way of becoming homeless: lend £20 pounds to someone; they can reimburse you but they live far away; they put £20 on your bank account; you don’t tell benefits you have an extra £20 on your account; they check randomly your bank account; they cut your benefits!). Perhaps Councils should be aware on how women are pushed to the edge until they become reluctantly delinquents as well described in Phyllida Lloyd’s herself (soundtrack is criminally crap though).

Early January 2024, the Council woman responsible to prevent homelessness is taking over from Benefits and Housing Needs Officer [she has viciously, a few times, weeks before trial and weeks following it, cut my benefits for absolute no reasons; then sent an appeal link (“Please note that any questions regarding the assessment of your claim or if you wish to dispute the reason for the overpayment - they actually never overpaid me - you must contact [appeal] our Benefits team directly... Your dispute must be in writing, within one calendar month of the date of overpayment letter”)...

I receive all their letters one month later

(a bit hard to make an appeal / complaint

when you have a month to react!

Saturday 2 March 2024:

This is the envelop... showing no date!

[end of 2022 and early 2023, I started receiving

texts and letters about taxes I didn't pay; I complained

that some of Hackney Council letters arrived 

with three weeks delay or didn't arrive at all; 

Head of Finance's reply on 2 February 2023: 

"A bill to advise you of this was sent, by post, 

on 20 December 2022. Again, I cannot account for

 why you did not receive this, but it may be an issue 

that needs to be taken up with the Post Office 

in case there is any other important post 

that you are not receiving."

It turned out, they never sent any Council Tax in 2021 

which is the reason I didn't pay... Not once did they

send a reminder in a whole year! But it's the Post Office's fault!]

... because I have a lot of time in my hands for a case I can’t defend as I have no idea why/how/WTF]. She gives lectures on homelessness at the London School of Economics and Political Science as well rubbing shoulders with Sadiq Khan! She also informs me that nobody is available to help regarding PIP for my disability (“Finally, the Council does not provide a service to assist residents who would like to pursue an application for Personal Independence Payments (PIP)”), then sends various links (https://www.hoxtontrust.org/help-and-support/ https://hclc.org.uk/welfare-rights/ https://www.mindchwf.org.uk/services/i-need-help-with-my-benefits/ https://www.scope.org.uk/advice-and-support/help-completing-benefit-claim-forms/) including one of complaints! Do these women in Hackney Council get a bonus / a promotion when saving money for the Council? Do they want to impress their male bosses?

By late January, she sent a link on how to apply for social housing... not paying the 40% rent increase (meaning I've been in rent arrears since January 2024 [though landlord gets initial Housing Benefit, not the top-up he requested]) and having refused to gift my compensation money... I won’t qualify... But do I want to stay in a hostile and brutal Borough led by an incompetent and ego-tripping Mayor and her bullying team? Anyway, this is what the Borough requests (four years waiting list BTW; one year if you make yourself homeless by couch-surfing):

On 27 January 2024, I visited my Labour ward Cllr at her surgery and challenged her about my flat state: she answered three times that my “flat has a lot of potential”; I then concluded that she thought I had a decent living condition to which she muttered the flat could be redone with a few thousands of £!

Do landlords / landladies have to prove how poor they are when being gifted thousands of £ in “incentive” or a £5000 grant? (my Borough can technically gift my landlord £7000 in the first term of 2024!)

Email from the Borough on 12 April 2024:

Landlord has nothing to fill... it's up to the tenant 

to bother filling applications in order to keep warm

and for the landlord to get thousands of £ without 

moving his ass!

A week ago, 16 April 2024, I emailed questions to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and his team; Sem Moema and her team; Caroline Woodley, Mayor of Hackney:

“As an unemployed journalist, your replies might help me get a job as I’m sending these to you and journalists in BCC. I would appreciate if you could reply by Monday 22 April 2024.

These questions regard the Housing sector in London in general and Hackney in particular.

These are journalistic questions which have personal connections, therefore no apologies are expected.

Many thanks for your time and feel free to pass on some questions to your team.

I will publish my article with or without your answers, hopefully by 25 April 2024, sending it to journalists.

HOUSING:

How can you manage to get around Housing laws made by the Tories?

Could you detail how you will target rogue private landlords - landladies?

Incentive towards private renting (regarding people receiving Housing Benefit):

What is the average amount a landlord – landlady can receive for a year from Hackney Council in particular, in London for a one bedroom flat in order to keep a flat at an affordable rent?

Is it usual for a Council to ask a tenant on benefits to participate towards incentive?

When a Council asks a landlord – landlady to keep a low rent if their flat is occupied by a person on benefits, how easy can the Council ask landowners to do repairs?

Has the Council got a duty to visit properties to make sure a tenant on benefits is living on proper standards?

In my case, my Benefits and Homeless Prevention Officer never visited my flat as promised when I told her I had no bath, no shower and heatings hardly working: is this standard / acceptable?

In order to move to a Council flat, a tenant on benefits is required to pay rent to landowner despite property being in derelict state, if they don’t Council won’t helped them avoid homelessness. How do you penalise landowners if they don’t fulfil their contract?

i.e: a neighbour who lived in Riverside Close E5 [with whom I went camping along her VJ boyfriend at Lizard Festival in Cornwall for its 1999 Total Solar Eclipse (best Bday ever)] was advised to pay her rent to her landlord (who was also my flat agent) and she couchsurfed for a year [making herself homeless] in order to get a Council flat. Her flat had suffered flood and was highly damp. I understand she paid rent without living in flat; didn’t get any money back when she left; flat has been ‘redone’ but has been empty for four months [since early December 2023 – most of his flats are empty] now! Can you describe why this is normal?

If it’s not, what do you do about it?”

No Labour politicians thought I should get a job as a journalist. Then again, they also declined responding to Maya Sall of Hackney Citizen in both her “leak-mould” piece and asbestos piece! Sall emphasises on how the Council can’t find some emails when they correspond with residents - I’m told that my correspondence with Benefit Officer stops in Summer 2020 starting again in Autumn 2023... The journalist carries on her Hackney Housing’ work for the BBC. If Labour politicians disregard journalism by refusing to answer questions of public interest on ‘Housing’, how can they expect Londoners to vote for them on 2 May 2024? Especially if their interventions are really vague or figures on homelessness is highly scary!

Following my email, Sadiq Khan was coincidently responding questions to ITV for Mayor candidates for the London debate. He also was quite happy responding to The Wired’s Peter Guest on conspiracy, climate injustice or racism! Not expanding much on homelessness but curiously insisting on the importance of facts “… where people can be persuaded with facts, where conflicts can be resolved with discussion” (p 69) / “The triumph of bullshit over facts” (p71). I so wish I could know if the Labour party thinks it’s reasonable to build a high sky swimming pool between luxury flats where affordable housing residents have no access to any facilities while also using a different entrance due to their ‘poverty’!

Other important reads on ‘Housing’ are written by Ruby Lott-Lavigna who is facing a ‘no fault eviction’ [by a chance encounter, she met the new tenant who will be paying £700 more per month than she did] as well as being made redundant from Open Democracy.

Two years after meeting the Eritrean young man in the community garden (he didn’t come back to the garden after our conversation), I had noticed abuse to other people than me. In January 2023, I wrote a detailed email to the Chair of community garden Abigail Hopkins, a counsellor in her spare time, about the ongoing abuse. She ignored it! I could have left but thought far too many people left and abuse goes under the radar... I had to investigate. By the end of August 2023, I wrote a long piece on colonialism, slavery linking its effects to managing a piece of land and behaving like a dictator! Early December 2023, following a dispute with the community garden manager for her provoking attitude, I reacted calling her a racist, a discriminatory person using wrongly a piece of land that belongs to the Council! I wrote about her abusive behaviour to Mayor of Hackney, Mayor of London, Councillors in charge of charities, parks, Human Rights defenders, the Labour Party and a few journalists.

On 9 January 2024, Chair of community garden Hopkins, banned me from going back to the garden for using abusive language, referring me as having “unpredictable behaviour”! (An email I had forwarded to my ward Cllr, Mayor of Hackney etc). Not inviting me to give my side of the story is a violation of Human Rights! But the Mayor calls my behaviour a breach of policy!

On 26 January 2024, Labour Hackney Mayor Caroline Woodley responded to my email sent 4 December 2023 about a very detailed ongoing and versatile abuse happening in Robin Hood Community Garden. I directly complained to its manager ever since I joined in August 2020! That particular email from December 2023 was regarding how I came to volunteer in the garden; on 3 December the garden manager was locked in, claiming her discomfort in my presence: she said I had to wait for another volunteer to let me in... in pouring rain, 8°C. I guess she staged a scene as nobody came, the garden was not advertised on Whatsapp (?) as being an open day. I used my Freedom of Speech rights and called her a racist (mainly to Muslim women), abusive and discriminatory towards disability.

On her email, Woodley is sorry to hear about my experiences while confirming “... the volunteering sessions are indeed advertised as weekly sessions on Sundays, between 1pm and 4pm”. She carries on giving me information about how hard the community garden is working with partners like UCL, sending me the community garden website’s link, then inviting me to “... attend the sessions again as advertised and have a much more enjoyable experience.” The Mayor of Hackney was clearly mocking me; did she expect me to turn up to the garden all dressed up in arrogance attire telling manager and ‘gardener’ that Mayor said I can come to the garden? Was it her plan to get me into trouble so it would prove my wrong doings?

My reply one hour later to Woodley: “Robin Hood Community Garden has been mostly closed on Sundays between June and December 2023, opening once or twice a month. But this is not the object of my initial complaint, so I am not sure why everything else has been ignored.”

22 March 2024, Woodley replied about Robin Hood Community Garden’ opening times while repeating what Hopkins (assumingly her friend) wrote “... they unfortunately made a decision to not allow you to volunteer in the Garden for the foreseeable future” based on me breaching their policy but I’m invited to discuss the matter further reminding me that Hackney Council is partner with the garden...

My response 20 minutes later, extract: “"but please be mindful that there is a Service Level Agreement between the RHUG and the Council to manage the Gardens" I understand that whatever I would say, they win, so how do we move on from here?”

On 23 March 2024, following a meeting with my ward Cllr at her Labour surgery, I reported to journalists: “[Cllr] said [Mayor of Hackney] is backing up Robin Hood Garden (RHG) despite them not giving details of my use of abusive language to its manager... [Mayor of Hackney] can't sack [manager] or any trustees because Hackney Council funds RHG (an independent garden [?] according to [Cllr])... then said my disability plays a part in it... I asked... why in a whole year of writing to her, detailing what's happening to RHG, nothing has been done... [Cllr] apologised for doing nothing / for having promised an investigation/admitting that no investigation had taken place... [Cllr] asked me if I wanted to go back to RHG... I asked [Cllr] how many people (there were quite a few passers by) have complained to Hackney Council that someone with a French accent was using abusive language to someone locked up in a community garden? [Cllr] said "nobody"; I asked her why nobody is taking me to court for using abusive language towards their manager. [Cllr] mumbled something...”

An entire community is prevented from attending a community garden and Hackney Council is only concerned about funding and its buzzline!

Out of the blue, on 11 April 2024 Cllr emailed there was no proper investigation of discrimination against me and others. Again, she insisted on me meeting up with Robin Hood Community Garden staff via mediation... I replied the day after that once again I disagreed with mediation. And that I had many times stressed verbally and on my reports that the abuse issue was regarding the entire community! I reminded Cllr that prior to being Mayor of Hackney, Woodley was in charge of families, parks etc in Hackney, insinuating she might have known Robin Hood Community Garden manager who also does board games for children & families in parks; or / and Abi Hopkins, Chair of RHCG who, apart from being a counsellor, she also deals with children, schools, parks etc.

I stressed that EcoActive is one of RHCG partners who seem to know Woodley; RHCG organised pollinator’ sessions in Spring-Summer 2023 I was not invited to – EcoActive have vacancies on these topics I can’t apply for due to unequal opportunities in treatment at RHCG! I added “... the whole thing is so brutal, violent and insulting! You obviously take their side! Why don’t you give me a job?”

Out of the blue, on 18 April 2024 Mayor emailed “... officers would be happy to help coordinate a meeting between you and the Trustees of RHCG to establish if there can be an acceptable resolution to this matter.” This is my reply:

“I don't sit with abusers!

Stop funding racists; disability discriminative; transphobix!

Stop being prejudiced!

Stop protecting your friends!

SACK THEM!”

If the Labour Party cared about perspective, they might learn some informative ways of looking in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (last known gorgeous soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto before his death)! 

How cynical Conservative and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insists on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda! A country sharing its border with Uganda (and Congo) where Geoffrey Oryema was born, escaped in the boot of a car, took refuge in France where I met him in Les Inrocks’ office. The singer and musician proposed an exquisite version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne for I’m Your Fan! I was delighted to hear his song Exile in Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano.