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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social

This is a test of what we are as a country, oh England, my England. Asylum seekers are getting basic care while living in conditions that are often not fit for human habitation, in decaying old hotels This was all arranged by the previous government deliberately to piss people off, to their profit

aug 29, 2025, 5:19 pm • 11 6

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Meher Oliaji - Fkkk the bigots @mehero.bsky.social

If asylum seeker accommodation is in Tory voting areas, it's because if you own a run-down hotel which is not commercially viable, you can make money by letting it to the govt. And until last year, a Tory MP was more likely to to get you that contract

aug 31, 2025, 3:02 am • 1 0 • view
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Mark Aitch @ver-bat-man.bsky.social

It's more likely that this mess was created by Tory incompetence and petty corruption than by any planned action. Putin was probably laughing his head off and saying "I wish I'd thought of that."

aug 31, 2025, 5:16 am • 0 0 • view
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Meher Oliaji - Fkkk the bigots @mehero.bsky.social

The whole of the Covid PPE scandal was exactly this sort of "petty corruption". The family-and-friends fast-track channel was vivid demonstration of how Tories think the public purse is available to their thieving hands.

aug 31, 2025, 7:06 am • 1 0 • view
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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social

Conservative Party policy scapegoated immigrants as cover for Austerity post-Brexit they created the asylum seeker hotel situation with a deliberate backlog policy + hotel placements Disinformation distraction, red meat for the under-informed + xenophobic Someone to blame to stop people looking up

A graph of rapidly rising migrant numbers making small boat crossings from ~100 to 45,000 2018 - 2022 from: Sea Change on Border Control: A Strategy for Reducing Small Boat Crossings in the English Channel https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4351994 Thom Brooks Durham University - Law School; Yale University - Law School February 9, 2023 graph showing the mounting numbers of asylums seekers awaiting a decision since 2018 despite the numbers of applicants not increasing by much https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/asylum-backlog graph showing asylum seeker application caseworking staff increasing to 60% from 2015-16 to 2021-22 but productivity falling to -70% during the same time period https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/asylum-backlog
aug 29, 2025, 5:48 pm • 10 3 • view
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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social

This is the reality of asylum seeker hotels.

Martin Smith 22 Aug Two years ago I stayed two nights, by accident, in a former hotel in the process of converting to an asylum hostel. Heres my story and what I learned: I was needed on a job with work at a site just outside Coventry at very short notice. I googled the nearest hotel to the site and booked it online. On arrival at 10pm the car park was almost empty apart from a few works vans for a local building firm and needed weeding. There was one person on reception and having waited on my own in the lobby for 20 minutes asked me if I was sure I had the right hotel and explained it had just converted its use to a hostel. She explained the situation and told me this was her last night as hotel staff had been fired and replaced with a skeleton crew on minimum wage. I decided to stay even though all the hotel facilities were long closed down including the bar, the kitchen and even the vending machines and lifts. They offered breakfast in a private room in the morning at 7am only and advised me not to speak to other residents. I did not obey this instruction What I learned: * Several hundred old and young men, women and a handful of children were housed sometimes in groups of 4 to 6 in former double hotel rooms. * Cleaning/airing of my room had not happened for several weeks * There was no clean bed linen or housekeeping service https://www.facebook.com/549365711/posts/pfbid0yNVvci2PDxwRtHv8RjDrMCRg81uhr2JPiX52Wt33SFEWCPjjbXhxNL1AGgYUxUZhl/ * The windows were badly in need of cleaning and there were tiles loose in the bathroom, rusty taps and wallpaper starting to peel * The hotel smelled very strongly of tobacco smoke leading me to suspect the hotel standard smoke alarms had been disabled * The breakfast was truly poor quality and without choice over contents or dietary options. * Many residents were too traumatised and terrified to talk, avoided me particularly and stayed in their crowded rooms 23 hours a day * Many I talked with were from Somalia or Afghanistan - including at least one who had been a former British Army interpreter. * A few asked me to go to the corner shop on their behalf to buy cigarettes and Coke with their pocket money of at the time around £2 a day. * This was a former hotel which had been converted into a hostel for asylum seekers. I was the last paying guest and they shouldnt have taken my booking or arranged alternative accommodation once I turned up. * Statistically three quarters of the people I shared the hostel/hotel with will have been approved for UK residency by now, including, I hope, the former British soldier. * Not a single resident of the hostel/hotel was illegal in any way So if far right propoganda about
aug 29, 2025, 7:42 pm • 16 9 • view
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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social

also important 🙏 donate if you can (and come along to stand up to hate)

aug 30, 2025, 3:57 pm • 2 1 • view