Tag Archives: Stockholm

The Tories are lying about asylum-seekers with an old trick

Symbol of hate: the Tory government doesn’t want any asylum-seekers to stay in the UK, so ministers are coming up with bizarre and cruel excuses to get rid of them. Bibby Stockholm – the cramped, firetrap, disease-ridden prison barge the Tories hired to house them at great expense – has become the symbol of this cruelty.

Oh look – the Conservative government is cooking the books; lying about the number of people who have arrived in the UK in search of asylum.

According to The Guardian, Stephen Kinnock of the Starmer Party accused the Conservatives of “artificially withdrawing claims” if someone misses an appointment.

“It doesn’t mean they’ve been processed, it just puts people into limbo. Then essentially people are just slipping into the underground economy,” Kinnock said.

More than 6,000 people have been wiped off the list without being fully assessed in just three months, for reasons such as failing to attend interviews or appointments, and not filling in new fast-track questionnaires.

Is this a revival of an old Tory trick – cutting off support with a false claim about the people they are affecting?

We can check this by asking a few questions: Do they even receive notification to attend these interviews? Do any of you remember when the Department for Work and Pensions was cancelling benefit claims by disabled people and those with long-term ilnesses, claiming that they had missed appointments – of which, it later transpired, they had never been informed?

I think the government would need to prove these people had been aware that an appointment had been made and that they needed to attend, before taking any action.

I wonder if anybody will bother to find out.

Then there’s this:

On this, at least, we have a little guidance on what will happen.

According to Bing‘s friendly AI: “The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, has said that if you decline the accommodation that’s provided, such as a barge, then we will consider removing your asylum support and that individual will ultimately have to fend for themselves.”

What does this mean? “The government begins the process of removing the asylum seeker from the UK. Some are offered money to leave voluntarily.”

So in other words, if people refuse to board a ship that has been condemned as a firetrap by the Fire Brigades Union and has been found to be full of Legionnaire’s Disease, they will be deported – presumably back to France.

We knew that the aim of Tory policy is to clear anybody who seeks asylum in the UK out of this country, no matter what their reason for coming here.

The more we discover about their methods, the lower our opinion of them must fall.

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Would Lee Anderson have told Jewish refugees to ‘f*** off’ back to Germany in WW2?

Floating concentration camp: Bibby Stockholm (pictured) is a floating mirror of the camps built by Nazis for groups they considered undesirable. How many Jewish asylum-seekers and refugees have been forced to board it?

Here’s a sad reminder of the lengths by which the Conservatives have regressed UK society:

Professor Roberts is only slightly inaccurate; while the Bibby Stockholm and any other converted prison barges are reminiscent of those ships from centuries ago, they are more accurately described as concentration camps – a label most commonly associated with the Nazi extermination of Jews, Romanies, homosexuals and other proscribed groups in the 1930s and 40s.

One cannot help but feel that this was an intended aim of Tory immigration policy; they did not have to let the issue of refugees migrating across the English Channel happen at all – it used to be well under control but successive legislative changes by the Tories changed that.

Is it a sinister message to the people of the UK? “Do as you’re told or you will be next?”

The Conservatives themselves have been strident in their support of a policy that imprisons people who have done nothing wrong, with a view to deporting them to a foreign country with a highly-questionable human rights record.

But they have (deliberately?) got the tone all wrong. Their party’s deputy chairman, “30p Lee” Anderson, actually used obscene language when referring to asylum-seekers – which implies that he considers them to be a form of life that is below him (this is impossible; as a Tory, Lee Anderson is already lower than vermin).

The associations with other far-right political organisations were quickly identified, but Anderson has been defended by other high-ranking Tories:

And public opinion has judged them all:

In fairness, the attitude is being challenged – and you can judge the pitiful response from Justice Secretary Alex Chalk for yourself:

There isn’t a queue to jump, of course. The UK government picks and chooses who it allows in and, if you are from a wide array of countries that includes territory the UK has bombed within the last 13 years, there is no legal route for asylum open to you.

People who believe they must seek sanctuary in the UK – and remember, France takes three times as many refugees as this country has; German takes 10 times as many – have no choice but to do as they have.

Here’s Chalk again, showing that he shares Anderson’s fascist views about foreigners:

His claim that people should stop at the first “safe” country has long-since been debunked; international law does not demand that and never has.

Fortunately the rest of us aren’t putting up with any of this Tory/Fascist/racist nonsense:

Now brace yourself for a bombshell:

If asylum-seekers and/or refugees refuse to take places on the Bibby Stockholm floating concentration camp, they won’t be sent back to France but they will lose financial support from the UK government, which will not provide accommodation for them.

So let’s be clear on this: they’ll still be in the UK, but out on the streets, unmonitored? Isn’t that what they want?

So the Tory plan to deal with these asylum-seekers and refugees is either to make them put up with conditions similar to those faced by concentration camp victims in Nazi Germany or to flood the UK’s streets with them – something politicians like Lee Anderson and Alex Chalk have been strenuously opposing for a long time.

Where’s the sense in that?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the House of Commons, we see no opposition at all:

So Keir Starmer agrees with the Tories yet again. No surprises there.

Indeed, the rhetoric of Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour) is identical to that of the Conservatives on this matter:

£6 million a day adds up to £2,190,000,000 a year for hotel accommodation. The barges cost – well, see for yourself:

So: £800 million per year. But that’s not instead of the cost of hotels – it is in addition to that cost.

And what are we – and asylum seekers/refugees – getting for that cost? Edwin Hayward has researched it:

He had a highly-pertinent response to a correspondent who thought this didn’t seem too bad:

The best word on this whole sorry affair has come – as it usually does – from the most unfairly-vilified politician in Westminster: Jeremy Corbyn. He reminds us that the UK used to have a human immigration and asylum system, before the fascists and racists who currently call themselves Conservatives (and their counterpart cuckoos in Keir Starmer’s party) came along.

And look at the comment on his words, below:

We have come full circle.

UK policy on refugees and asylum-seekers is not only vile and inhumane; it reflects that of the Nazis to the minorities they persecuted.

Lee Anderson, Alex Chalk, Keir Starmer and Stephen Kinnock (it seems clear) would have put Jewish refugees from the Nazis in concentration camps, if they had been alive and in Parliament at that time. And how many of those currently aboard Bibby Stockholm are Jewish, anyway?

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Asylum barge is potential new Grenfell Tower-style deathtrap

Suella Braverman considers a kinder, ‘compassionate Conservative’ response to asylum-seekers.

Isn’t it good to know the Tories are taking their responsibilities seriously?

Oh, wait…

Once they have detained people they believe have come to the UK illegally, they have a legal responsibility to ensure the well-being of those people until their future can be decided.

So, do they house these people in safe and secure accommodation? No!

They say: “We’ll put them up in a floating firetrap with no means of escape if it burns; that’s good enough for ’em!”

Or at least, that’s what This Writer gets from the following:

Here’s the supporting information:

Bizarrely, if I recall correctly, the Tory government could have put the same number of people into luxury hotel rooms for less money than it has cost to hire this floating incinerator.

The Fire Brigades Union has now written to the Home Office, and you can read the letter here:

It says: “Firefighting operations on vessels such as the Bibby Stockholm provide significant challenges and require specialist training and safe systems of work.”

Then it describes safety provisions on the Bibby Stockholm as “diminished” and warns that the nature of those provisions “exacerbate our operational concerns”.

The letter also states that “The FBU believes fire safety standards are universal and apply to everyone… Fire does not discriminate and therefore neither should safety regulations.”

The implication is clear: the boat is unsafe and the FBU believes it has been deliberately made unsafe on Home Office orders.

This Writer looks forward to hearing Suella Braverman’s excuse for housing asylum-seekers in a deathtrap.

I’m willing to bet it will include a lot of bullying talk and probably a bit of racism as well.

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Barge to house asylum seekers looks like a prison and is treated like one. What is it?

Has the plan to house asylum-seekers on the 222-berth barge Bibby Stockholm come unstuck with its comparison to a floating prison?

Tory ministers may be claiming it hasn’t…

… but they would have been better-off checking their history books first.

Allow me to introduce you to HM Prison Weare:

Formerly known as the Bibby Resolution, HMP Weare was moored at – guess where? – Portland Port near Weymouth, where it held 400 prisoners between 2004 and 2005 when it closed due to costly running, being unnecessary and the cost of millions of pounds in order to refurbish it.

The prison was reopened a few months later for a short period. Not long after, the prison closed permanently and was sold off after conditions on board were criticised by the Chief Inspector for Prisoners, who complained that inmates had no exercise and no access to fresh air, also stating the ship was “unsuitable, expensive and in the wrong place”

So: poor conditions, costly and unnecessary.

May we expect to see the same conditions prevailing with HMP Weare’s sister ship, Bibby Stockholm?

Here’s a better idea for it:

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