Be Excellent To Each Other

You will have all seen the news reports and heard the discussions about housing asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge. You will have no doubt have also heard the appalling language government ministers have been using about people who are seeking sanctuary from persecution and torture. But this is all a smoke-screen for something else that has been happening this week that will affect every single one of our friends.

The government are determined that they will not open any new hotels to house this summer's expected influx of asylum seekers. So this week, with no notice, the government has implemented a 'hotel maximisation scheme'. It has quietly removed the legal requirements about room size and over-crowding that usually applies to Houses of Multiple Occupancy in the case of asylum seekers, and applied these revised rules to the temporary hotel accommodation. This means that all the rooms that are single occupancy in our women and families hotel will become twins.

Our friends who have been living in their own room for many months (nearly 2 years in some cases) will now have to share with someone they don't know, who may not be the same religion or even speak the same language. There is no communal room at the hotel as it has been converted to a twin bedroom so there is nowhere for the 15 children we suppoprt to play.
As you can imagine, this has caused a lot of distress at the hotel, especially as for some the first time they heard about it was when they were handed single sheets instead of double. We are expecting 18 new arrivals over the next few days.
In the case of the men's hotel, the contractors are looking into adding bunk beds to triple the capacity.

Our colleagues at other hotels have similar issues - one hotel is doubling from 250 to 500! And none of the support groups have been informed about this - we are expected to find the resources to add 18 women to our english class, fund a bigger bus to get them into town, find them all clothing, get them to their health appointments and generally advocate for them. We are already exhausted.

Why is this happening? Well, the govenrment have spectacularly failed to process enough of the backlog of asylum claims, meaning that people are still stuck in hotels. In fact, the numbers arriving is 17% lower than at this time last year, but it is taking AT LEAST 2 years to get through the asylum system. This country could easily absorb the 35,000 asylum seekers that arrived last year - we need people to boost the workforce - but it hasn't yet processed the 32,000 that arrived in 2021, or the 30,000 that came in 2020.

So when you hear people talking about the Bibby Stockholm Barge, or the Minister using the F word, please tell them what is really going on and how utterly appalling and inhumane it all is.

Why is this happening? Well, the govenrment have spectacularly failed to process enough of the backlog of asylum claims, meaning that people are still stuck in hotels. In fact, the numbers arriving is 17% lower than at this time last year, but it is taking AT LEAST 2 years to get through the asylum system.

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats. “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”

Trump, 77, faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments, for state and federal election subversion, retention of classified records and hush-money payments to a porn star.

I had honestly forgotten that Liz Truss had ever been PM. It was literally only last year!

Yeah, serves him right, except he'll be let out when Trump gets back in next year.

It was all worth it for this Stephen Collins cartoon.

Theatres are getting hammered by that too. I was meant to see Phil Wang on Friday but it's been cancelled