"In their letter to the Home Office, lawyers for the FBU cited media reports which said the Bibby Stockholm had only 222 single-occupancy rooms, but that additional beds had been placed in each in order to to increase the capacity to 506.
"Other reports said that, while the barge had three fire exits, one was not operational because it was at the end of a gangway that had been deemed too steep to be safely used.
“A whistleblower in the local authority is also quoted as telling the Times that fire checks in July had led to serious safety concerns and describing the barge as having the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”.”
deleted by creator
How’s it a shit solution? It held workers on it previously? Tories are desperate to make an aussie style immigration island.
How’s it a shit solution?
It held 200 workers and they ditched it because of complaints. Braverman wants to house 500 people in there. This places huge obstacles with hygiene, cooking, fire safety and creates a very oppressive living area.
The three barges have been leased for £1.6b for two years in a very unscrupulous contract. This equates to each person costing £1,066,666 each to house (£533,333 each year). This does not include running costs. This does not include legal fees incurred because of the obvious challenges against the use of the boat. This cost obviously rises if it houses less than the 500 stated.
As for the Australian system. Take some time to read upon that. Or better still look at how much the Australian system cost.:
The annual cost of detaining a single asylum seeker in Papua New Guinea or Nauru is A$3.4 million (US$2.5 million).
How can you possibly think this is a good solution?
That math breakdown of cost is shocking
The home office have quoted £20k per day. Which when you look at it, this is clearly not the case. I could well imagine the £20k per day being the running costs only (staffing, energy and food).
deleted by creator
Why does it seem that every time this government does something (whether or not I agree with the aim) there is an overall air of corner-cutting and incompetence?
their aim is always making money for themselves or their friends.
That’s usually the case but with this and the Rwanda proposal I think they’re doing it because their voters enjoy the optics and indignity of migrants being treated as sub human.
Where hundreds of millions of pounds are concerned, there is more than just optics.
and making money is just a bonus?
It is not incompetence. There is nothing this government (That is Sunak, Truss or Johnson) has done that has not facilitated a backhander somewhere. The Tories are on nothing more than a heist. They know they have been over-egging the thieving, and people are wise to them. Now it is only about as much as they can get before the gravy train ends.
Sunak’s family took a £1b contract weeks before giving out a 100 licenses to fossil fuel companies for researching new sources of oil. And now Sunak wants to grab a trade deal with India, where strangely his family has very close ties. Sunak is grabbing what ever he can. As soon as he looses at the next GE, he will grab his green card again, and spend this cash in the USA.
I sometimes wonder if there isn’t an element of doing things this way with the knowledge and expectation that others will expend energy and resources challenging it; win or lose, it might just prove to be an effective, devious and deliberate tactic for wearing people down.
Governments definitely do not want people chasing them for corruption. This was the downfall of John Major with the sleaze around cash for questions. Sleaze is a line Labour have thrown at the Tories ever since just to remind them of the cause of their worst ever defeat to date.
This current lot bat the sleaze comments away by gaslighting the public that it could not possibly be true. The only time they ever react is when it looks like they cannot hide and it is going to cost them votes. Owen Patterson being the most prominent case on that one. I suppose there is an element of this with Nadine Dorries as well. Grifting as an MP is sort of akin to stealing MPs wages while doing naff all.
There are plenty of dishonest MPs, but not so many that are well known. The Tory press hound any opposition aggressively and hide away from their own failings. Michelle Mone’s total absence with press coverage or police charges versus the response given to Nicola Sturgeon being yet another case in point.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Government plans to accommodate asylum seekers on a barge on England’s south coast face a possible legal challenge over fire safety.
The Bibby Stockholm is a three-story barge, currently berthed in Portland Port, Dorset, which is intended to hold around 500 men while they await the outcome of their asylum applications.
In their letter to the Home Office, lawyers for the FBU cited media reports which said the Bibby Stockholm had only 222 single-occupancy rooms, but that additional beds had been placed in each in order to to increase the capacity to 506.
A whistleblower in the local authority is also quoted as telling the Times that fire checks in July had led to serious safety concerns and describing the barge as having the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”.
The barge has already faced a number of legal challenges, including from refugee charities representing individual migrants and over whether the government has secured the appropriate planning permissions.
The latest challenge comes as the Home Office considers plans to fit people arriving illegally in the UK with GPS tags as an alternative to detaining them because of a lack of space in the immigration detention estate, according to the Times.
The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
