“Prison in Pimlico”
Sometimes I wonder how Westminster News editors decide which ‘news’ to publish. In my most cynical assessment I even wonder if there are secret ‘conventions’ negotiated between mandarins and chief editors, such as ‘you can write about this subject if you also write about this one’. Do I sound too convoluted? Well, look at this screenshot of the DT’s online edition’s front page:
Side by side there’s a report on migrants and a piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Russia being on her knees. Was this a quid-pro-quo negotiated between mandarins and chief editors, e.g. publish this but write another anti-Russia piece’?
After all, the rest of the Westminster press are still going on about yon disgraced ITV presenter and/or about the government’s covid ‘inquiry’, the latest stage for the erstwhile PM for his ‘it weren’t me, guv’ performance: “Newspaper headlines: Ministers defy Covid inquiry and Schofield speaks” (link).
In the following I’ll deal at length with the extraordinary report on yon immigrants, disregarding AEP’s piece. After all, we know by now that the DT is the first and foremost amongst the warmongers in Westminster. I m also doing this because so far none of the usual ‘suspects’ have copied the DT report, thus only this paywalled piece is available.
Firstly, look at the headline: “Migrants barricade London hotel after being denied private rooms – Asylum seekers say they will sleep on the pavement outside Pimlico Comfort Inn in protest against being treated ‘like animals’” (paywalled link). Gasp and clutch yer pearls – what the harsh government is doing to the poor thing is terrible (all emphases are mine):
“Instead of the single rooms with en suite bathrooms that they had in their Essex hotel, they found they were being forced to share – four to a single room with two bunk beds and a “smelly” toilet – in a hotel in central London. On Thursday, the 25 migrants refused to return to their rooms in the Comfort Inn in Pimlico and instead decamped to the pavement. They say they will sleep there with their blankets, duvets, cushions and suitcases until they get single rooms. A 27-year-old Iranian said: “Two square metres is not enough for sleeping four people. And when you go to the toilet, the smell damages you.” (paywalled link)
Dearie me! ‘Smelly toilets’? How disgusting, how undignified! It gets even better! The DT clearly has sent a reporter to talk to those poor people:
“A 21-year-old Channel migrant from Iran said: “They said we’re going to move you [from Park Hotel] to another, better place. They gave us this postcode. When we checked on Google Maps, we said, oh this is very nice. But when you get in, it’s like a jail. And they treat you very, very bad. They treat you like an animal. […] We’ll stay [on the street] until the Home Office does something for us. We can stay even for one month. It’s alright.” A 26-year-old from east Africa who crossed the Channel on a small boat said they had been given private rooms in their hotel in Ilford. “We are not kids, everybody had a private room. We need a private room. How do you live with four men?” (paywalled link)
Well, at least they’re only demanding a ‘private room, en-suite’, not a whole house for themselves! Nobody seems to have told them that beggars can’t be choosers. In the year these ‘poor refugees’ have been here they seem to have done quite nicely for themselves on our money when you look at this photo showing their possessions. There’s more:
“The migrants – from Iraq, Iran, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Bangladesh – have stuck protest posters at the hotel entrance and on traffic lights that declare: “Help us,” “This is a prison, not a hotel,” “Inhuman conditions, dirty rooms” and “Homeless by the Home Office”.” (paywalled link)
What a beautiful slogan for a protest poster: “Homeless by the Home Office”! I wonder which ‘refugee activists’ helped them with this. Was this report allowed to see the light of day because the Immigration Bill is wending its way through Parliament and some sort of ‘public outcry’ is needed in support? After all, other protests from citizens across the country have had such an impact!
And finally, we learn the reason for this horrible transfer of yon migrants from their ‘private rooms’ in Ilford to this ‘prison in Pimlico’:
“[The ‘refugees’] transfer is part of an attempt by the Home Office to reduce the £6 million-a-day cost of housing some 50,000 asylum seekers in hotels. Ministers are understood to be pressing for increased use of shared rooms amid concerns that people smuggling gangs are exploiting the lure of hotel accommodation and a chance to see London’s tourist attractions.” (paywalled link)
So some ministers have cottoned on to the fact that people traffickers use images of accommodation in hotels in tourist spots as pull factor to increase their smuggling budget? About time too! And why wouldn’t ‘poor refugees come when there’s this:
“Asylum seekers housed in hotels are free to come and go and receive £45 a week, or £9.10 a week if they get bed and board. Some 400 hotels have been commissioned to date, causing controversy, as some have been four-star country estates or the main tourist hotels in city centres.” (paywalled link)
Well, that’s what happens when NGOs, pressure groups and some of our esteemed MSM are more keen on treating those migrants ‘fairly’, on our, the taxpayers’ money, happily disregarding the ‘cost of living crisis’. Finally, there’s a moan from a hotel director nearby, about cancellations and local residents having their lives disrupted, saying that it ain’t fair for the tourists, but also that “housing four migrants to a room was “unfair and unhealthy”.” (paywalled link)
If putting four migrants in a room is ‘unfair and unhealthy’, I wonder why we don’t have private rooms for all patients in our NHS hospitals … Moreover, the management of this ‘prison hotel’ wasn’t talking to the DT, so I wonder if it has been bought by those nice business entities which ‘manage’ the hotels in which migrants are placed – and if the director of that other hotel is perhaps unhappy that his property hasn’t been bought as well.
Funny how we’ve not heard about our own ‘home-grown’ homeless for some time. I’m not aware that they’ve been given even three-star hotel accommodation. Perhaps they ought to band together and demand to be treated like ‘poor refugees’? Why should they put up with ‘unfair and unhealthy’ conditions in the dormitories for the homeless – and doesn’t charity begin at home?
That’s all I have for you. Try not to worry about rising taxes and inflation: yon poor things need to be ‘housed’ properly and deserve our money, to visit our tourist attractions. Doing otherwise surely would be racist and akin to slavery! Have a good day.
Well said to all that Harold. As a nation ee have become far too placid, where has our fighting nature gone, My father would have been getting ready to use his belt buckle.
Dear Viv,
It would appear that you have hit one of my nerves! (taken my mind off the sciatica for a tad).
I enjoy your photo intros to your daily review, but today!
Is this a cartoon of Smerk Feckerberg living out there in the real ‘Free World’ with his chums, looking in on what part of the real ‘World’ we are allowed to be in?
Just Askinmet (ing) (LOL)
Bournemouth.
There’s a rumour going about that the wake from the boat pictured got these children into difficulties.
The captain of the boat is the one arrested.
Makes sense as the incident happened near the pier.
The immigrant in the picture appears to have a fag in his mouth. I don’t know what a packet of fags cost but I believe taxation has made them quite expensive and so it is surprising that someone on £45 a week (less if they are getting meals) can afford to smoke. We can be pretty sure they go into the hotel at intervals to recharge their smartphones . I’d more impressed if they camped outside the Home Office but these poor ‘refugees’ are not about to endure the conditions of our indigenous homeless (of no free sim cards and electricity). In any case, they have far too many possessions to be wandering homeless.
At a recent dinner I sat next to a Polish lady ( a former presidential candidate as it happens) who had returned but the day before from a demonstration in Krakow – large she said – in protest at the number of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. In England the protests, the very few protests, have been small. Only in England is it the invaders protesting and the placid populace looking the other way. Perhaps not quite only England. There was an intrusion in a Paris town hall by immigrants demanding flats be given to them. The robust response by police was in sharp contrast to UK police acting as immigrant protest enablers.
Revolutionary fervour left England over 300 years ago in contrast to our continental cousins, mainly the French, for whom revolutionary fervour never really went away. The number and level of protests in France is quite impressive and it is growing in Ireland – Varadka as out of touch as our own politicians are here – and it is to other countries we must look to lead as our own citizenry are so docile. The huge covid era demonstration in London in April 2021 which I estimated to be at least 100,000, was a good natured, festive affair as we walked along Oxford street past bemused, masked shoppers. We are no longer the Saxons of whom Kipling wrote (in Normans and Saxons):
My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:—
“The Saxon is not like us Normans, His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, “This isn’t fair dealings,” my son, leave the Saxon alone.
“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears,
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.
Kipling’s view of England and the English, as in his ‘The Beginnings’ also, is painful to read these days. We have become too lazy and complacent to be round anyone’s ears anymore. Our character has changed and it will be, is, our undoing.
Maybe the unhappy Benefit Seekers at the Pimlico Hotel could be offered a free dinghy (one of the hundreds at Dover) back to the safe country of France. In the long run it could be a better option than here in the UK where the Government seem intent on creating food and energy shortages in pursuit of Net Zero and importing anyone from anywhere. In effect they are creating a third world country similar to the ones the Benefit Seekers originally left.
I do wish that the papers would stop labelling those people as “asylum seekers” which they are not, having travelled through a safe country, France. UN rules require them to seek asylum in the first safe country that they enter so I can only conclude that they are being weaponised by a government working against the interests of its native people.
Plus you have to ask where are their families? Abandoned in deadly danger?
Why do they destroy their identities before they land?