Cost of Furnishing Asylum Seekers’ Flats “With Satellite TV” Too “Sensitive” to be Released, Says Watchdog
The cost of furnishing flats for asylum seekers cannot be released under Freedom of Information laws because the issue is too “sensitive” and could put them at risk, a watchdog has ruled. The Telegraph has more.
John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, has ruled in favour of the Home Office, which refused to reveal the cost of furnishing a block of flats to be used by 346 asylum seekers in Farnborough, Hampshire.
He rejected an appeal to release the information under freedom of information (FoI) laws, saying the public interest in revealing the cost to the taxpayer of the furnishing was outweighed by the need to protect the asylum seekers from protests and risks to their “health and safety”.
The apartments were allegedly finished with flat-screen TVs and satellite television.
Lee Anderson, the Reform U.K. MP for Ashfield, criticised the decision and said he planned to raise it in a Parliamentary debate on immigration next week. He added: “The real risk is to the taxpayer, who is spending millions of pounds per day on people that should not be in the country.
“The fact that the Home Office and Information Commissioner are hiding or suppressing this information is a kick in the teeth for every single hard-working taxpayer in this country. They should have this information. I think they are probably embarrassed about the cost of it.”
James Cleverly, when he was Home Secretary, paused plans to move asylum seekers into the flats after a local backlash. It was claimed that, on the open market, the flats would have cost £1,400 a month to rent.
Worth reading in full.
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Don’t release it in case it makes all those “racists” Tweet something and we have to lock them up.
So we’ve now reached the point where the state takes money from its people but refuses to say how it spends it, removing proper accountability.
The root of the problem is the power imbalance between the state and citizens. The state has more power and now uses it to abuse its population.
But as.most of them are plugged into the BBC, ITV, Sky info matrix, they’ll never know or think to question any of it.
And those that aren’t and do ask questions, we’ll it’s the clink for them.
Dare tell me we don’t live in a pseudo Soviet world now.
F’all ‘pseudo’ about it.
Can we expect to see the establishment MPs fall over each other as they desperately head for the exit doors when Lee Andersen speaks in the Immigration debate as they disgustingly did when Andrew Bridgen stood up to speak in the first Covid debate on excess deaths?
Well done to Will Jones & DS for featuring this absolute outrage— it’s Highway Robbery of the Taxpayers, who never gave their consent for any of this.
Other reports said the Home Office had even refused offers of good second-hand furniture, because they said “they didn’t match”!!!
Why the emphasis on ‘flat-screen’ TVs? It would be remarkable if they were anything but flat-screens these days.
What may be relevant is the size of the screen – some modern TVs are monstrously large. What is relevant is that it seems each apartment has its own TV and that it appears the residents have subscription TV service and not just Freeview broadcast provided.
It’s insane… Asylum seekers, who have contributed the square root of sod all and paid no taxes or contributed to the economy in any way, are being granted better accommodation than a good proportion of hard-working but struggling Brits who have been doing these things all their lives!
And they have to be mollycoddled with a wall of silence about the cost of their furnishings that we are paying for.
Funnily enough, some of the larger tvs, which are surely all ‘flat screen’ these days (or were they supposed to get CRT tvs?) can be picked up pretty cheaply now. Not defending anything, just stating a fact. In the early 80s I splurged out £250 for an 18 inch colour portable tv, which was a lot of money for me. Our most recent smart TV cost much the same for a 43 inch screen. The cost is probably on a par with the smartphones they are given. However, the government have surely shot themselves in the foot because refusing to say how much everything cost tells you it was too expensive, and is probably a goodly proportion of the amount of winter fuel allowance removed from pensioners.
You mean the replacement Smartphones because their old ones were discarded into the drink. There is nothing like a genuine refugee who hides their identity!
The reason TVs where specifically asked about was because they wouldn’t release the total housing costs for the boat ubbermench, so TVs where specifically requested for a specific location under FOI to get an idea of the alleged luxury based on the nunber if rooms. The Home Office is keeping the luxury completely under wraps owing to the approximated cost of £400 per day per new “citizen”
They shouldn’t be given TV at all.
I think a lot of ex-servicemen who’ve fallen on hard times might have something to say about this utterly utterly disgusting revelation.
They get precious little back from the state after giving their best years and in many cases limbs and sanity.
I’m so disgusted I can hardly think.
The only possible reply is a tax strike.
Fuck’em.
And yes this incitement to break the law.
I think we are mostly numb.
All I can say to that is…What a bunch on wank*rs!
It’s now disappeared, but 2 years ago and shortly before her death, I did a Google search for my mother to see what was now happening in her childhood home on Rugby Street in Hartlepool. This is a street of modest, back to back terraced houses built in the 1930s. I came across an advertisement for an investment opportunity whereby 5 houses in the street had been bundled together and were being sold as a single job-lot. Each of the 5 houses was fully occupied by a number of male asylum seekers, with the government signing up to a long term guarantee of their rental payments, as well as covering the costs of routine repairs and maintenance. It was naturally described as an extremely low risk, high-yielding investment The price at which this package of 5 modest houses was being offered was substantially above their open-market value, and their sale was obviously likely to distort the existing housing market in the area, particularly to the detriment of potential first time buyers. I was just looking at Rugby Street because of my family connections, but I have no doubt that similar investment opportunities are being advertised throughout Hartlepool and similar working-class… Read more »
Stop calling them asylum seekers. They are nothing of the sort. They are government-sponsored criminal invaders.
Yup and the Lefty Lawyers & organisations that house them are just as much scumbags as those gangs that they allow the public to hate on.
Excellent point. We must avoid using the corrupt language of the enemy.
I preferred the more accurate “Illegal Aliens”
Indeed
Or invaders
Needed to be said.
Outrageous!
Again I say, those entering this country illegally are arriving from a safe country and are, therefore, not fleeing danger. Thus, they do not have the status of ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’
Having volunteered with charities that work with mainly indigenous homeless who are left to survive on the streets, I find this particularly difficult to stomach.
State Secret
How They Spend Our Money
Spot on. They have no public mandate for this, and we were never asked.
STOP THE BOATS but START THE SKY SUBSCRIPTION. Migrants should also request a package that includes NETFLIX. There are a lot of good shows on there they can watch when not wandering down to Specsavers for their free glasses.
That headline will be one of many reasons, that there’ll never be another Labour or Conservative government.
This last UK GE has put us on sync with the rest of the West, with the voters waking up, and the current government flavour being irrelevant.
God, I hope so. I want them destroyed.
Well we already have a uniparty state so we are only a stones throw away from some form of totalitarian state.
The article doesn’t mention a Sky sports package. If the dark powers were really keen to get fighting age males into the country they would surely let it be known that Sky sports is available?
Just a quick question since the others have already asked / answered the important ones – who pays their TV license?
Do people still pay a TV licence fee?
As a pensioner I have had to cancel my satellite subscription. To say I feel niffed about this situation is a gross understatement!
Get a Manhattan Freesat. I got mine four years ago for £70. You can’t pause or record but that is the trade off.
The lack of transparency is creeping tyranny. I am sure “civil servants” (more like uncivil non servants) realise that such lavish accommodation that incentivise people to leave their countries, become exploited by organise human traffickers charging elevated prices (increased in proportion to the absurdly attractive benefits offered by the UK Home Office) and that this is the point of such policies. The UK government pays its citizens to not work or detect any incentive to seek work or self improve. It also pays a high proportion of wages in the UK via working tax credits, a form of corporate welfare that should be phased out so the markets can do their job – something this country’s elite has lost all faith in, even concept of, free markets in this century something that needs to be corrected or we are doomed), a form that has been augmented by ultra, super, MASS immigration, 9/10th of which is legal and therefore, without question, the policy of our government despite what nonsense they spew whenever they open their mouths. There is no evidence or reason to believe the little boats are anything but a bonus to giant, more often than not foreign, corporations paid… Read more »
How many of these tv’s will be removed & sold?
How many “irregular migrants” arrive by means other than small boats across The Channel?