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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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We observed the strange outcome of a government policy decision: an attempt to convert a luxury hotel in the heart of the Wharf into a center for asylum seekers. Leaving aside the political firestorm, the pure economic logic is baffling. It seems like an attempt to solve a problem using the most expensive possible tool, a phenomenon I've noticed governments are particularly prone to.

To tug on this particular culture war thread, I also don't understand why anyone would agree to this. Even if your only allegiance were to the asylum seekers, you could house more asylum seekers with the same funding in cheaper real-estate on the outskirts of the city. See also: homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, etc.

Homeless shelters are often located at the center of the city because that is where the people who need their services mostly are.

Remember that one culture-war flashpoint is the fact that the vast majority of asylum seekers are getting sent to the places that are too poor and too lacking in political power to refuse them. People are pissed. If there's one thing the English still believe in, it's in everyone doing their part.

I also rarely see a mob of investment bankers torching a hotel.

The 'charitable' explanation seems to be utter bureaucratic incompetence. The cynical one would be that said bureaucrats are trying to prove a point, getting one over the financiers too big for their britches.

Ahem. Bureaucrats are unlikely to have made this decision. Politicians probably did (or at least decided the guidelines) so that the impact of housing asylum seekers was disseminated across differing communities. (Which might also involve getting one over on financiers, or charitably ensuring that the wealthy have some skin in the game (or even more cynically "See we're not JUST putting them in poor communities")). The bureaucrats just implement largely. This is Home Office funded so the decisions will have been made at a pretty high level.

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