Amelia

@AmeliaJac0b

London, England

Joined March 2024

704 Following

165 Followers

43 Posts

AmeliaJac0b retweeted

The New Statesman @NewStatesman

23 days ago

HOW BRITAIN LOST CONTROL by Anoosh Chakelian When George Orwell was working on The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936, he lodged at a tripe shop riddled with beetles on this street. He had asked a local to point him towards the worst place to stay. On the same quest today, he would have had plenty of suggestions. Darlington Street and its offshoots are thought around town to have Britain’s highest concentration of Serco-run and other “HMOs”. HMOs are houses in multiple occupation, and Serco is one of the private outsourcing companies with a government contract to rent them out to asylum seekers. Serco leases houses from private landlords and runs them on their behalf. I have heard from landlords who are being paid between £1,000 and £2,000 a month in rent on these properties, depending on the number of bedrooms, location and condition. The money these landlords are receiving comes from the Home Office, which agreed ten-year contracts to outsource the accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels and houses to Serco and two other firms: Clearsprings and Mears. These contracts are projected to have cost the taxpayer a total of £15.3bn by 2029. There are 93,653 asylum seekers housed in Home Office asylum accommodation in the UK, around 22 per cent of whom are in hotels, some of which Serco also runs. The government has prioritised closing hotels. As a result, the number of people being quietly dispersed to houses is rising every year – there are now 68,719 in tens of thousands of houses across the country. Emotion runs high. The UK’s asylum accommodation model has led to rioting and protests for two consecutive summers across Britain. Protesters direct their rage at the government, the council, police and asylum seekers. But occasionally, you see signs reading “Serco Out”. Serco is so integral to the British state that the Labour politician Margaret Hodge has called it “too big to fail”, because “there are too many services that would collapse” if it went bankrupt. It simply runs too many state functions for it to be feasible to allow it to go bust. It’s not just Serco. So much of the state, from welfare, prisons, and asylum to the NHS, security and social care, is in the hands of gnomically named companies most voters have never heard of: Capita, Sodexo, G4S. Thatcher is often accused of “selling off the family silver” when she privatised public utilities and state-controlled industries. But less attention is paid to the services she pawned off, now in the hands of outsourcing giants. The question is whether a potential future prime minister, such as Andy Burnham, could overthrow the outsourced state. Cover illustration by Gregori Saavedra

NewStatesman's tweet photo. HOW BRITAIN LOST CONTROL by Anoosh Chakelian

When George Orwell was working on The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936, he lodged at a tripe shop riddled with beetles on this street. He had asked a local to point him towards the worst place to stay. On the same quest today, he would have had plenty of suggestions. Darlington Street and its offshoots are thought around town to have Britain’s highest concentration of Serco-run and other “HMOs”. HMOs are houses in multiple occupation, and Serco is one of the private outsourcing companies with a government contract to rent them out to asylum seekers.

Serco leases houses from private landlords and runs them on their behalf. I have heard from landlords who are being paid between £1,000 and £2,000 a month in rent on these properties, depending on the number of bedrooms, location and condition. The money these landlords are receiving comes from the Home Office, which agreed ten-year contracts to outsource the accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels and houses to Serco and two other firms: Clearsprings and Mears. These contracts are projected to have cost the taxpayer a total of £15.3bn by 2029.

There are 93,653 asylum seekers housed in Home Office asylum accommodation in the UK, around 22 per cent of whom are in hotels, some of which Serco also runs. The government has prioritised closing hotels. As a result, the number of people being quietly dispersed to houses is rising every year – there are now 68,719 in tens of thousands of houses across the country.

Emotion runs high. The UK’s asylum accommodation model has led to rioting and protests for two consecutive summers across Britain. Protesters direct their rage at the government, the council, police and asylum seekers. But occasionally, you see signs reading “Serco Out”.

Serco is so integral to the British state that the Labour politician Margaret Hodge has called it “too big to fail”, because “there are too many services that would collapse” if it went bankrupt. It simply runs too many state functions for it to be feasible to allow it to go bust.

It’s not just Serco. So much of the state, from welfare, prisons, and asylum to the NHS, security and social care, is in the hands of gnomically named companies most voters have never heard of: Capita, Sodexo, G4S.

Thatcher is often accused of “selling off the family silver” when she privatised public utilities and state-controlled industries. But less attention is paid to the services she pawned off, now in the hands of outsourcing giants. The question is whether a potential future prime minister, such as Andy Burnham, could overthrow the outsourced state.

Cover illustration by Gregori Saavedra

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AmeliaJac0b retweeted

The New Yorker

@NewYorker

24 days ago

Heidi Blake investigates Andrew Tate, drawing on thousands of private messages, sealed prosecutorial files, and court records—as well as scores of interviews with the Tates, their associates, and more than a dozen alleged victims. https://t.co/W1dJFfX8y3

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Amelia

@AmeliaJac0b

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