Tiny village votes for 'independence' from UK amid asylum seeker row | Hacker News Reader

Tiny village votes for 'independence' from UK amid asylum seeker row

manchestereveningnews.co.uk

22 pointsDanhale9341 comments

> Piddington — home to roughly 350 residents

> the Government announced plans to house 1,256 male asylum seekers in a nearby former military base.

It seems a bad idea to put them all in one place where they will outnumber the local residents almost 4-to-1

Previous approaches of distributing them across low-rent hotels and bnb accommodation have recently suffered arson attacks. This isn't the first time a disused military base has been used for this kind of purpose, and ultimately they have to go somewhere; wherever the government puts them is going to object.

I'm not even 100% clear whether they're allowed off the site!

The asylum system leaves people in an extremely unpleasant limbo for a long time while it makes decisions, based purely on the false belief that they're uniquely likely to be criminals.

> A spokesman for the Home Office said: "The Government is closing every asylum hotel, saving taxpayers over £1 billion on asylum support since the election.

This is why the hotels and bnbs were a bad idea.

.. and replacing them with what, exactly?

With nothing. Why does the UK have giant numbers of asylum seekers, and why wasn't any of the EU countries they travelled through to get there good enough? It's the hardest to reach country in Western Europe.

EDIT: other than RoI.

Because the UK wants them. They can stop the boats at any time. They can stop feeding and housing them at any time. They come because the UK government and NGOs provide them with a comfortable life.

It's the minimum requirement under ECHR. The government does actually have to comply with its legal obligations, this isn't America. They can't choose to just ignore them.

This is why the problem hasn't been fixed. You can't say "just do X" when X isn't legal. Do you really think nobody's thought of this? That the government actually likes being in this position of the past decade or so?

Yes indeed, that is the oft-cited fatal flaw of remaining in the ECHR.

But that aside: why come to the UK?

The ECHR is actually very loose with their definitions and gives the governments much freedom.

The UK chooses to interpret and enforce them as they do. Other european countries are within ECHR limits and deal with it entirely differently.

The UK elites no longer have the EU to blame for their policies, so they speak about ECHR. On the continent people barely know ECHR exists.

The ECHR says you must give prisoners the vote. Successive UK governments chose to ignore that part.

So don’t be so sure about “can’t” versus “won’t”.

I think you mean "Because the UK wants them, only 2% or so of illegal immigrants arrive by boats".

Boris Johnson did Brexit "to stop the immigrants" ... and opened the floodgates. The very opposite of what his campaign promised. The very opposite of WHY the British public wanted Brexit.

May as well house them in Westminster. They don’t actually do anything useful there.

These are not Ukranian war refugees. They can be sent back to their home countries

Can they? Have you personally reviewed all 1,200 cases?

> and ultimately they have to go somewhere; wherever the government puts them is going to object.

Back to their own country, look I am an immigrant myself but there is this massive trend of goverments developing suicidal empathy even at the cost of their own citizens; it really needs to stop.

They're already outnumbered by prisoners, which has not turned out to be a bad idea.

https://hmiprisons.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmipris_repor...

> A tiny village has voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state in a symbolic "referendum".

And the mice voted to bell the cat.

Belling cats is actually really useful

The point is that the vote is futile, not that the enforcement of the vote wouldn't be beneficial.

> The Domesday Book records that by 1086 Judith, Countess of Huntingdon, a niece of William I of England held the manor [of Piddington].

It's been going on for some time now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piddington%2C_Oxfordshire

See the 1949 Ealing Studio film “Passport to Pimlico” for a take on how it’s going to work out.

Much like the residents of Martha's Vinyard, I am sure all have been very progressive, until it was time to have migrants in their back yards.

This was voted down but it is to the point, NIMBYism is more the rule than the exception when it comes to this subject.

This is more likely going to be a situation where they were always xenophobic.

There's a rather uncomfortable interview with a local resident (of many years) who is Australian with a Jamaican husband, saying "well great now I know all my neighbours hate foreigners".

It's not xenophobia to not want foreigners to outnumber you 4 to 1 in your hometown.

Not so much "in" as "next to"; https://maps.app.goo.gl/ERuytwVias2Lmfof9 - it's the area above and to the right of the prison, HMP Bullington.

Thinking that not liking over 1000 men moving in next to a small village is purely "hatred of foreigners" is mind-blowingly race-brained.

…so xenophobic that they voted for both a Liberal Democrat MP and Mayor?

This isn't a good example of xenophobia, assuming you are using the word for its colloquial implications (I.e. simple race-adjacent hatred, and not just the fear of a large group of new strangers of a culture or circumstance that is alien to your community).

> until it was time to have migrants in their back yards

How did the migrants get to Martha's Vineyard?

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/16/migrants-marthas-vi...

They were of course removed from the community swiftly.

You're implying they should have been kept there? I'm not following. It looks like they were maliciously sent there without an agreement, and still were treated humanely and forwarded somewhere that agreed to take them...? You're criticizing this?

And the border communities loved having them there and invited them? Everything I said was factual. The voters of those northern communities love supporting policies as long as they happen someplace else. A thing called luxury beliefs.

From your link:

> Although their travel to Massachusetts was facilitated by DeSantis, the migrants who arrived on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday came from Texas. The DeSantis administration paid an aviation company, Vertol Systems Company Inc., $615,000 to transport the migrants from San Antonio to the exclusive vacation enclave.

So Florida spent $615,000 to pick up some people from Texas and dump them on an island in Massachusetts?

...and you imagine that this makes the people in Massachusetts look bad?

Yeah. I don't know what to tell you, dude.

Nice straw man you have there.

Human trafficking political stunt by embezzling politicians

It's all fun and games until they're in your own backyard

garrison the barracks with asylum seekers!?

Disused barracks; shortage of other places; hotel accommodation has recently been subject to racially motivated arson attacks.

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