What, the big green man-turned-monster is back?
No, not that one, the one on the right. Prison hulks
Surely we don’t have those anymore?
Well, not anymore for convicts – the last UK floating prison was HMP Weare, closed in…. guess?
1899?
2005. But good ideas never go out of fashion, and using ships for accommodation has been – ahem – ‘floated ‘ – in several guises since. In fact, Scotland is currently ‘hosting’ displaced Ukranians in two cruise ships and the Dutch had a floating prison for a while that closed in 2016 and is now…
Lying at the bottom of the sea? A floating arts project? A meme? I don’t know, what do you do with these white elephants when they either reach the end of their downwardly mobile lives, or are deemed too politically controversial to live with?
… a luxury hotel on the Thames
Goodness.
In fairness, the ‘Good Hotel’ has got a bit of a mission on to actually do good.
So what’s this all about?
Well, the UK government are proposing to move the current glut of asylum seekers from temporary hotel accommodation into more permanent residences, presumably pending their subsequent deportation via ‘decisive action’ or whatever buzzword someone will come up with to disguise human misery this time.
And this will include ships?
Yep, hulks are back!
Oh, didn’t I see something recently on the telly about prison hulks? A new docu-series or something? I wasn’t really watching but it didn’t look very pleasant on board.
No, silly, that was the Beeb’s recent adaptation of Great Expectations!
Oh!! Just a coincidence then?
I suppose so, if one believes in such things.
And if one doesn’t?
Then either it wasn’t the best timing to announce a policy to house the vulnerable / displaced / criminal / work-shy / work-seekers / those to whom we owe a debt of gratitude and have failed (delete as appropriate to your political persuasion) OR, that rascally old proto-commie Beeb has stolen a march on the government by pre-emptively torpedoing its new attempt at solving the unsolvable.
Gosh.
Exactly.
Still, if dealing with asylum claims takes as long as it usually does, the poor things might soon find their prison tuned back into a hotel anyway.
Exactly. Good ideas never go out of fashion.
Exactly, and a spell in a hulk never dis Magwitch any harm, did it?
Exactly.
