Nooddorpen for Refugees

Overheard in the kitchen - The Chairman is cleaning resin gunk from behind his wedding ring at the sink:

Hay: "What are you doing?"

Chairman: "Cleaning my ring."

Hay: "Yuk - shouldn't you use toilet paper for that, and certainly not the sink?"

When I was a kid living in Rotterdam in the 50s, the place was peppered by what we called Noordorpen - emergency villages for those who had been made homeless by Rotterdam being flattened by the Nazis. 'Nood' is emergency and 'dorpen' is villages.

One such village was about half a mile across an open field, directly opposite our flat in Rotterdam South. A hospital has since been built there.

It strikes me that this is a solution to the Ukrainian refugee situation. Many of the prefabs that were built in Bristol during and after WWII have only just been demolished, so they last a long time.

I've thought for a long time that they are a solution for the homeless, except that the homeless would have to move to the area where the emergency villages are, which has consequences for family ties, jobs and a host of other issues. Such issues, however, aren't present for refugees. They would ensure the refugees stick together for mutual support and their needs (schooling, therapy, health) can be serviced on a concentrated level much more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Mind you, the process put in place by the government will ensure we receive only a trickle of refugees. Gove has made a big issue from the system being uncapped, but that's like the marketing a lot of internet companies make - they advertise uncapped data, but throttle the speed down to a level that's practically unusable.