Councils spending taxpayer money on PlayStations for asylum seekers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/04/councils-spend-taxpayer-money-playstations-asylum-seekers/

Posted by SlySquire

29 comments

  1. This feels like an institutionalised scam – like the Nigerian prince email or the Indian call center using remote access software – except this time, it’s operating on a sovereign level with taxpayer funding and NGO backing.

    It will be fixed when the political class realise that these insitutions that were designed to help the people have become tools Europe’s enemies use to sow instability, politically and economically.

  3. > The Telegraph can reveal that in 2022, the Tory-run council of West Sussex used £334 of its funding to buy PlayStation consoles and games for new arrivals in a “hotel setting”.

    £334 *might* get you a used PS5, or 3 at a push 4 used PS4s.

    If these consoles are used in communal areas, which I’m almost certain they are, for refugees then fine, would you rather have them loitering about on the streets with nothing to do?

    The telegraph is just as bad as the S*n, the rest of the country need to do a Liverpool and refuse to read or even interact with these shitrags.

  4. The total opposite of a deterrent, This country is an absolute joke.

  5. any evidence of this?

    the telegraph saying they audited it feels a bit ‘trust us bro’

  6. >The Telegraph can reveal that in 2022, the Tory-run council of West Sussex used £334 of its funding to buy PlayStation consoles and games for new arrivals in a “hotel setting”.

    So at most the council bought one second-hand PS4 with a couple of games.

    Meanwhile how much in dividends did the bosses of Tesco, Thames Water, and Centrica take that same year?

    There are criminals in this country taking us for a ride, but it ain’t the asylum seekers playing Rocket League.

  7. >The Telegraph can reveal that in 2022, the Tory-run council of West Sussex used £334 of its funding to buy PlayStation consoles and games for new arrivals in a “hotel setting”

    So essentially, they bought A single playstation, one would imagine that having stuff like a TV/Playstation in a communal area doesn’t seem too outrageous – surely better than them having nothing to do.

  8. You’re angry at refugees when the water companies are literally making you pay the fines they received for polluting your water.

    Get angry at the right people

  9. Fucking rags posting their second tier journalism on this sub have ruined it. Nothing but rage and click bait. What the fuck happened to journalism that this level of shit is just accepted. Fucking rags.

  10. They bought one second hand, communal playstation.

    The way these comments sections are looking, they want asylum seekers to be treated like they’re in prison, bored as hell for years.

  12. This is bullshit. £334 on a PlayStation in 2022 wouldn’t even get you a second hand ps5. Plus councils don’t just do this shit for giggles – there will be a reason for it. Probably because a kid(s) was so fucking traumatised by something that the Social Worker and MH workers suggests a bit of normality.

    You will read crap like this about how councils waste money. I have worked for councils for 14yrs and I can say that the waste is almost non-existent now as most councils have cut everything they can to save money due to chronic underfunding over the past 15yrs. You will hear stories about how X council wasted £1m on this cycle track project (for example), but that money is provided by Central Govt for specific projects and can not be used for anything else. The majority of big spend is like that now. Central Govt will pay for projects that push the Central line – whatever that is depends on who is in charge at No. 10.

    I hate how people say money is wasted (I get letters about this from time to time). No, it’s not wasted its just being spent on something you don’t like. That’s not waste, that’s just catering for others.

  13. As much as I’m not a fan of it gaming is great way to keep people occupied and inside, less likely to cause harm.

  14. Another Torygraph article to fluff the Toby carvery brigade up into another ham scented rage over nothing. Toby’s will be fuming that some refugees got a bit of enjoyment from a second hand PS4 and some games. Meanwhile the “royal” parasite family, the actual Tories and their friends and loads of private firms took 100’s of millions from the tax payer and they think that’s all ok.

    There is a problem alright, but it certainly isn’t some vulnerable people playing a bit of Crash bandicoot.

  15. It’s not going to keep them off the streets as a lot of them are working illegally for just eat using someone else’s account. They are posting video’s of themselves waving wads of cash and getting all their bills covered by the taxpayer £9000000 a day.

  17. Nothing gets the telegraph/mail demographic frothing at the mouth more than the thought of asylum seekers, prisoners, single mums etc being given a PlayStation. The word alone.. play? having fun? They’re not allowed to have any of that!

  20. This is such a stupid rage-bait headline. Even the real meat of the article says that £141mn has been spent on services such as: yoga classes, driving lessons, and the £334 spent on maybe one PlayStation. Across 110 council areas, this is hardly newsworthy. People rant about asylum seekers being on the streets, causing problems and also refusing to integrate, but when councils try to mitigate these issues, it is said to be a waste of money. Just a reminder that these are asylum seekers, some of whom have fled from warzones like Ukraine and the Middle East. I find it hard to agree with Rupert Lowe that we should be deporting women and children back into a warzone.

    Edit: Just another reminder that the Tories spent about £500mn on a Rwanda deportation scheme which deported no one. Estimates also put the figure at £1.8mn per refugee sent to Rwanda, if the scheme had worked. If you want to be angry at people wasting money, be angry at that.

    For reference, on average, there are 100,000 households in each council area in the UK. Applying this to the figures in the article works out to £1.3mn spent per council or £13 per household. That is £4.30 per year per household spent on this.

  21. For context, the Telegraph reports that £334 was spent on a console and games for asylum seekers in 2022.

    [in 2022, academics at the University of Portsmouth have estimated the total cost of economic crime to the UK at £350 billion a year.](https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/127415/pdf/)

    [Money laundering is estimated to cost the UK economy more than £100 billion each year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/economic-crime-and-corporate-transparency-act-2023-factsheets/economic-crime-and-corporate-transparency-act-information-sharing-measures#:~:text=Money%2520laundering%2520is%2520estimated%2520to,%C2%A3100%2520billion%2520each%2520year)

    [And it’s been estimated that Brexit causes a loss to the economy of around £100 billion a year.](https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/cost-brexit-0#:~:text=Bloomberg%2520found%2520that%2520Brexit%2520is,%C2%A3100%2520billion%2520a%2520year)

    Let’s watch the general public get upset with immigrants and asylum seekers again whilst the rich and powerful bend them over.

  22. How kind of them. Nothing like a nice gaming session after a long day of definitely not working cash-in-hand at a car wash, “Turkish” barbers, Uber eats delivery or “American candy” shop.

  24. Was the telegraph ever a serious paper? It is a shitty hate rag these days.

  25. You’d have to be dumb as a brick to still fall for this kind of crap. Being a journalist is literally one of the most shameful professions to be in these days.

  26. >The Telegraph can reveal that in 2022, the Tory-run council of West Sussex used £334 of its funding to buy PlayStation consoles and games for new arrivals in a “hotel setting”. The council also paid £496 for yoga sessions for those in hotels.

    A whole one playstation in other words. So what

  27. Can we Ban Telegraph?

    It’s always smoke and mirrors with this rag

  28. God forbid people who have had a rough time have 1 communal second hand PlayStation, how much money disappear to the pockets of MP’s friends during covid again?

  29. Something I discovered the other week: asylum support is paid out of the aid budget (already reduced from 0.7% of some figure [GDP, GNI, government spending?] to 0.5%, so arguably wouldn’t have been spent on UK nationals anyway…

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