Jailhouse Food, The Verne, Portland, Dorset; IRC Food

Not so long ago, I read about the Jailhouse Cafe and its delicious food.

Since the Verne Prison became an Immigration Removal Centre, there have been complaints about the food:

S20 Detainees could eat communally. The food was adequate but not sufficiently culturally diverse. Detainees were not routinely involved in the preparation of food and did not have access to a cultural kitchen. The shop was not large enough for the population and access to it for detainees was unacceptably poor. It was badly designed and causing widespread tension and frustration.

Rod Liddle satirised the subject in the Sunday Times, on 20 September 2015, reporting that an inspection had found the food on offer to be "insufficiently culturally diverse" ("this being, er, England. Shepherd's pie, fish and chips and so on"). Mr. Liddle asks if authentic British food - indigenous cuisine-  is the UK's "secret weapon in the battle to stop more people trying to come here".

He writes:

"Let immigrants eat British...Here’s some more worry for you. A detention centre where we hold foreign asylum seekers whom we are about to deport is serving food to its clients that is insufficiently culturally diverse."

Funny - except that mockery isn't funny, even when combined with an element of self-mockery. As I am not a subscriber, I haven't been able to access the 115 online comments about his article. They must make interesting reading.


Deportee, YouTube  - Arlo Guthrie and Hoyt Axton