Britain | Hostel environment

Britons take against asylum hotels

Home Office hotels provoke a backlash from locals

KTXGBA Vintage 1900's British Rail renowned famous travel poster produced for the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) to promote rail travel to holiday town of Skegness. The poster illustrates a young boy pulling the Jolly Fisherman by his red scarf on a sandy beach
Image: Alamy
|Skegness, Lincolnshire

A Slow rain falls over the Sun Hotel; an unpleasurably brisk wind whips along the Pleasure Beach; the Sea View Pub offers nothing of the kind; and Skegness’s “No.1 Fun Pub” is shut and shuttered. No one is visibly having any fun anywhere. The northern seaside town of Skegness has long been famous for offering pleasures that are at best muted—as even it acknowledges. Its famous slogan, coined in its Edwardian heyday, reads less like a boast than a confession, or perhaps a threat: “Skegness is SO bracing.”

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Hostel environment”

From the February 18th 2023 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Britain

Crew members during the commissioning of HMS Prince of Wales

Has the Royal Navy become too timid?

A new paper examines how its culture has changed

A pedestrian walks across the town square in Stevenage

A plan to reorganise local government in England runs into opposition

Turkeys vote against Christmas


David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary

David Lammy’s plan to shake up Britain’s Foreign Office

Diplomats will be tasked with growing the economy and cutting migration


Britain’s government has spooked markets and riled businesses

Tax rises were inevitable. Such a shaky start was not

Labour’s credibility trap

Who can believe Rachel Reeves?