[OSM-talk] Sealand

[Keith Sharp]

On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 17:32 +0000, Simon Huggins wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 12:25:46PM -0500, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 05:04:27PM +0000, David Earl wrote:
> > > Come on, it's none of these - it's someone's little joke!
> > > It's appears to be a man made platform in the North Sea, with no 
> > > official status.
> > "Since 1967, the installation has been occupied by associates and family
> > of Paddy Roy Bates, a former radio broadcaster and former British Army
> > Major, who claims that it is a sovereign and independent state.[5]"
> 
> >  -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
> 
> > Whether Sealand is a sovereign state or not appears, from the Wikipedia
> > article, to be a matter of some political debate -- but it does not
> > appear to be a 'joke', just a difference of opinion or interpretation.
> 
> By that principle I hereby declare that the shed in my back garden to be
> a sovereign and independent state which I shall henceforth call
> BullShitLand.

Working from the assumption that you live in the UK, then the land you
built your shed on does not legally belong to you - it belongs to the
Queen.  Hence you cannot easily create a new, independent, legal country
in your back garden :-(

Sealand is more interesting because it is a modern artificial construct
in international waters that was abandoned by the UK for a long time
before being reoccupied.  I suspect that if push came to shove the UK
Government could assert legal ownership and would win the case in the
international legal and political arena.

I am not a lawyer, politician, or pirate roaming the high seas...

Keith.