Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Island Paradise For Sale.




Want to live in yer own wee nation where you are lord and master over all that you survey? well I do so I was looking to start me own fully armed compound with religious followers but then I saw this.
A platform was built during World War II for anti-air craft defense for the Port of Harwich in Essex . eight miles from Essex and six miles of the coast of Suffolk it was sunk into a sandbar. Called HM Fort Roughs it was one of the many Towers built buy Guy Maunsell around the coast.
When all that illegal radio station crap was going on in the 1960's with the now famous radio Caroline ships there was also a station run by squatters on the fort, as you know squatters have rights too but 6 miles from the coast its a little more lapse in the force you can use to remove them. In 1965 Roy Bates evicted such squatters by force and then again in 1967, he wanted his own radio station on it and so he claimed it as his.
In 1968 the Royal Navy tried to evict him, heres how that exchange may have went.

Navel officer "I say old chap, do you mind leaving the towers as they are still the property of the Ministry of Defense , we'd be awfully obliged if you could".

Roy Bates ::::discharges shotgun into the air like an Iraqi dictator:::::"fuck off".

Navel officer "righty ho, sorry to trouble you sir, we'll be off then".

The judge ruled that Principality of Sealand as it was called by bates is out of British territorial waters so its all his , a bit like the ruling for the Cherokees to keep their land, they won but Andrew Jackson being a cunt of a bitter balls said, well lets see them keep hold of it, before he marched them out at gunpoint (a bit of yank perspective to keep them engaged) Their Royal Highnesses Prince Roy and Princess Joan of Sealand introduced a constitution, flag , national anthem, currency, passports and probably some rule about number twos going over the side and not clogging up the toilets and stinking out the towers, they have eight rooms in each by the way but where is the smell to go?

The Royal couple, look at his big chopper, no wonder a fit bird like her hangs around him.

In 1978 Dutch businessmen collaborating with German (probably nazi) businessmen while on Sealand to discuss a deal kidnapped Roy's son but were over powered and executed as per the laws of Sealand, ok maybe not executed, they were released with at least a kick in the balls as that's what I would do if they grabbed one of my sons, well maybe not Trevor my expendable son.
The main draw back to living on the fort would be the fact that's its a rusty old piece of shit from World War II and that all the Bloggers you'd never want to meet in real life life doon that direction, no offense but yous are a bunch of sick wankers .


For all their talk about being royalty the Bates don't even live there, 10 hefty caretakers do and the Sealand Royal family all have British passports, so they say fuck off to Britain until they needed to be airlifted by the RAF when there was a fire there, yeah that would be right, I wonder what healthcare is like on the platform .
If you want to buy HM Fort Roughs, you can't as its a principality, but for an 8 figure sum you can have squatter's rights, er I mean custodianship of the scrap heap, don't bother.