Small Country For Sale - Priced To Move - Some Fire Damage

Here's a Flickr account with a lot of pictures of Sealand.

Pretty cool but I think its a bit over priced at 950million for approx. 550m^2. It seems to be you could stage a take over the place if you wanted. Sealand seems to be lacking a military.....

They've already repelled one invasion attempt, although it sounds like its not as well manned as it once was. From things I've read there are only 1 or 2 full-time occupants.

On another note: let's say somebody dropped it in your lap. What would you do with your own little country? Ideas?

The best use of such a facility that I can think of is to set up a multi-channel TV and radio transmitter to blast the Britts (lovely people that I Love) with stimulating programing from across the pond.

First Sealand, next THE WORLD!!! Alrighty so I suffer from a touch of megalomania so who's perfect.

Idea 1: I would think this would be the ideal place to put certain world leaders. Far away enough from civilisation, but yet close enough to keep under scrutiny to ensure they cannot do anymore harm to decent folks like us.

Idea 2: In South Africa we have a group of Far Right dinosaurs who are just dying to have their own "home land" I did initially think the Island of St. Helena would be good, but that of course would endanger the wild life. This place looks ideal, for the same reasons stated above in point 1.

Idea 3: I believe Osama bin Laden is looking for a new residence! Might scare the bird life though.

Idea 4: Nuclear Testing site. I believe the Bikini Atoll is worn out and has no trade in value. Thanks to the French.

Any more ideas!!

Sealand would be a perfect place to base an Internet gambling network.

If it had a tree, and if it were actually a place where I actually could be free from politicians and their tyranny, I'd be there.

I'd use the U.S. Constitution there. It'd be nice if it were law somewhere on earth.

This is big news locally. It appeared as a feature item on the BBC Essex breakfast radio programme a day or so ago, with an Estate Agent pricing it at £67m Sterling, wishing he hadn't placed it on his books.

It's about the only place left on this planet where one cannot hear mobile telephone ring tones: £67m is cheap!

£67m is cheap!

Oh boy, only 67 million quid, quick give me half a dozen!!! Yeah right and pigs can fly! For that money I would rather buy me self a little island in the Caribbean, like Jamaica or something, lie under the palm trees, watching the waves gentle lapping on the golden sands, feeling the gentle sea breeze caressing my skin, sipping pina caloda(or premium rum or something like that) smoking a Dube(joint) saying something like "Hey Mon, what's a tsoo..naam..ee!"

• First, go to a first class British bank, and get the financing.
• Buy the country.
• Buy a pistol.
• Declare war on England.
• Lose the war, (What else? re Falkland).
• Become a colony.
• Start pumping British money, due to colonies by law.
• Pay the bank with British government money.
• With the surplus, buy more arms, and recruit Freedom fighters.
• Declare war for independence, Fight to the last drop of blood.
• I will sing war songs, tell stories of war heroism, send suicide bombers,
• Finally, for the first time in my life, I will feel like the rest of the world. knowing that there was something worthwhile fighting for. Knowing that I am part of the human society.

Wangito.

YOU SCARE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I dunno. I think he was onto something there. I just want to know one thing: Once you do have your own country, how do you keep the socialists from taking over?

"Socialists" are those the people who are constantly talking on a cell phone, socializing?

Here's the way I figure it:

1. Socialists/far lefties are those who think of government as the solution, not a problem.

2. Fascists/far righties, on the other hand, are those who think of government as the solution, not a problem.

3. Centrists are those who trust the lefties and righties to figure out that government is the solution, not a problem.

I may be the only person left on earth who thinks that government is itself humanity's biggest enemy (oppression, slavery, genocide and war), and needs to be kept on that constitutional leash called The Rule of Law.

So, I like the idea of putting all our politicians on that pile of concrete with only one bathroom. In fact I'm giggling while I'm typing this.

I may be the only person left on earth who thinks that government is itself humanity's biggest enemy (oppression, slavery, genocide and war), and needs to be kept on that constitutional leash called The Rule of Law.

Hi Andy, as to your comment above, there are a multitude of us who actually agree with your point. As per the old addage...How do you know when a politician is lying?.................................When his/her lips move!!!!!

One just has to take a look at the history of Africa: Biafra, Congo, Mau Mau, Rwanda,Somalia, Zimbabwe, and the list goes on. I guess for us in South Africa it's just a matter of time before some lunatic decides to seize power and start the long awaited civil war. Right against left, Centrists against both, Christian against Muslim, Black against White, tribe against tribe, or just for the hell of it. Africa does not need a reason to start genocide, any old excuse will do, mind you I suppose thats true for most of the world today!

Now the only problem I can see is that Sealand is just not big enough to put all the politicians, satanists, maniacs, lawyers and other such delightful folk on, maybe a feasibility study could be done for Antarctica!!!!!!

If there are any other S.A.'s on this site they will be sure to tell you that the watch words of the average citizen are...."Don't steal......the Government hates competition!!"

All I want to know is whether there is anyplace on earth where there's a hope of freedom?

A little spot would be fine...but I think 10K sq ft is a little too little.

"All I want to know is whether there is anyplace on earth where there's a hope of freedom?"

Yes there most certainly is, then humans find it, occupy it, cause harm to each other, beg for a governing body to protect them from each other, and it will no longer be free. We are very imperfict creatures; we will never be able to maintain a true utopia. And I use that word in its most humble sense. The best we can do is keep our heads above water, keep looking up and not down (especially when the water gets chin high,) surround ourselves with other positive people, and try to teach our young to be good people.

A couple nights ago while feeding my Angus beef cows I watched a plane fly over head under the starry background. I was thankful I did not have to worry that it might be a bomber plane attacking nearby cities.

Last night I drove across county lines to go visit a friend and pay him for some lumber he sawed out for my corral. At the county line I was not stopped by a road block occupied by either government military or rebel forces.

When I got home I had a snack of a couple cookies and some yogurt, both of which I bought at the store. At that store there were shelved full of food that I could afford to buy.

I don't agree with everything our government, or any governing body throughout history has done; however I still believe that we have it pretty good in the USA. I'm sure other countries do too, but I've never been there so I cannot say.

I agree with all that...except that I'm betting you know that our country is heading the wrong way; and that the liberties that so many of our predecessors fought and died for are slipping away.

Sure, we're fat and happy now. But we're fools to forget that liberty requires both diligence and constant resistance to politics. It's like brushing teeth or cleaning the toilet; you're never done because politics, like muck/bacteria/plaque, tends to build up over time.

I think your onto something with the analogy. Could it be that our lack of responsibility has lead us to a point where we want a quick fix for everything that get between us and happieness? That including laws, regulations, and policies that realy shouldn't exist?

That is how human history works. But I don't think it's a lack of responsibility so much as our built-in desire to bow to Golden Calves. Like in the Old Testament's I Samuel:8, we're always turning away from God/sanity and toward politicians. I dunno why, but we do indeed keep doing it.

Part of the problem is that well-intended people really do believe that government CAN solve problems. There's no basis for the belief, but it's a stubborn species of bacteria to be sure.

You hit it square on the head. I wasn't going to bring religion into this, but since you insisted. I was tempted to ref. the ten commandment earlier and your ref to the golden calf correlates well.

I like your ref to "well-intended" people. Those that go around thinking they are doing great things with out the foundation of "the solid rock." I don't know whether to feel empathy for them, or be terribly afraid of them; perhaps both is appropriate.

I cannot quote where, but the Bible also instructs us to obey (not worship) our earthly rulers as they are chosen by God. Yes I know we elect our president here in the US as opposed to some devine intervention, but sometimes I wonder if we pick the same ruler God had in mind. He always has a plan for us as individuals and nations, but he doesn't mess with our free will (for a reason I will never comprehend fully) and will allow us to go do what ever we please, but we will then be on our own. I wonder if he has let the people of the USA go wondering off on our own electing whomever makes the best sale of themselves or does the best job telling us what we want to hear and makes us happy. Once again a testament to our laziness is not only how few people vote, but more importantly those that do vote and don't do their homework. If voters did do their own research instead of soaking up campaign adds I think those ads would prove to be less effective than they are today. Oh boy, here I go again...

We're going to get slammed for bringing the Bible into this thread you know.

"...but more importantly those that do vote and don't do their homework. If voters did do their own research instead of soaking up campaign adds I think those ads would prove to be less effective than they are today."

You're a kindred spirit!

OK, so this isn't exactly engineering talk, but this whole thread was stretched from the beginning, right?

Let me know what you think...off this thread, of course.

Liberty or Bust!

Andy Horning

Freedom, Indiana

I have gotten somewhat behind with my CR4 email so I have only just managed to get to this thread. I interested on what you think about the voting rules we have in Australia. Voting in federal and state elections is compulsory and is always carried out on a Saturday. There are exemptions and you can vote early if you cant get to a poling booth on the day. There is no compulsion to fill out the ballot paper correctly but in general the number of people that are eligible to and don't vote is less than 2%. You can also choose not to vote and pay the fine.

Making it compulsory certainly changes the dynamic and removes problems like an unpopular leader getting elected because of the whether. It also makes politicians direct their policies to the entire voting population because they know everybody is going to vote. The result is that Australian elections are probably as close as you can get to a true representation of the entire population as you can probably get. It also stops things like people boycotting an election then claiming afterwards that the vote wasn't a fair representation.

I am interested in what you think, is the small imposition of making voting compulsory worth it to get a true sampling of the majority of the population or would you prefer to have it voluntary and risk electing a non representative government?

By the way few Australians see compulsory voting as an incontinence and just treat it as the norm.

I get in trouble when I talk politics too much (I've run for office several times...and lost every time, I write newspaper columns and I work with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation).

But here I go...

Benjamin Franklin said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." John Adams was even harsher in what he saw as our foolish plunge away from a Republic under a constitution, and toward Democracy.

Think about what we're really talking about here. Would you rather have a government ruled by law or by tyrants? It doesn't matter how many tyrants you're talking about; a single king or a majority who's either led by a king (Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Il...) or simply a racist mob who oppresses a minority or more.

Majority rule is antithetical to the Rule of Law. If ten guys vote to take your property, your vote doesn't count. If ten guys vote to lynch you and take your wife, your vote doesn't count. And here in the USA, where we know the vertical jump height and astronomy sign of our favorite basketball stars, but where we've never taken the half-hour necessary to read and understand our U.S. Constitution, "the electorate" is not an intelligent force.

Biomass is a poor way to run a country. Rule of Law works; the alternatives do not.

"If ten guys vote to take your property, your vote doesn't count."

If you had just 10 people in a town voting to take your property this may happen but if the all 1,000 people in the town all had to vote then the 990 others may see the 10 people that are trying to steal you property for the criminals they are.

With a voluntary voting system you can get a small minority trying to do something like this but the larger the number of voters the less likely it is. If 501 people out of the 1,000 voted to take your property then there would more than likely be a good reason behind it. The argument is that the larger the number of people that vote the more difficult it becomes to defraud and the harder it becomes to fix the outcome.

If you really truly don't wish to vote in Australia you can claim that it is against you religious beliefs or something similar and you will be excused. The point is that by making voting the default the resultant turn out at the ballot box can never be claimed to be a non representative expression of the peoples choice.

I know there was considerable dispute of the voting that saw George W Bush elected as president but I am curious to know what percentage of the total eligible voters did vote for him and if voting were compulsory would he have still won?

"Biomass is a poor way to run a country. Rule of Law works; the alternatives do not."

We are not talking about a biomass we are talking about law. The question is, is taking the view of the entire population by means of a compulsory vote a better representation of the will of the people than a vote by those that felt it necessary to express their democratic rights?

Frankly I don't know, both methods seem to work fairly well and there is more than likely little difference in the long run but it is interesting to see how other democracies find what the will of the people is.

By the way we also have a more complex voting system that uses preferential voting rather than a simple greatest number of votes wins method. When you vote for your representative you need to list all the candidates in order of preference. After the first round of counting the person with the least number of primary votes is eliminated and those votes are then distributed to the candidate that each voter has chosen as their second preference. This continues until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes. This sounds complicated but it allows you to have a protest vote, for say a candidate that is running to promote the cause of children with some rare disease, and still have a say as to who ends up as your representative. What are your thoughts on this rather than a system of whoever has the most votes wins?

Oh, but I do prefer your system of preferential voting. The system called Approval Voting is my favorite, but almost anything is better than what we've been doing...

Read more at http://www.sealandgov.org/index.html!

Ha Ha, buy this "country" and declare war on the USA. Surrender right after the declaration and get billions in "foriegn aid" for the next 60 years. See the film "The Mouse that Roared"for a primer and lots of laughs.

. . . or read the book. It's even better!

True, Steve. But watching Peter Sellers's brilliantly funny performance in three roles is worth the 119 minutes. A tip; Don't drink anything before you slip the DVD into the player or you'll spend a lot of time trying not to pee your pants from laughing. As always, spending time watching any master craftsman work is worth it.

You convinced me. I'll have to watch it.

You keep forgetting that in "The Mouse That Roared" that little tin pot country that declared war on the USA won.

There's a story on The Local today that the file sharing web site The Pirate Bay is trying to raise money to buy Sealand to circumvent copyright laws. (there must be something to it, since they've change the logo on their homepage from a pirate ship to an image of Sealand).

The Pirate Bay is perfectly legal in its home country of Sweden, although apparently the Swedish government is under pressure to close them down.

They don't actually distribute copyrighted content, they host torrent files that allow bittorrent clients to download the files from distributed sources.

Since GB simply increased its borders many years ago, Sealand is worthless, legally. Companies do now buy ships to park in international waters in order to remain out of the reach of politicians (and thereby do viable business).

But I'm pretty sure that no matter where you are, you'll run afoul of international patent/copyright laws if you play loosy goosey with somebody else's work. And even if you play straight, US lawyers will sue anybody for anything. That's what they're paid to do as government mercenaries.

Let's face it...the only property worth buying has to have some sort of tree on it, and it has to have a beach. The Principality of Sealand is a POS.

Why buying the Sealand? there's is no valid legal reason really. However, ships can not be recognised legally as land, as they are detached from the earth. Same legal dispute that exists in the Arctic zone. The south pole in the other hand is part of mother earth, therefor has claims of Territorial sovereignty from various nations. For years, 12 nautical miles out of the shores of Tel-Aviv Israel, there was a radio ship called "The Voice Of Peace" broadcasting a massage of peace and the best music around, avoiding royalties, just as "Radio Caroline" did in England. Anyone trying to buy a country must have a financial agenda, and nothing else. meaning, trying to avoid some payments to someone. Yes, "money makes the world go round..."

BTW, The dispute over Sealand is not over, and British court has not ruled in favour, as the "owners" try to imply. It's the "12 nautical miles international water law". Sealand is approximately 7 miles out only. Some countries even stretch it to 200 nautical mile.

Not so simple.

Wangito.

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