Principality of Sealand

Absolutely, so a couple of weeks ago we were talking about micronations.

Sealand.

Sealand, yeah, which has captured the imaginations of quite a few people.

One in particular is our good friend Sandro Manetti.

So it says here, the subject of this one is Greetings, citizens of Big Finish Land.

It says, although Benji said after the discussion of Sealand that you don't have to be a ruler of a micronation to email this podcast, I am one such leader.

And I thought that I would write in to answer Nick's ponderings about these small principalities.

Oh, yes.

But you can't just say no to living in a society.

You live in the society, you take laws or political decisions that you don't like, or you go off and live on what's Sealand, which is that sort of independent island.

I love

that place.

The problem is when people think it's real and start using it to impress creditors.

Sealand is the more audacious one.

A micronation on an abandoned seafort selling titles.

The Principality of Sealand.

It's a platform in the North Sea, off the coast of Suffolk.

A guy named Roy Bates occupied it in 1967 and declared it an independent state.

They issue passports, stamps, coins, and titles.

You can buy a Sealand Lordship.

Well, to me, it is our private oil drilling platform.

Hey, listen, what is it? Sealand? That oil drilling platform that's like they claim to be their own country or something?

Yes, yes, that's right.

Right?

Obviously, I can't call this an episode if I neglect to thank Heath Enright for impressing us this week, Eli Bosnick for expressing our frustrations, and Lucinda Lusions for suppressing her anger, but she should be back next week.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds, Al and Andre, Heroes Come Cheap, Mark, Nora, other Nora, Becca, Michelle, SF3 podcast, Ashley, Abraham, other Abraham, at, empty, and under, Steve, that one Welsh town nobody can pronounce, that one volcano nobody can pronounce in Sealand form, the real Bermuda Triangle, Nathalie, Wendrix, Claire, Crystal, Kirby, Becky, Matt, and Andrew who are so hot they could never eat raw food even if they tried.

Sorry, dude, who used that Welsh town name.

I was just telling this into the other day.

and had this bump and the bump was actually a camera and we were sitting in the you know sitting in seats trying to film this thing with her just lifting her t-shirt up to show this camera without anyone seeing you know and it was in a way There was a lot of charging about.

But, yeah, and also I did film a documentary which involved false passports, gun runners, smugglers, and a made-up state on Sealand, which is off the coast of the UK, which is based on an old wartime fort.

They were a nice set of people who set up Sealand, but people had started making mock passports, using those passports for... various reasons so I had a lovely time filming in Madrid over a couple of days with that and that actually made the national papers here in the UK which was quite fascinating.

I think I remember that.

I think we did an interview with someone at the time.

That rings a bell.

Ah, you may well have done, yeah, because it ended up being connected to various rather horrendous organised crime groups in parts of North Africa that were trying to smuggle weapons.

And they were using Sealand passports to try and pretend Sealand was an EU state and they had diplomatic immunity to come in.