First, the Cayman Islands.
And now, Bermuda.
There was a charming article about St Helena in yesterday's Financial Times Weekend Magazine. Both my uncle and my grandmother were interviewed, and she was pictured.
St Helena is neither a tax haven, nor does it cost anything to defend.
But nor, as the article mentioned, have its people enjoyed full British citizenship continuously. Although they do hold it again now; Tony Blair did at least reverse that aspect of Thatcherism.
Unlike the white people for whom the rules are always totally different. Ask the Chagossians.
Not only would it be cheaper to declare all of the British Overseas Territories independent, each with an annual grant of one billion pounds in perpetuity, than it would be to continue to defend those other-determining white people.
But it would also get shot of the national shames that are the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and, as will doubtless be along in a moment, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.
The first two even have currencies pegged to the US dollar, which itself circulates freely in Bermuda, while the US dollar is the only legal tender in the second two. Yes, you did read that correctly.
It is time for the United Kingdom to exercise its own right of self-determination.
If the Falkland Islands did not want to be part of Argentina, then that would be up to them. A billion a year really ought not to make that too difficult for them.
Demanding that the rest of us be permanently at their beck and call for that purpose is not self-determination. It is other-determination.
A billion a year would also have given St Helena its airport a very long time ago.
Perhaps even when two Acts enacted under the same Prime Minister had jointly made it more difficult for St Helenians to enter the United Kingdom than for the German and Italian veterans of the Second World War who were still very much alive at the time.
And now, Bermuda.
There was a charming article about St Helena in yesterday's Financial Times Weekend Magazine. Both my uncle and my grandmother were interviewed, and she was pictured.
St Helena is neither a tax haven, nor does it cost anything to defend.
But nor, as the article mentioned, have its people enjoyed full British citizenship continuously. Although they do hold it again now; Tony Blair did at least reverse that aspect of Thatcherism.
Unlike the white people for whom the rules are always totally different. Ask the Chagossians.
Not only would it be cheaper to declare all of the British Overseas Territories independent, each with an annual grant of one billion pounds in perpetuity, than it would be to continue to defend those other-determining white people.
But it would also get shot of the national shames that are the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and, as will doubtless be along in a moment, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.
The first two even have currencies pegged to the US dollar, which itself circulates freely in Bermuda, while the US dollar is the only legal tender in the second two. Yes, you did read that correctly.
It is time for the United Kingdom to exercise its own right of self-determination.
If the Falkland Islands did not want to be part of Argentina, then that would be up to them. A billion a year really ought not to make that too difficult for them.
Demanding that the rest of us be permanently at their beck and call for that purpose is not self-determination. It is other-determination.
A billion a year would also have given St Helena its airport a very long time ago.
Perhaps even when two Acts enacted under the same Prime Minister had jointly made it more difficult for St Helenians to enter the United Kingdom than for the German and Italian veterans of the Second World War who were still very much alive at the time.
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