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Comment by nsokolsky | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered why the UK bothers to keep up such a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Would've been 10x cheaper for the budget to buy the residents 50 houses in Australia and just keep the island as a nature reserve.

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Because China will claim it as its territory and set up a military base there before you can count to ten.

Just ask The Philippines.

And because it enables claims on resources located in its economic zone and the corresponding seabed.

Take for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia, tiny islands but huge ocean area with immense resources.

Seems pretty far for China to care about. Pitcairn Island is roughly the same great circle distance from Beijing as it is from London.

Would you say the same about Solomon Islands?

What makes you think it's looking at London?

Pitcairn Islands is half way to the Americas, and right in the thick of a bunch of U.S. territories.

What are the US territories it's in the thick of? Closest territories are French Polynesia and Rapa nui, a Chilean territory.

"What we have, we hold." - British Empire proverb

It keeps the saying "the sun never sets on the British empire" true, iirc.

Mandatory citation of XKCD: https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/

The sun sets at 3:30 during winter on that cold, wet little island

If the UK loses Pitcairn, the sun will set on the British Empire. Literally. Without Pitcairn the UK will be entirely in the dark part of the day for the first time in centuries.

Remote islands can be very useful to navies

Such as a Royal Navy?

You might be interested in Rockall [0], a rock in the North Atlantic. It even has a song [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

[1] https://youtu.be/AV1MrOPt0pg?si=LGYMHfYJS0bMFF5I&t=1057

... it's rock music then? :)

Two songs it seems. Gang of Four - Ether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee_HrbO9xfI&pp=ygUSZ2FuZyBvZ...

This has been done. Pitcairners were relocated to Tahiti (they hated it and all came back to Pitcairn after just 6 months) and then later to Norfolk Island (most of them stayed, but around 40 of them moved back to Pitcairn after a couple years).

Saying "they hated it" when referring to their return from the migration to Tahiti is underselling things a bit. Over a third of them died from sickness having no immunity to things having been isolated so long. The island lifestyle there was completely unlike Tahiti of the past due to the influx of non-Tahitian people, and they basically lived in slums. Luckily they were able to sell copper sheathing from the Bounty to pay for the return journey back to Pitcairn.

You never know when these places will be useful. Maybe they'd discover something valuable in territorial waters. It's a cheap lottery ticket.

I think it's the closest land to R'lyeh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%27lyeh

The further an empire declines, the more desperately it clings to the shreds of a past glory.

See also the constant references to the "blitz spirit" by generations who weren't alive to remember it.

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