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Comment by connorgurney | Hacker News Reader

I think this is one of the few things as late that makes me feel genuinely proud to be British, because, beneath the hostility that feels so rife across our country recently, we’ve so many good people making things like this happen. Bravo.

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The hostility is rife across social media. I don't see much of it day to day.

Reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit during the early days of CNN and 24-hour news channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjuPJskNRE

Unfortunately, for a few years now, social media is real life...

As the persons said, they are not observing it in real life.

This is what I also have observed in various contexts as well. Social media is not a representation of what real people think. Most people in real life does not comment in social media, or they comment on inconsequential or trivial things....

Social media gets distorted by a handful of extremists who are motivated, and by commercial interests. A lot of the nastiest stuff is not even posted by British people, but people masquerading as British: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgpyn30dp3o

This is only happening in order to protect the UK states' control over the territory.

Altruism isn't the priority - just the pitch. The real priority is to ensure Tristan Da Cunha remains property of the UK - which, if the colony were to fail, would be immediately endangered. This is why the imperial military is involved, not civilian organizations - the military target is to ensure the island remains the property of the UK.

I know exactly what you mean. But for me there's an even greater emotion here... relief. At a time when everything feels so utterly divided, it's such a relief to see a positive story that everyone can celebrate and feel proud of, regardless of their stance. Better, it's a story that can't be politicised one way or the other, it has a purity about it. I think if we had more positive stories like this, our political & ideological differences wouldn't seem so all consuming.

It certainly involved a lot of skill and expense, but how many more lives could be saved if the same money had been spent on improved traffic safety or NHS in general?

Probably not that many. You underestimate how expensive either of those things are.

We have obligations to provide services like this to the people living in our overseas territories, and you won’t find many people who’ll oppose that.

This is a classic. It occurs in two forms:

Wow, logistics to <remote place> are very expensive! We could spend that money better in the cities!

Wow, logistics in <city> is expensive! We could spend that money better in rural areas!

I read about a new road tunnel in London last year, a ten-digit price tag for about 1km of road IIRC. I'm 100% sure some people suggested that that money could have been better spent in rural areas.

We shouldn't be wasting a penny on colonies, this isn't the age of Napoleon anymore, get the English out of any country that isn't England.

You're suggesting that we should run a h3 grid over the world and assign everybody territory based on their haploytype?

Or is it only the 'English' who should be confined to certain geogrpahical parameters?

I'm English and live in another nation. I'm guessing me and my family should go 'home'?

The one thing you seem to be missing in your anticolonialist tirades is the fact that Tristan was uninhabited. It’s not like native peoples were displaced by the British colonists, right?

Many self-described anticolonialists forget that "self-determination" doesn't actually mean "people who live far away from the mainland should just fuck off and take care of themselves".

I've experienced it a bit as a Frenchman (and we have quite a few remote territories as well) who has lived on a couple of remote places (that were uninhabited as well before becoming French, but that shouldn't actually matter) and it's incredible how puny, short-sighted and simply egoistical some people can be.

The Netherlands has a few islands off the coast of Venezuela.

Very few of the people who live there want full independence lol.

I'm missing your point here

I'm saying that it is common for some people to advocate for jettisoning other parts of their country, especially if they are far away from where they live.

I did assume, and it makes a change, but Britain isn't in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

No, you're correct Britain is a collection of islands in the northern hemisphere. This however is an island in the Atlantic ocean and is a British Overseas Territory.

> This however is an island in the Atlantic ocean and is a British Overseas Territory.

Britain is actually 3 countries under the control, largely, of England. Britain is the name they use for their empire loot.

They can call it what they like, if they dont mind giving up say, the south coast of Britain? No, then pot kettle my man.

What definition of empire are you running here? Is it the same definition you'd assign to Russia, India, China, Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar?

Are the Andaman Islands, Kaliningrad, Midway, Ogaden, Balochistan, Xinjiang all loot under the auspices of empire?

What about the Galapagos? Svalbard? Falklands? All loot? Looted from who?

The word's thrown around a lot, it'd be nice to have a definition for once.

This guys comment history is absolutely wild! So utterly full of hate and ignorance. Amazing how often those two things go hand in hand.

I get mad upvotes so what does that tell you

Karma 98 after 8 months. What does that tell you?

Youve been riled by my carefree attitude

True, but this is military expenditure. So would you rather they spend this on an exercise or on actually saving people?

Yeah and helps demonstrate thst Tristan is strategically important

I think it's rich the English dont like foreigners given how many countries they think they're entitled to posses

Not sure what that means. What do you think the Uk claims to own?

Lots of european countries owned colonies until the post-war settlement.

And immigration to UK is at an all time high so not sure on other point?

Immigration to the UK is not at an all time high - both immigration and net migration are down pretty sharply:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70989jrdweo

The general trend of the past years has increased immigration

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisor...

Its not an open border and the rules changed and now it is decreasing

As a someone living of foreign origin living in England my experience is that it is avery friendly and accepting place.

People respond to inspiring stories that show what is possible. Inevitably that means choices that might not match what a perfect allocation looks like.

Quiet, bland execution in government will get you voted out. Technocrats tend to come in after corruption, but they don’t usually last.

You'd rather we ignored our overseas compatriots?

Colonists you mean.

There's been repeated efforts to depopulate the Island by the UK government because it's expensive when you have to do drops like this - the people living there want to be there and prior to them getting there it was an uninhabited island.

I'm not really sure it meets the definition of a colony in the modern sense of the word.

Just to let you know: Colony: "a geographical area politically controlled by a distant country"

If it's verboten, then I'm guessing:

All Arabs back to the Arabian peninsula? "Latin Americans" back to Europe? The removal of 98% of the USA, Australia, etc? Malagasy back to Madagascar?

Sounds very genocidal... At least half of the world's population uprooted at least :/

And the English back to various corners of north west Europe and the Scots back to Scythia!

It's a small price to pay to keep political control. Probably not the entire motivation here, but generally countries like keeping their remote islands and settlements lived in because it represents a claim of the land by proxy.

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