Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/14/the-contentious-rock-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean.html
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Hopefully it won’t lead to shots.
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The newsletter, The Rockall Times (tagline: “There’s fuckall on Rockall”) still has a website, although sadly no longer active.
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As a kid in England long ago, the word “Rockall” was heard iirc on the weather forecast. Had no idea what it was or meant until now.
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The Chinese government has done much more to lay claim to bits of rock.
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“Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…” 
There is something about the pronunciation of North Utsire and South Utsire that makes me wince. 
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Colour me surprised. I thought it was all about cod.
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As The Register used to put it - There’s fuck-all on Rockall. But there might be lots of oil and gas around it.
Iceland had an equally contentious claim on a part of the Greenland Sea based on a group of uninhabitable rocks called Kolbeinsey off the north coast of the country. It used them to draw part of Iceland’s 200 mile exclusive economic zone that would otherwise have belonged to Greenland. This caused quite a lot of friction between Reykjavîk and Copenhagen, even more so when the Icelanders put a concrete helicopter platform on the rocks. Fortunately, being sensible nordic types, they came to an agreement in 1997 where Iceland got 30% of the area and Greenland the other 70%.
The helicopter pad has since fallen into the ocean.
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Lester Haines who ran the site was once planning to go for the record of living on the rock; sadly it never came to pass.
Lester died a few years ago after the magnificent achievement of getting a paper plane to glide back from space.
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Nobody sits like this rock sits. You rock, rock. The rock just sits and is.
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Lester Haines; not just paper planes.
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Britain. Not just England.
You wouldn’t want us reporting USainian news as being done by the Californian government.
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And Rockall has never been part of England. If Britain has a valid claim then it’s part of Scotland
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Gang of Four sung about this in 1979!
Ether
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I remember tech news site TheRegister always seemed to be mildly obsessed with Rockall…
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I live in North Utsire and if you know how “Utsira” is actually pronounced in Norwegian, it does make you wince.
That said, I am a fan of the shipping forecast (I’ve actually just read a book about it)
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