Freedom of the Seas

Now that the progress of global warming, which we have done so much to assist, has made a rise in sea levels virtually inevitable, the British government has laid claim to two hundred thousand square kilometres of the Atlantic seabed around Ascension Island. "The island has a land area of around 100 sq km but, due to its isolated location, it generates an [exclusive economic zone] with an area of more than 440,000 sq km", said the director of the International Boundaries Research Unit at Durham University. The ocean floor in the area "is believed", in the voice of the Journalistic Passive Credulous, "to contain extensive mineral deposits", which is no doubt what qualifies it for the honour of being designated an economic zone.

Naturally, since this is a British enterprise, the waters are "generally deeper than the Pacific and probably beyond current technological limits for extraction"; however, if the application is approved the Government will gain a lump of the Atlantic seabed "in which it will have sovereign rights to exploit living and non-living resources" until sufficient taxpayers' money can be sunk in a bribe for some private company to offer an appropriate degree of choice as to their disposal.