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Lobsters. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250915-tristan-da-cunha...

There's actually Street View images, so you can take a look, also at the agricultural plots southwest of the town (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_Patches ). There's some sheep, cattle and (I think) donkeys as well.

Looking at Orkney and the Shetlands on a map, the UK is the logical country for them to belong to, unless Scotland becomes independent.

By the way, Skara Brae is worth seeing if you are at all interested in history. I'd rate it at least on the same level as Stonehenge.

Looking at the position of the Falklands on a map however ... different story.

Orkney is only 20 miles from the UK mainland so I'm not sure that's the reason. People there make fudge which is pretty good. Until recently (1956) it hosted a major Royal Navy base.

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...

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.

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.

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?

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

Until recently TDC had a very slow FCDO satellite link that required their website to be quite basic in order to actually be viewable on computers on the island.

They now have a fast Starlink connection, but I’m glad they’ve kept the website as it is.

Seems consistent. Ukrainian soldiers are performing life saving missions i.e. defending their citizens from an unprovoked attack.

then the military would also act life-saving, since they are defending the attacked country

Then the military should have stopped the country from trying to join NATO, avoiding the invasion of Russia and saving countless lives and homes.

We have a mountain here called Bod an Deamhain meaning the Demon's D*ck. It has been anglicised into something more polite.

If you want something more bleak, there are also islands called Disappointment and Desolation.

This is the best thing, thank you.

For the big McMurdo US base they have flown in a few times in the winter for extremely important life or death medical reasons (last year: Aug 25 [1]) For the smaller other country bases it tends to be too dangerous and impossible. They are not able to use mcmurdo and the americans cant help either.

The general rule is that the Americans don't fly during the winter but they do tend to downplay and not publicize the times when they do fly.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/mcmurdo-statio...

From what I gathered from the article the person who got off was a resident of Tristan? They have such limited shipping options that this might have been the only way for them to travel from any mainland. Not sure though, but I don't think they got off there to seek medical assistance.