Captain Calamity keeps up with the Times

Not content with New Statesman coverage, Stuart Hill, self-proclaimed steward of the unilaterally declared state of Forvik in the Shetlands, has broken into the pages of the Murdoch press with a story in The Times for 18 August 2008.  

Most of the detail will be familiar to regular readers of Scots Law News – see here, here and here.  The man from the Times (its Scotland correspondent, David Lister) does offer updating detail, however; some of it more than some readers will want to know, for example on toilet arrangements on Forvik and the composting lavatory project.  But we also learn that three other Shetlanders have paid Mr Hill two Forvik gulde each to become land-owning citizens of the state (meaning that they have a token plot of land, a share of the foreshore, and a seat in the Forvik “ting” [parliament or assembly] once established), while around 100 non-Shetlanders have paid one gulde each for honorary citizenship.  A gulde is apparently worth £60, although how the rate of exchange is calculated (or indeed maintained in today’s volatile currency markets) is not made clear in the Times story. 

Scots Law News can add, following perusal of Mr Hill’s “Shetland Conversation” website, that a further source of income for the campaign arises from an opportunity to sponsor a tree on Forvik.