The Way of the Wombat

Daughter-dear is spending eight weeks of this summer doing a project as part of the Shell Step programme, in her case developing a database of local community organisations.

However she is having a short break from it this week to get work experience with a local law company and she seems to be enjoying every minute of this. The company, Cains is actually a major player in a number of fields, and her time there has included looking at maritime law, registering ships, a meeting of the Financial Supervision Commission to discuss the registration of a new bank, and obtaining mortgages on aircraft.

Did you know you can get a mortgage on an airplane? And that at least one big bank requires any plane mortgaged with it to have a plaque fastened to the fuselage to say so?

But the most interesting thing has been the Space Law department!

Apparently, back sometime last century, it occurred to the international community that, if satellites etc. were going to become commonplace, space needed dividing up and to belong to people. Britain, trying to own as much space as possible, pointed out that they were responsible for the Crown Dependencies, and ought to get space for them too, which the British would administer.

Except that the Manx government, in more recent years, said to the UK government "Well thanks for administering our bit of space for us, but we'll take it back now and administer it ourselves". The UK government realised that they couldn't refuse - and we now administer our own bit of space, licensing satellites etc. and earning money from it.

Now comes the really weird bit. Space was not dished out so that you own the bit above yourselves, but as a sort of patchwork to ensure reasonable bits for all. And you know which bit belongs to us? Well, if you live in the middle of the USA, just look upwards.

Yes, that's right - if you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit over somewhere in the vague vicinity of Nebraska or Kansas you have to get it registered with the Isle-of-Man government and pay us rent!!

Now how cool is that?