--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Meynell <knm@m...> wrote:

>
> >11. Saint Helena (Jamestown)
> >12. Saint Helena Dependencies (Ascension Island,
> >Tristan da Cunha)
>
> There are officially a single territory, although the three main

islands

> are separated by hundreds of miles of ocean.

While this may now be legally true, administratively the two former
dependencies are virtually on their own.

Ascension and Tristan both have as their FCO representative an
administrator who in theory asnwer to the governor of St. Helena.
Ascension Island has issued their own coins, albeit commemorative.
Both use joint St. Helena-Ascension issued coins. Tristan will use
whatever they get, GBP, Falklands or SH-AC coinage. They both issue
their own stamps. Neither Ascension nor Tristan are to be found on
the St. Helena Government website.

I am more familiar with the Tristan case since, having gone to all
three on a cruise, I was able to spend quite a bit of time chatting
with the then administrator of Tristan. Their twin sources of
income are lobster fishing and philatelic sales. These amount to
about GBP 80,000 per year and thus they receive no annual budgetary
assistance from the FCO. One case where the UK does chip in is in
cases of emergency medial evacuations since a doctor only comes by a
few times a year and the island has no airport.

I know that Ascension has its own separate residency rules. They
define every worker there, since no other types of residency permits
are issued, no matter how long their duration, as temporary workers
and do not permit permanent residents. The exception was one
individual, who had worked there for over 25 years, petitioned for
retirement there and was granted.

So I would argue that while legally speaking the three islands are
one Overseas Territory, they, especially Tristan, have such wide
autonomy that to say so seems closer to legal fiction.

HH