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    The Isle of Man

    Britain, when it was Great Britain, had an empire that spanned the world. The sun, for a while, literally never set on the British Empire. You could travel on trains from Cape Town to Cairo and always be on a pink bit in the Atlas.

    But the Isle of Man - a funny little rock in the bit between Morecambe and Belfast - remains, enigmatically, part of the Empire but never wholly conquered by it. Given that it would take probably just one of our battleships to turn up at one of its fishing ports and threaten to bomb the hell out of the homosexual-birching, three-legged-flag-waving, wicker-man-burning islanders, and make the Isle of Man as constitutionally different to England as the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Dogs, one wonders why this has never happened. Especially in the context of Parliamentary time being required to discuss how the Finance and Welfare Bills will be enacted on the Island.

    Could it be because it's a tax haven?

    #2
    The Isle of Man

    As indeed is the Isle of Dogs nowadays.

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      #3
      The Isle of Man

      Technically speaking, the sun still doesn't set on the British Empire, right? It doesn't set on the French empire either, with Departements/Territoires d'Outre-Mer like Guadeloupe, Polynesia, Reunion. And of course the US might be the greatest empire of all time, with nearly 1,000 military bases in every corner of the world.

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        #4
        The Isle of Man

        Enemy aliens in WWII were sent to the Isle of Man. Many of these were Jewish refugees who were scared shitless on seeing the three legged flag which looked a bit too close to a swastika for comfort.

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          #5
          The Isle of Man

          Presumably they had never visited Sicily.

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            #6
            The Isle of Man

            If I've understood the table on page 28 here correctly, the Isle of Man is a "compliant" jurisdiction in tax haven terms.

            http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/GFannualreport2014.pdf

            Which makes it better than the "largely compliant" UK, Germany or Netherlands.

            Switzerland doesn't seem to have even qualified for the first round proper.

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              #7
              The Isle of Man

              ursus arctos wrote: Presumably they had never visited Sicily.
              I don't think they were doing a tour, like.

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                #8
                The Isle of Man

                Bored of Education wrote: Enemy aliens in WWII were sent to the Isle of Man. Many of these were Jewish refugees who were scared shitless on seeing the three legged flag which looked a bit too close to a swastika for comfort.
                The first time I visited, a couple of years ago, I stayed in a hotel that had been used for internment during the war. They seemed quite proud about it, with photos of the internees on the wall in the restaurant.

                Once I caught the bus from Douglas to Port Erin. This goes via the airport, which is the only place I have seen adverts asking "Have you ever considered buying your own plane?"

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