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The Current Transcript for December 9, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Our MPs are just refusing to deliver Brexit and honour the mandate of the people. I can tell you, I go to the stage where I'd be wanting to chew my own tie in frustration.

LAURA LYNCH: Boris Johnson hasn't consumed any of his clothes just yet, but the UK prime minister is in the final days of an election he says he didn't want. And it seems many people in the kingdom are similarly frustrated, angry and divided. We have a feature documentary report from CBC's senior Europe correspondent Margaret Evans to kick off today's show. After that, urban paradise?

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VOICE: It's almost like looking out on the grounds of Downton Abbey. Quite lovely. And it's very inviting, except you're not really invited here unless you pay.

LL: Lush green land, centrally located in Vancouver and wasted, says urban designer Charles Montgomery. Langara golf course, like others in Canada, is a target for those who say it's past time to transform fairways and greens into much needed housing. More on that in an hour. Also today, we'll look at the measles outbreaks that are killing children and alarming public health specialists. I'm Laura Lynch. This is The Current.

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Documentary: From London to Hartlepool

Guests: Margaret Evans

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from British House of Commons]

LL: The familiar pleadings of the flamboyant John Bercow trying to maintain decorum in the British House of Commons. He presided over one of the most turbulent periods of parliamentary history, mostly because of Brexit. In fact, one calculation had him shouting order 14,000 times during his tenure. But the job will fall to someone else when MPs return after this week's general election. Bercow retired last month. And that next session promises to be no less turbulent if the campaign is any indication. We asked the CBC's senior Europe correspondent Margaret Evans to give us a sense of what people are thinking ahead of Thursday's vote. Here's her documentary, From London to Hartlepool.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds of Finnish Christmas carols]

MARGARET EVANS: Rutherhide, South London in the annual Scandinavian Christmas market, offering up all things Nordic from Danish glug and Icelandic scarves to Christmas carols sung in Finnish. Also on offer this year, free legal advice for European Union residents of the United Kingdom worried about their status win or if Britain finally leaves the EU.

VOICE 1: Information about the EU settlement scheme?

VOICE 2: I have one of those already.

VOICE 1: Great.

MARGARET EVANS: It might seem an odd place for a cluster of Swedes and Danes, but the docks near here were once a base for seafaring trade links to Scandinavia and beyond. More than three million EU nationals live in the UK. About a million of them here in London.

VOICE 3: Whoever is here before the Brexit date, they can benefit from these preset deadlines settlement scheme. It's a bit complicated in terms of what needs to be done by a certain date because deadlines keep shifting.

MARGARET EVANS: The advice spoof is doing a brisk business staffed by immigration lawyers volunteering their expertise. It's one of the clearest signs yet that Brexit may indeed be right around the corner, three and a half years after the referendum.

VOICE 4: Are you a European national?

VOICE 5: I'm Finnish, yeah.

MARGARET EVANS: For many Europeans who've held the right to live and work anywhere in the 28 nation block for decades, it feels like a slap.

ANGEL: I thought if Brexit happens I'm out of here.

MARGARET EVANS: This woman called Angel says it's changed her opinion of the place she's called home for 30 years now.

ANGEL: If I'm not welcome, well dammit. I've been paying taxes for 30 years. If that's not good enough for them then let them have it.

MARGARET EVANS: The sense of urgency comes courtesy of Britain's conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his gamble that this week's election will win him a big enough majority to push Brexit through parliament.

BORIS JOHNSON: I've just been to see Her Majesty the Queen earlier on and she agreed to dissolve parliament for an election. I want you to know, of course, that I don't want an early election.

MARGARET EVANS: Critics, Angel from Finland included, say the election has muddied the waters, leaving Brits uncertain about what they're voting on, a government that reflects the kind of society they want to live in or Britain's relationship with the EU.

ANGEL: Brexit is for the rest of our days. It's not just for six years.

MARGARET EVANS: But EU nationals don't get a vote and the battle for those who would see Britain remain in the European Union is indeed being fought at the ballot box.

[Sounds from London Underground]

MARGARET EVANS: The London Underground at rush hour, a heaving river of humanity swept through long tunnels and up and down escalators in an ever greater crush. This is a city of nine million people and you feel it. 60 percent of Londoners voted to stay in the European Union, 70 percent in the riding we're about to visit. Remainers fear that if Boris Johnson's conservatives win the election, then the moment they're dragged out of Europe against their wishes, will be upon them. An inexorable drumbeat sending them over a cliff's edge.

JOHN SHORE: The original referendum was fought on an emotional level. Most people who voted "remain" feel that it was won through cheating, through lies, and we feel a need to do something about it now. We really do.

MARGARET EVANS: John Shore is standing outside a pub called The Butcher's Hook and Cleaver, not far from St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a bitterly cold evening, but he and other volunteers campaigning for a second referendum are about to pamphlet local pubs in the hopes of identifying potential remain voters. Most of the volunteers are retirees, contradicting the claim that only the young want to stay in the EU.

ANDREW CONWAY: We would like to have more young people actually involved in the campaign thought. That would be very helpful.

MARGARET EVANS: Andrew Conway is a retired math teacher.

ANDREW CONWAY: I don't think Labour Party campaigns effectively to remain. I was very disappointed with the Labour Party in not putting forward the benefits there are for working people.

MARGARET EVANS: I would think I would think ask if there's somebody they go out once or twice a week, a seemingly jovial group, but they're also deeply frustrated and full of a sense of loss.

JOHN SHORE: Yes, angry. Yeah, sort of.

ANDREW CONWAY: Cheated because of the way it was done. We were let down by all our politicians. It's not a party thing where we're let down, but all of our politicians.

MARGARET EVANS: That sense of betrayal, of course, is just as strong amongst those who voted to leave.

[Sound of seagulls]

MARGARET EVANS: Hartlepool, a seaside town 360 kilometres north of London, as the crow flies or the seagull. It's another place whose history links to the outside world through the sea. Once home to a thriving shipbuilding industry. But there the comparisons end. If anything, Hartlepool is London's opposite. Formerly the beating heart of English industry, it now has the highest unemployment in the country, and 69 percent of people here voted for Brexit. It's one reason why both the conservative and Brexit parties believe they can break through northern England's so-called Red Wall, labour heartland long tied to the working class. The relationship though that is now fraying over Brexit. High tide most afternoons, you can usually find a handful of fishermen out on the sea wall, no matter the weather. They stand decked out in waterproof suits, a single rod perched against the rail in the hopes of catching something for their evening tea, preferably cod. Denmark and the continent lurks somewhere on the far side of the swells, unseen and receding ever further in the minds of every fisherman we spoke to. Steve won't give his last name, but he worked in the prison service for 20 years and is now retired.

STEVE: Our politicians nowadays are very, we haven't got the characters we used to have. We haven't got the experience.

MARGARET EVANS: So if you feel that way about politicians, you know, what are you going to do this election?

STEVE: Well, I voted Labour all my life, but I won't be voting Labour this year. I do have a thing about voting for Conservatives and I can't vote for the Lib Dems, which I would have done. I can't just vote for somebody that's completely ignored what the country voted for. So it didn't leave me much choice, did it?

MARGARET EVANS: You're a man who voted remain, who's going to wind up voting for the Brexit party.

STEVE: Sounds like it, doesn't it?

MARGARET EVANS: It's an example of just how deeply Brexit has disturbed traditional politics here, churning up old loyalties and sending them flying like sands unleashed by a restless sea.

[Sounds of the sea]

MARGARET EVANS: What's happening with this fish of yours?

VOICE 6: It's gone.

MARGARET EVANS: It's gone.

VOICE 6: Yeah.

MARGARET EVANS: Oh okay.

VOICE 6: I voted remain, by the way. But it's a democracy. We voted out. We should have left. If you can't go with your vote, you've lost your democracy.

[Knock on door]

MIKE HILL: Hello, I'm Mike. I'm the Labour Party candidate for the election.

MARGARET EVANS: Mike Hill won Hartlepool by more than 7000 votes in 2017. In normal times, his seat would be considered safe. Labour has held it for half a century.

MIKE HILL: Well consider them because I always feel.

MARGARET EVANS: He was a former union organizer and he's out door knocking on a foggy day.

MIKE HILL: Please vote if you can. Please vote.

MARGARET EVANS: He'll admit there's been some contradictory messaging from Labour headquarters on Brexit.

MIKE HILL: Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, has been recently criticised for not declaring which way he will go on that.

MARGARET EVANS: Official policy is that Labour will negotiate its own Brexit deal with the European Union and then put that specific deal to the people in another referendum, which would also offer remaining as a choice. It's not a message that goes over well in Hartlepool.

MIKE HILL: We understand that people are frustrated about Brexit, but they've also got remember, that Hartlepool is in the situation it's in because of 10 years of Conservative Party austerity measures. We've been battered and battered and battered again by the Tories.

MARGARET EVANS: As one of the UK's most deprived areas, Hartlepool has benefited from European Union funding. In fact, the Northeast receives twice as much EU aid as other parts of England. But few people know about it.

MIKE HILL: I think misinformation has been going on for some time over the European Union, European Parliament, but people just feel disconnected and you can understand that.

[Sounds from Bingo night in Hartlepool]

MARGARET EVANS: Bingo night at Ye Old Durham Social Club in Hartlepool. The lights are bright, the heat's turned up high and tables are crowded with pints of beer, g and t's, the coloured markers people used to fill in their bingo cards lined up in rows like soldiers. They don't use the bingo call letters anymore, but if they did, B would certainly be for Brexit.

VOICE 7: We're putting the most money and getting nothing out of it.

MARGARET EVANS: Pat Abby and Rachel Gilling have known each other since their children were babies. Ask how life in Hartlepool is these days and the answer is one long list of loss.

VOICE 7: We've lost the forge, they've lost the shipyards, the mines, they've all closed down. What else used to be here? Oh we used to have a matchbox factory, a tin factory, a laundry, all closed down.

MARGARET EVANS: For them, the election is about Brexit and little else. And Abby quite likes Boris Johnson. She will not be voting Labour even though she used to.

VOICE 7: When Labour was there, they used to help us, you know for the working now. But now it's just all for themselves.

MARGARET EVANS: Enter into the fray, a contrarian. There's always one and tonight it is Rita Kelly. She'll vote for no one at all.

RITA KELLY: Women have suffered and died for the vote for women and I feel very guilty that I'm not using my vote, but on the other hand, I'm very careful about where I gave my loyalties and lot don't get it.

MARGARET EVANS: Kelly is genuinely anguished by this election and the choices before her.

RITA KELLY: We've never been given enough information to know what we lose and what we gain, etc, which is I'm saying going back to how we got into the thing in the first place.

MARGARET EVANS: Britain joined the European Union, then the European Community in 1973 under the conservative government of Edward Heath. And in 1975, the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson put "staying in" to a referendum. 67 percent of voters opted to remain.

[Sounds from Bingo in Hartlepool]

MARGARET EVANS: Much easier to get back to the bingo and less divisive topics of conversation.

VOICE 8: Well, I could speak about what the royal family do.

VOICE 9: And you can write a book. Oh I can talk for England. I'll talk for England.

MARGARET EVANS: Sasha Bedding runs a charity in one of Hartlepool's poorest neighbourhoods. He says the community has been both maligned and misunderstood, especially over Brexit.

SASHA BEDDING: There's been a lazy shorthand for people who will leave as you were racist, knuckle dragging, unintelligent people. And Actually, in my day to day life, I don't see that. What I see is a group of people who wanted something to change, who haven't had what they would consider the fair chance.

MARGARET EVANS: Poverty, says Bedding, tends to draw horizons in. The failure of a steel industry, he says, has challenged the community's sense of self. Many people here blame EU regulations prohibiting state aid for its collapse.

SASHA BEDDING: For the first time in a long time, that vote mattered. It was a binary yes and no. It was a vote that you couldn't manipulate. You couldn't lose it in majority areas or traditional Labour heartlands or additional Tory heartlands. But I think it's more than just a very simple they don't like the EU. It's more complicated than that.

MARGARET EVANS: The fact that Brexit has yet to be implemented just seals the belief for many in town that their vote doesn't count in the end.

[Sounds from London Underground]

MARGARET EVANS: Back in London, where remain campaigners are convinced that enough people have changed their minds about leaving the EU that they would win a second referendum if it were held right now. But even if that's correct, it won't help them in an election scenario unless they can convince people and an awful lot of them to vote tactically.

NAOMI SMITH: This adds on to this. You could sneak ahead.

MARGARET EVANS: Naomi Smith is the CEO of a tactical voting group called Best for Britain. She and about 20 others are crammed into a rented office space, running computer programs and pouring over numbers.

NAOMI SMITH: Our mission is to stop Brexit by any Democratic means. Remain votes get split across up to four parties.

MARGARET EVANS: There are no formal arrangements between remain or referendum supporting parties, and there are a few different strategic voting groups, not always recommending the same candidate. Confusing for voters. There are other challenges too.

NAOMI SMITH: We've not, on the remain side, got a single figurehead behind which people can rally in the way that on the leave side you really do have these big figures in Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.

MARGARET EVANS: Across town, Conservative Party workers preparing to go out canvassing are quietly confident that their big figure, Johnson, will deliver them a win and with it, Brexit.

ANTONIA COX: I mean, I would like it to be about quality of life. You know, we just put in this pedestrian crossing here to make life easier in this area. But of course, it's not about things like that. I'm afraid it's just it's about getting Brexit done. Yeah.

MARGARET EVANS: Antonia Cox is a conservative council member organizing for the conservative candidate in the same riding the People's Vote campaigners wrote in earlier leafleting the pubs. The Conservatives have had their own divisions over Brexit. The former conservative prime minister John Major, recently describing it as the worst foreign policy decision in his lifetime. Cox originally voted remain in the referendum, but has since changed her mind.

ANTONIA COX: I think it will be good to get back control of borders and laws and you know, this will still be a great country and it will still be an outward looking country. I mean, it really will be.

MARGARET EVANS: Maybe,bBut will it be able to heal? The very nature of the election, the confusion surrounding it, the high stakes and the bitterness will make it hard to put the Brexit debate to bed, because identity politics here has shifted away from traditional party lines into just one question: are you "leave" or are you "remain"? And both sides feel like they've had something fundamental stripped from them, be it democracy itself or long held assumptions about the land they live in. So here's wishing at the very least for the people of these good isles, a little respite over the holiday season, some shelter from a storm not yet passed.

[Choir singing]

LL: The CBC's senior Europe correspondent Margaret Evans's From London to Hartlepool was produced by Lily Martin.

[Music]

LL: The CBC News is next. Then.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We are on a trajectory that is going in absolutely the wrong direction. We are backsliding very significantly. Some of these situations are very influenced by the public perception of vaccines.

LL: The World Health Organization is warning about a rise in measles cases around the world. We'll head to Samoa, where health workers are going door to door trying to stop the outbreak. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

Back To Top »

Misinformation about vaccines one factor contributing to measles outbreaks in several countries, experts say

Guests: Emma Lawrey, Steven Hoffman, Isaac Bogoch

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, it's a housing crisis, not a golf course crisis. That's one of the arguments being used in Vancouver to convince the city to turn golf courses into housing. That discussion in half an hour. But first, containing a preventable outbreak.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When you're looking for the measles, it starts with basic fever. Yeah, if you look at the top of his mouth, he's got the red spots.

LL: Dr. Nadine Tenn Salle Is peering into the mouth of a toddler. She's in Samoa's capital city, Apia. The child she's just diagnosed is one of around 4700 who have come down with the measles. Since the outbreak started in October an estimated 70 people have died, most of them children.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's very hard to lose a child. We have a lot of dreams that we need to fulfill for our little ones. But once they're lost, I doesn't know what to do.

LL: Schools have been closed and a state of emergency declared, as a massive door to door vaccination campaign is underway. The anti-vaccination movement is slowing the progress. Last week, a high profile member of that group was arrested and charged with incitement against the government efforts. Meanwhile, red flags or cloths hang outside the homes where people still need to be vaccinated and health workers are arriving to help. Dr. Emma Lawrey is with New Zealand's Medical Assistance Team. She's an emergency room physician in New Zealand and has been coordinating the international health teams who have come to help with the outbreak. She spoke with us from Apia.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We have a New Zealand team of doctors and nurses and logistics are provided by fire at a district hospital, which usually houses about eight inpatients, which has now become a measles centre. And they've had up to sort of 33 inpatients at a time. But day to day, obviously, most of the clinicians are seeing patients caring for inpatients. And then there's a very small group to work on coordinating, make sure we've got the right people working in the right areas, that we've got the right skills. And just looking at trends and trying to out for me, decide or advise the New Zealand government on how we can help in the future. It's now over 4000 cases of measles in a country which is really relatively small. Unfortunately, some are had relatively low measles immunisation rates compared to some of the other countries in the area. And that really does mean that the spread can be much wider and greater. I'd just really like to make a plea for everybody worldwide to to immunize their children or if they're not immunized, to get immunized because this isn't isolated to the South Pacific. This is in many, many countries around the world. And really the key to preventing outbreak is vaccination. In saying that they've instituted a mass vaccination campaign here in the last week, which has raised their rates to, I think, somewhere near 90 percent. And hopefully that will be a big turning point in the outbreak. Numbers are starting to improve in the hospital. And we have a medical team that's assisting the Ministry of Health at a district hospital about an hour outside the capital, Apia. And numbers there as of yesterday were really starting to look better in terms of the number of patients that we have. Obviously, this has just had a devastating effect on people as someone with a number, quite a number of mainly small children who have passed away from measles. The medical staff within Samar have been working incredibly hard. They've been absolutely amazing. For the last couple of months. And obviously, everybody is very tired, but I think there's a feeling of things starting to improve, which isgreat. I think we will see a tail of measles cases. You know, still we still see numbers coming in, but in much smaller numbers and in much less severity for some time now and over the next month or so, I think there will be a slight shift into sort of early recovery for the Ministry of Health here in Samoa.

LL: That's Dr. Emma Lawrey. The emergency room physician is in Samoa as part of the New Zealand Medical Assistance Team. Now, Samoa isn't the only country struggling with outbreaks. In 2018, more than 140,000 people died from measles worldwide and 9.7 Million were infected. That's up from 7.5 million cases in 2017. There is a safe and effective vaccine, but vaccination rates have stagnated in some countries because of poor public health systems and the growth of misinformation about safety. Steven Hoffman is a professor of global health, law and political science at York University in Toronto. He's also the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Population and Public Health. We've reached him today in London, England. Hello.

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Hello. Good morning.

LL: How surprised are you by what's going on in Samoa?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: What's happening is not so surprising in the sense that these types of outbreaks are going to happen and do happen in many countries around the world every year. What's difference and what's scary about what we're seeing this year is we're seeing outbreaks on a scale that we hadn't seen in quite some time. And we're seeing a re-emergence in places where previously measles had been eliminated.

LL: So let's talk about the developing countries. What other developing countries are experiencing severe measles outbreaks?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, there's five countries that account for half of all measles cases around the world. First is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That's the country that has the highest incidence rate of measles. Liberia, Madagascar, Somalia and the Ukraine, but there's in many other countries that have measles, including in Canada. Every year Canada has 200 cases.

LL: I'll get to more about in a moment, but I just wonder, in those five countries that you talk about, what are the vaccination rates like?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Vaccination rates are much lower than in most developed countries. I mean, measles outbreaks occur when there's lower vaccination rates in order for a vaccine to be fully effective for a whole population to achieve herd immunity. We need about 95 percent coverage. And so in all of the countries where we are seeing outbreaks, that's because there isn't the level of vaccination coverage that's needed. And it varies. So in Samoa, for example, where the current outbreak that's getting the world's attention, it was around a 30 percent vaccination rate until recent efforts have brought it up to almost 90 percent. And so those countries that are where we see these cases of measles, these outbreaks, they would range anywhere between that.

LL: But in those again, in those five countries that you mentioned, why are vaccination rates so low?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: So the challenge with vaccines is that so first we have to pay for them and then we have to make sure that they can be delivered to those who need them. So there's 19 million kids every year who are not vaccinated with the measles vaccine who could fully benefit from it. Part of the challenge is around financing. So we need to actually fund the purchase of these vaccines and the delivery of them. But the second part, that delivery piece is extremely challenging. Most vaccines need to be kept cold. This needs to be a cold chain. And to reach far flung places can be quite difficult and require concerted effort. But the thing that's getting most of us really worried is we're increasingly seeing people voluntarily not vaccinating, which is really a tragedy given that this vaccine, it's safe, it's effective and will prevent measles in almost all cases. If someone has had two doses and why are people saying no? Well, this is one of the big challenges we're seeing in the world. Indeed, the World Health Organization mentioned vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10 challenges to look for in the current calendar year. Vaccine hesitancy has really been causing a challenge in developing countries, but also in developed countries. We see increasingly people are either sceptical or worried about what might happen. There's a lot of fears out there which don't need to be there because of how effective and safe these products are and how many lives have been saved. Just from measles alone, increased vaccination coverage between 2000 and 2018 saved 23 million kids lives. That's quite significant. Something we have to tackle.

LL: I mentioned earlier that the government in Samoa says it's arrested an anti-vaccine activists, anti-vaccination activist who was challenging a vaccination drive. This seems like a coordinated effort to get people to resist vaccines. How common are those kinds of anti-vaccination efforts in developing countries?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: So we see it less prominently than in developed countries because indeed, the irony here is that most people in developing countries who don't have vaccines, who don't have that coverage, desperately want it, righ?. They just can't either afford it or they don't have access to it through their local health care system. So it's not as prominence as what we see, for example, in Canada, the United States, but it is there and it's unfortunately growing. And that's the real worry that even if we do invest the funds, we do try to reach everyone who can be there. If people don't want the vaccine, then, of course, that's going to be a real challenge for infectious disease spread.

LL: Alright. Let's look at developed countries then, because a number of those countries have lost their measles free status and that includes the United Kingdom. What does that mean for those countries?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, that's what's been really surprising and especially worrisome to global health researchers like myself. So this last year, four countries in Europe lost their measles elimination. So Albania, Czech Republic. Greece and the United Kingdom. What that means is that whereas for a long period of time there had been no sustained spread of measles within those countries. Suddenly there has been an outbreak again that have sustained for more than a year. And it's not just in Europe. The United States last year reported the highest number of cases of measles in 25 years and almost lost its measles elimination status.

LL: And this, again, use how much of that is due to the people who choose not to get vaccinated?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, in countries where vaccines are mostly covered by the health care system or and by this great access, then vaccine hesitancy and campaigns against vaccination become a major part of the problem. I can't say an exact percentage, but that would be that's what we would point to as the main barrier in those countries where vaccines are fully implemented as part of a regular routine immunization program.

LL: How concerned are you that we're actually losing ground on this preventable disease?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: I'm very worried. If you look at the 20 year time horizon, it's actually very good news in the sense that in 2000, more than half a million people per year died from measles. And so this year, one hundred and forty thousand deaths would represent almost 75 percent reduction in deaths from measles. But if we just look at one year time horizon, if we compared to last year, this year it's about a 15 percent increase in cases and deaths from measles. Now, that's that's just a setback on a scale we just haven't seen for a very long time in global health. And that gets a lot of us worried and really highlights that we need to double down on these efforts and really scale up vaccines and achieve their full lifesaving potential.

LL: What does doubling down mean?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, the good news is that there's been significant global efforts to increase vaccine coverage around the world. Most prominently does GAVI, the vaccine alliance. This is a multilateral institution where many countries and non-state actors have come together to better coordinate the purchasing and delivery of vaccines, particularly in the poorest countries. Canada has always been there has been a major funder, and it's just one example of the kinds of international efforts needed to tackle this challenge, because when it comes to infectious diseases, we're all in it together. Right. The health of people around the world is influencing the health of everyone else, including in Canada, because viruses like measles don't carry passports. And as a result, if we're serious about protecting people in Canada and other countries, we have to protect people around the world at the same time.

LL: Steven Hoffman, thank you for your time.

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Thanks so much.

LL: Steven Hoffman is a professor of global health, law and political science at York University. We reached him today in London, England. In Canada last year, there were 29 cases of measles. So far this year, more than tripled that. 113 cases. Dr. Isaac Bogoch is an infectious disease physician at Toronto General Hospital. He's in our Hear our Toronto studio. Hello.

ISAAC BOGOCH: Good morning.

LL: What concerns you most about the numbers of new measles cases in Canada?

ISAAC BOGOCH: What concerns me most is that we can see a trend towards greater numbers of cases per year in Canada. And although we might think that we're doing relatively well compared to other places in the world, which we are, we can see a trend toward people choosing either not to vaccinate themselves or vaccinate their loved ones. And this is likely directly resulting in more cases in Canada.

LL: Okay, so the reasons for seeing such an increase?

ISAAC BOGOCH: Yeah. I mean, as was pointed out by earlier guests, we know there's, you know, unfortunate circumstances in many parts of the world where, you know, the public health infrastructure just isn't the same as what it is in Canada and there's a lot of measles. And that's terrible and of course, there's a global effort to curb that. And inevitably, you know, people move, people travel, and we will get an imported case in Canada from time to time. That's that's just going to happen. What's tragic and unfortunate is if there is an imported case in Canada, we should really have zero cases of subsequent transmission within Canada because we should have, you know, high levels of vaccination in Canada to prevent the further spread of this in Canada. And we're not seeing that.

LL: Where that phrase herd immunity comes in.

ISAAC BOGOCH: Exactly. Exactly. And we're not seeing that in Canada. In fact, earlier this year, there's a you know, we had a measles outbreak in British Columbia from an imported case. And there were subsequent cases of measles, several cases of measles in B.C. when there should be zero. And and this is unfortunately happily happening with increasing frequency in Canada. And all this really shows is that, you know, perhaps the pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction in Canada.

LL: There's also an issue, I think, of people who have been born between 1970 and 1996. Some may think they're immune, but they aren't.

ISAAC BOGOCH: Yeah. So that's a really good point. So Canada started vaccinating against the measles in about the early 80s, 1980, 1981, and then they did a lot of makeup campaigns to make sure that, you know, most people who were susceptible to measles received the vaccination through through school programs and one dose of the vaccination was given at that time. Up until 1996. Now, one dose of the measles vaccine is really good. It's just not good enough. And we know that about 85 to 90 percent of people that got that one dose of the vaccine will be protected for a long, long, long period of time. But again, that's only 85 to 90 percent of people. That's not 100 percent of people. In 1996, they started giving the second dose, a second dose of the measles vaccination. And we know that if people have two doses of the measles vaccination, their level of protection against the measles is about ninety nine percent. So in Canada, we have seen and globally we have seen people who, you know, did everything right. Their parents took them to get their vaccination. They got their vaccination. They have their vaccination cards. They have nothing against vaccinations. They're just going about their lives. And unfortunately, they were exposed to measles and unfortunately, they came down with a case of measles. So I think it's really important, especially in Canada, for people to think, you know, if I was born before 1996 and sometime between 1970 and 1996, just to have a check it look at your vaccine card. If there's any questions about this, it's a chat with your primary care provider to see if maybe you would benefit from a second dose of the measles vaccine. And I think that's important because, you know, years ago we would say, well, you know, you might be low risk and you're not travelling to any place where there's a lot of measles. But we're now in an era of historic measles cases in a vaccine era. And we know those cases are being imported to Canada. And I think it's really important for Canadians to be protected.

LL: Well, what reasons do people give you then for not getting a measles shot or giving one to their kids, making sure that kids get vaccinated?

ISAAC BOGOCH: Well, I mean, this is obviously a very complicated issue. And, you know, we often talk about vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination movements. And I think we often do ourselves a disservice by really categorizing everyone under one umbrella, under one, you know, anti vax or vaccine hesitancy category. And in fact, I think there's a lot of heterogeneity in that group. And I think there's going to be a lot of different ideas and beliefs and values within the group of individuals who are not vaccinating themselves or their loved ones or not. And and I really think that when we have an approach to this, it has to be a multifaceted approach to deal with the heterogeneity of people in that group.

LL: What are the kinds of conversations you have in your office with patients then?

ISAAC BOGOCH: Sometimes we hear people who are just adamant against vaccines and they say, you know what, like. I don't believe the science and you know, there's, you know, issues about, you know, big pharma and conspiracy theories. And certainly that sort of one polar side of the argument. And then there's other people who have no issues whatsoever and they say, you know, I just heard something, I read something. I thought that this was not good. I read something online or I heard from my friends that this is a little bit dangerous. And of course, we know that it isn't and as your other speakers pointed out, that these are safe, effective, freely available vaccines. And, you know, a simple conversation with these individuals can redirect them rather easily. And then, of course, there's everyone in between. So it's.

LL: What do you say to the hard liners though?

ISAAC BOGOCH: I mean, honestly, I do a lot more listening than I do talking in these in these cases. And I think it's really important for you know, primary care providers, specialists, public health providers, the general public, and we're having these conversations to really listen and really hear what the values and beliefs are of people that are choosing not to vaccinate themselves because that law ultimately frame our conversation with them. I just don't think this shaming and blaming game is really going to help anybody or solve any problems. You know, this is not about slam dunking on the competition. This is about working together to make sure that individuals are safe and communities are safe. And we can do that by ensuring that we have herd immunity and ensuring that people are vaccinated.

LL: But the strange thing is this pushback against vaccine misinformation has been going on for some time. Why do you think it is not sinking in?

ISAAC BOGOCH: Yeah. I mean, certainly the pushback towards vaccinations has been going on since the advent of vaccination. So this is not new at all. This has been going on for forever. And, you know, looking in the crystal ball, it's going to continue to go on for forever. What I think has changed is that the tactics have changed. And we now know in an era of social media, Internet access and, you know, everyone with a smartphone in hand, we can see the creation and amplification of pseudoscience and misinformation spread rapidly. And the results of that are devastating. And again, to come up with a counter approach to this, I think we really need a group effort. I don't think this is going to be physicians and public health providers waving their fingers. This is going to be a coordinated approach with multiple stakeholders, including, you know, government at all levels, including community support, including health care and primary care. Entailing what, though, social scientists? I think it has to be a multipronged approach to education. Well, I think it's education would likely be one component. I think we need social scientists to really help with, you know, how to frame conversations. I think we need policy at at city levels, at provincial levels, at national levels. And this is I really don't think there's going to be a one size fits all solution. And that's why we really need everyone at the table to put her put their heads together to figure out how are we going to how are we going to combat this and really make evidence based and science based policies that are safe for Canadians.

LL: You see the arrest of this person in Samoa, do we need to go to that extent? Do we need to make vaccines mandatory?

ISAAC BOGOCH: You know, I wish I had all the answers. I certainly don't. You know, and obviously this is one of those things where if there is any easy solutions, we'd have them already. But so clearly, this is very, very complex. And, you know, arresting someone is, of course, the extreme element. And we have to, you know, balance several things. We have to balance science. We have to balance safety. We have to balance people's choices and individual choices over their bodies. So, you know, I think really to to come to terms with how to approach this, it's not going to involve, you know, one individual or one group. This is going to be a multipronged approach.

LL: Alright doctor, thank you very much for coming in today.

ISAAC BOGOCH: Thank you for having me.

LL: Dr. Isaac Bogoch is an infectious disease physician at Toronto General Hospital and he was in our Toronto studio. I've got some time now to tell you about a story coming up tomorrow on The Current. Electric cars are hardly a novelty anymore, but what you don't see yet are electric planes. There are reasons for that. But at a time when the aviation industry is under scrutiny for emissions, some are trying to overcome the challenges. This week in Vancouver Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall hopes to fly the world's first all electric seaplane.

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VOICE: I'm the pilot, so I'm the test pilot. So, you know, I had to go through you know rigorous interviews and whatever to make sure that I had sufficient experience to do that. I do, because I flew one of these aircraft every day for 10 years. We're looking at very strict parameters on weather. So it has to be, you know, no visible moisture and 10 knots maximum wind. So this time of the year, that's a bit of a tough call, but it's looking good. I have absolutely no qualms about flying the aircraft. This is a tried and true airframe and this just has a different motor on it. When you think about the safety standards, all we have to do is prove that this aircraft is as safe or safer than the existing technology we have today. And that's not hard to do because this is a much more hi-tech system.

LL: Tomorrow on The Current, the hopes and limitations of the electrics skies. Coming up in our next half hour.

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VOICE: The structure that is now Sealand was actually outside of U.K. jurisdiction. So he went out there with a view to set up his pirate radio station and when he got there, he thought, wow, if this is no man's land, nobody owns this, it's outside of territorial limits, why don't I just declare my own country?

LL: Why not? Liam Bates's grandfather laid claim to a platform out in the ocean in 1967, making the Principality of Sealand, the self-proclaimed smallest micro-nation in the world. If you have ever fancy yourself a lord or a lady and let's face it, who hasn't, but you're still waiting for that call from the queen, they may have an offer you just can't refuse. That story's coming up in about 20 minutes. I'm Lady Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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Should Canada's public golf courses be converted to parks and affordable housing?

Guests: Charles Montgomery, Anne Penman, Ed McMahon

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current. If you're in a city practically anywhere in this country, you're probably fully aware of the housing crisis. And while governments tinker with mortgage regulations in the short term and create housing strategies in the long term, there's one seemingly intractable fact at the root of the issue: nobody is making any new land, though, that's piquing interest in certain urban green spaces.

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VOICE: What a beautiful space and you know, if we were in Stanley Park in the summer, you'd have or Central Park in New York, you'd have hundreds of people playing and picnicking out here. And we have one lone golfer.

LL: The beautiful space is Langara Golf Course, a publicly owned course, smack dab in the middle of Vancouver.

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VOICE: Let's see how he does on this drive. He's lining up, reaching back, ready for the swing. Boom. Nice shot. Oh actually off into the trees, isn't he? But you know what? There was no chance that his ball would hit anyone because there's nobody else out here.

LL: Charles Montgomery advises cities on urban design issues, and he's the author of "Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design." He's long been trying to get Vancouver to rethink its links and he's not the only one. Earlier this year, UBC professors proposed a way to convert the city's three public courses to social housing for 60,000 people. The city says it's open to new ideas for the old golf courses. And it's holding public meetings in the new year. Our Vancouver producer Anne Penman met up with Charles Montgomery just outside the Langara fence.

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CHARLES MONTGOMERY: I don't know. It's not an ugly fence, is it? But I hate it and it makes me so angry. And that's why I think, Anne let's just hop the fence. Shall we? So it's a low wooden post fence. It's not so high. Want to come with me?

ANNE PENMAN: Yeah. That's OK. That was easy. Now we're inside against the law?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: That's right.

ANNE PENMAN: The by-law probably.

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: We're inside the paid zone. And I think this is the first green here. And look at this expansive green. It's just kind of wondrous. You know, don't you imagine you know, Prince Harry to come riding along on a horse or something? It's quite magical really. It's almost like looking out on the grounds of Downton Abbey. Quite lovely. And it's very inviting, except you're not really invited here unless you pay.

ANNE PENMAN: But it's a public course.

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: Right. So we we have a funny issue here in Vancouver, where the city of Vancouver brags that 90 percent of this city is within a five minute walk of green space of a public park. But if you come to the edge of this green space, you reach a fence and if you hop that fence, you get yelled at as I did this morning or you can pay. So, for example, this Saturday, if you wanted to play golf here, it would cost you $37. In the summer, it costs up to, I think, $67 to play golf. So you have to pay to play. So this isn't really a public space. So today on this drizzly fall day, in this massive park like space, we have 18 people currently playing golf and 50 people, a grand total of 50 people are signed up to play golf all day today. So you will have 50 people using this supposed public space today, while over in my neighbourhood, on a postage stamp sized park, Grandview Park, you'll have, you know, maybe three times as many people using 5 percent of the land during the day. So Vancouver's public golf courses represent 15 percent of its park land, about half the size of Stanley Park and these are exclusive spaces.

ANNE PENMAN: There'll be a public consultation next year for different ideas about how the city uses golf course space, public so-called public golf course space. What would your vision be for this place?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: It's fantastic that the Parks Board in Vancouver has decided to look at the future of its three public golf courses. And my hope is that these spaces can be repurposed so that more people can enjoy them. A broader variety of people can enjoy them. Children, toddlers, people of all ages, people of all interests can use them. So we could maximize the utility of this space so that on a day like today, instead of 50 people using these many acres, maybe you would have hundreds of people using these many acres. So. we can get a lot more out of these lands,.

ANNE PENMAN: People have floated the idea of using green space like this for social housing. What do you think of that idea?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: We're experiencing a housing crisis here in Vancouver. It's kind of ironic here we're out looking out at this beautiful park land where over on the other side of the city, you know, more than 100 people are camped out in Oppenheimer Park. So it can feel strange to talk about preserving green space when we aren't even making space for people to live. In fact, in Vancouver, we spend much more money on providing homes for cars than we do for people. Now, I know my friends Scott Heine and Patrick Condon have suggested, well, why don't we use these parks to provide affordable housing? And it's a compelling idea. But I think I think we need to think beyond the urgency of this moment and look into the future where we were expecting hundreds of thousands of people to be moving to this city. And in fact, hundreds of thousands of people should move to the city if we want to live closer to together, together, live in more sustainable ways. So I would be nervous about using this park land for housing. But then if we look just across the street from this green space, you see single family homes, low density housing. it's a travesty that we aren't up-zoning those lands so that we can provide more housing at four or five, six, seven storeys along the edges of the park so more people can enjoy these parks. When you think about the number of homeless people living on our streets and living in Oppenheimer Park, it does make me wonder, though, if some of this park land can be used for temporary modular housing. This is a form of how housing we're building all across British Columbia to address this homeless emergency. But do we need to use the Greens when all we have to do is turn around and look at the parking lot of Langara golf course and you see, you know, a couple of hectares of housing for parking. Why can't we build temporary modular housing there, repurpose this park, and then in the medium term, rezone the neighbourhoods along the edges of our urban golf courses so that thousands more people can enjoy a truly public space.

ANNE PENMAN: What about people who would argue that on behalf of the environment, the tree canopy and the benefits of having a green space like this in a dense urban environment?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: I think our leaders in the past and our planners had tremendous foresight in preserving green space because the city is going to get denser and denser and the tree canopy here and the net, the natural spaces are essential. So I'm not suggesting we should cut all these trees down and pave over the park. What I'm suggesting is all this money we pour into this space can be put to better use by opening the park up to more uses, to inviting more people into these spaces. As Patrick and Scott pointed out, that the real value of these lands, of Vancouver's three City-owned golf courses is more than two billion dollars if it was developed. I don't know. I'm looking out on this space now, I see one, two, three, five, six, seven people tottering around in the drizzle. Can't we do better than that?

ANNE PENMAN: This isn't the first time you've spoken out about the use of the repurposing of golf courses or having a look at them at the very least. How's it going for you so far?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: Well, I've never tried to run for elected office, so I think I'm okay. What's interesting to me is when I talk to urban planners, landscape architects and others around this issue, they have very strong opinions. They'd like to see these changes. They'd like to open up these lands, but they won't speak about it on the record because they all want to get work with the city of Vancouver. And so it's kind of it's a taboo subject. But I think we need to start speaking out about these issues in a in a city and in an age where we're recognizing just how unfair our cities are and just how much we need to consider everybody when we're thinking about the use of our urban land.

ANNE PENMAN: Do you golf?

CHARLES MONTGOMERY: I've enjoyed a bit of pitch and putt myself. I mean, I'm a middle aged white guy. Of course, I love to hit a ball around. I mean, that's who these courses were designed for. But we've reached in an age in thinking about cities where we have to ask ourselves, you know, who is the city for who gets to use city spaces? And are we using this land efficiently when we're in the heart of a major North American city, and we have a crisis of affordability and housing and a crisis of equity in access to high quality parks and services. Not all of us can live next to Kit's Beach or next to Jericho Beach or next to Stanley Park.

LL: That was author and urbanist Charles Montgomery and CBC producer Anne Penman on the green at Vancouver's Langara Golf Course. It's not just Vancouver, where urban planners, city leaders and real estate developers are eyeing golf courses longingly. Members of a prestigious golf club in Woodbridge, Ontario, are considering a $120 million offer to develop their course into high-end homes. And in nearby Oakville, the owners of Glen Abbey are looking to demolish fairways and build more than 3000 residential units. The municipality there is fighting back. Across the country, more than 50 golf courses have been shut down since 2015. Ed McMahon is a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute who's been watching the trend across North America. He's in our Washington, D.C. studio. Hello.

ED MCMAHON: Good morning, Laura.

LL: Are golf course conversions the solution to our housing crisis?

ED MCMAHON: Well, land costs drive housing costs and we've got really a supply demand problem all over North America and the problem is we have fewer golfers and a rising demand for a limited supply of close and developable land. In other words, a saturated golf course market coupled with a scarcity of buildable land is driving the transformation of fairways and greens into housing and other uses all across North America.

LL: Does that though, mean that that could fix the housing crisis or is it just a part of the solution?

ED MCMAHON: Well, I think it's certainly a part of the solution. I think that one of the things that cities are thinking about is all the different ways that they could use publicly owned land to provide affordable housing, put things like putting housing on top of libraries or fire stations or even apartments for teachers on top of schools and the golf issue in particular. You know, the simple truth is we have far fewer people playing golf today than we did in the past. Aging baby boomers are dropping the sport and millennials just aren't all that interested. They'll tell you that it's golf is too time consuming, too expensive, too difficult. And they got too many other things to do with their time. As a result in the U.S., we close 200 golf courses in 2017 and we propose 200 more in 2018, so I think you're going to see a lot more of these examples where close and developable land is going to be transformed into other uses.

LL: OK, so is it just housing or are you seeing golf course land being converted to other uses?

ED MCMAHON: Oh, sure. We're seeing them being converted into all kinds of things from housing, solar farms, agro hoods, soccer fields, wildlife preserves, parks and walking trails and even the ones that are being converted into high density housing, they almost never would convert all of the land into housing because density demands compensating amenity and one of the amenities that almost everyone wants is park space, walk, trip walking trails, green space, that sort of thing. So usually even the golf courses that are being converted they're preserving portions of the land for parks and walking trails.

LL: Right. And because Charles Montgomery, who we just heard from, the urbanist in Vancouver, talked about how he's been trying to get the city to rethink golf courses for years, but it can be a hard sell for a lot of people. Does that surprise you?

ED MCMAHON: No it doesn't. And I think there are couple of reasons for that. First of all, green space has psychological, as well as practical value. And, you know, a lot of people bought houses around golf courses thinking they would have golf course views and tranquillity forever. And then when someone comes in after they've bought their house and says now we're going to build thousands of more houses there, that can be pretty unsettling. And, you know, this tends to be very valuable land. It's oftentimes in in high value, high income neighbourhoods, etc.. So the idea of putting homeless people in, you know, high income neighbourhoods, that can be unsettling to people. But we do have a real housing crisis all over North America. And as I said before, land costs are the major thing driving housing costs. And so we've got to take innovative looks at where we can find land that's not going to be that expensive and publicly owned golf courses are one of those assets that we can look to.

LL: It's interesting because some people who buy land or housing around golf courses, they don't even actually play golf. Do they?

ED MCMAHON: Right. Well, we did a survey on that some years ago, and we found that even in golf course developments, the majority of the buyers didn't play golf. And then so we'd interview them and say, well, why'd you buy the house then? They go, oh, we like the view across the fairway. We like to live next to protected open space. It was kind of like an aha moment. It was like, well duh. What's it cost to build a golf course? Millions of dollars. What's it cost to maintain a golf course? Millions of dollars. What's it cost to leave some of the open space alone in the first place? Well, almost nothing. And so that began a movement here and certainly here in the United States and across North America, really to build golf course developments without the golf course and we might call these conservation communities. And today one of the hottest concepts in residential development is agrohoods.

LL: Yeah, I was going to ask you to explain that term.

ED MCMAHON: Well, it's building housing developers around working farms. It used to be that no one cared where their food came from, but now we have an entire generation of foodies and everybody wants to know where their food came from and they liked this idea of locally owned, locally grown food. And so it's not just about growing vegetables, it's about growing community. So we're seeing some of these projects where we're building actually housing developments around working farms.

LL: What about the idea though of using golf courses for affordable housing, new affordable housing? Does that make sense to you?

ED MCMAHON: Well, it makes sense in a few locations, particularly if you're talking about publicly owned courses where the land is basically free to the local municipality. As I said, though, most of these courses tend to be privately owned, like the one outside of Toronto that you referenced earlier. These projects have tremendous land value. And I think the offer for the course in outside of Toronto, I think the initial offer was something like one hundred and twenty million dollars. They're talking about offers as high as $200 million. When you spend that kind of money, you're gonna have to have some market rate housing to basically make the numbers work when you do a development. It's a lot easier, as I say, if you start off and the public owns the land to begin with.

LL: Right. So have you seen a successful project of affordable housing built on a former golf course anywhere in North America?

ED MCMAHON: Well, we've seen some that we might call low, you know, market value housing. There's the four places where you're seeing the most of this are New York and New Jersey, California, Florida, and in in resort communities like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So, yes, we're seeing some I wouldn't call them, you know, low income housing, but prices that are starting in the 200,000s. We're seeing some golf courses with rental properties on them. But in most cases they're what I would describe as mixed use communities where you have some housing, some commercial, some office and certainly some park land.

LL: So what does that say then about the future prospects for having affordable housing on former golf courses?

ED MCMAHON: Well, I think that the truth is that in a market where developers land is scarce and expensive, giving golf courses new life as a residential or a mixed use community makes a lot of sense.

LL: So if this starts to happen, if the trend does carry forward, then what is the next frontier? Can you see a day when they start using park land, urban park land for housing?

ED MCMAHON: Well, as I said before, you know, cities have to be livable as well as affordable. And livability requires us to have park land, open space, et cetera. You know, Theodore Roosevelt used to always tell the story about the American who came upon a beggar in the streets of Shanghai, and he said to the beggar, he gave him some money and he said, what do you plan to do with the money? And the beggar said, I plan to spend one half for bread and one half for flowers. And of course, the American was appalled by this. He said, well, why would you waste one half of your money on flowers? He said well, of course, I don't see it that way. The bread is to sustain life. The beauty makes life worth living. And I think that we need to think about the balance of all of these things when we think about our urban life going forward.

LL: A good observation to end our conversation. Mr. McMann, thank you.

ED MCMAHON: Thank you.

LL: Ed McMahon is a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute. He was in our Washington, D.C. studio.

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Sealand is the world's 'smallest independent state.' For a small fee, Prince Liam will make you a royal

Guests: Liam Bates

LL: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch. We all have them, that hard to buy for a person on your list. Their hobbies are too expensive. They already have every kitchen gadget ever made and socks are just boring. Well, here's a new idea. How about nobility papers from Sealand. Starting at 30 British pounds, a little over $50 Canadian, you too can style yourself as a lord or lady of the world's smallest independent state. And you'd be in good company. Ed Sheeran, the singer songwriter, is a baron. George Stroumboulopoulos is a lord. So is star cricketer, Ben Stokes. He found out in August, live on Good Morning Britain.

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VOICE 1: We have made you Lord benjamin Stokes of the Principality of Sealand. It's an official title. You are now officially Lord Benjamin Stokes of Sea Land.

VOICE 2: Congratulations.

VOICE 3: Is this actually a real thing?

VOICE 1: It's a real thing. It's a real thing.

LL: It is a real thing. And to learn more about it, I'm joined by a member of Sealand's royal family. Prince Liam Bates is on the line from Leigh-on-sea in Essex. Hello. Should I call you your highness?

LIAM BATES: Just Liam is fine.

LL: Alright. Well, then. So tell me, Liam, how can I become a Lady of Sealand?

LIAM BATES: OK. A good few years back now, we started this initiative of offering Sealand titles of nobility to our supporters, and it's all done through our official government website, www.sealandgov.org.

LL: And do you get once you, say I become a lady of Sealand. What do I get with that?

LIAM BATES: You basically get your registration deed, which will tell you that you're officially a Lady of Sealand, or whichever title you're choosing, and you'll get a big information pack with all sorts of details about Sealand, where it is, what we've been doing over the last 50 years — things like that.

LL: Alright. Let's talk about Sealand itself then — what is it?

LIAM BATES: So Sealand is a fortress located seven miles off of the east coast of the UK, dating back, as I say, to the Second World War. That's the structure, but Sealand in itself is the smallest independent state.

LL: But when you say fortress, I actually think of something like a castle with battlements built on an island. What does this look like?

LIAM BATES: You said battlements. Many years ago — they've all been removed now — there were very large anti-aircraft gun emplacements on Sealand, you know, to shoot down German bombers. But nowadays it's a lot more friendly looking and homely. You know, we have a kitchen, we have a lounge, we have toilets, bedrooms, a chapel, a gym. We even have a jail actually, as well.

LL: But it's not even an island, is it? What is the structure?

LIAM BATES: So the structure is two large concrete towers with a steel deck up on the top.

LL: That gives me a much better visual idea of it. You say that you've got all these creature comforts, you've even got a jail. Do people live there permanently?

LIAM BATES: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's always, well ever since 1967, there's been a manned presence on Sealand, like continuously, 24-hour.

LL: So it's a platform, which means what? How do you get up to it?

LIAM BATES: There's only two ways up to Sealand. The most regular way is by boat. We take like fast boat out to Sealand. It takes approximately 20-25 minutes and then we lower kind of a swing-seat down, like a bosun's chair. The other way on, of course, is by helicopter, but that's a lot less frequent.

LL: And a lot more expensive. How often do you personally get to Sealand?

LIAM BATES: I'm out there at least once a month.

LL: Let's talk about the history of this place. How did your family come to rule Sealand?

LIAM BATES: My grandfather, Roy Bates, he was involved in pirate radio in the UK back in the 60s. And so he actually set up on an identical fortress on a different location, not too many miles away, but that one was actually within U.K. territorial waters. Because of that, the UK brought in some laws to shut these pirates, as they called them, down. My grandfather thought, well, what's next? You know, what can I do? Do I get a boat to go outside of territorial limits? And then he was researching some more and he found that the structure that is now Sealand was actually outside of the UK jurisdiction. So he went out there with a view to set up his pirate radio station and when he got there, he thought, well, if this is no man's land, nobody owns this, it's outside of territorial limits — why don't I just declare my own country? It seemed like quite a normal idea to him, I think.

LL: But what reaction did he get from the UK government after he declared independence?

LIAM BATES: There's many, many stories of ways that the UK government have tried to take back the fortress. I mean, a boat full of royal marines were sent out to recapture it at one point. And there's since been government papers that have been declassified where they considered having the Royal Navy run a ship into it in the night, to knock it down. Things like that.

LL: Why would it bother them that much?

LIAM BATES: I think they saw it as a threat. You know they, it was quoted as a government official saying they were concerned about it becoming the Cuba off the east coast of the U.K.

LL: I understand. In 1978, there was actually an attempted coup. What happened?

LIAM BATES: So there were some European guys, I believe mainly Germans, decided that they were going to take Sealand for themselves. You know, they thought it's a country, there's been coups many times throughout history, how is that done? We'll take it by force. They went out by helicopter, I believe, under the guise of doing business with my grandfather and my father and when in fact, the intention all along was to obviously take it by force. So my father was held captive out there and eventually released.

LL: How long was he held?

LIAM BATES: I think he was held just short of a week, maybe four or five days. And yeah, he was released and he went on a Dutch fishing trawler back to Holland, made his way back to the U.K., and at which time the planning immediately started for the dawn helicopter raid, which would eventually end with my father, my grandfather and a small team of their highly trained friends recapturing Sealand.

LL: So do any governments or the UN officially recognisze Sealand?

LIAM BATES: So not officially, but we do fulfil all of the criteria of the Montevideo Convention, which actually states that if you fulfil all these criteria, you will be recognized as a country.

LL: Why is keeping Sealand so important to you and your family? You touched on it a bit earlier in terms of your elders, but why so important to you and your family now?

LIAM BATES: It's part of who I am. It's been in the family for generations now. I sincerely hope that the generations that succeed me will keep Sealand going.

LL: I mentioned off the top some of the famous lords of Sealand. But there are lots of other not-so-famous people too, who have declared their allegiance to Sealand. What do you think explains that enduring appeal?

LIAM BATES: It's the thought that in a world where you're born into a society that tells you pretty much everything — it dictates how you're going to live your life and so I think the appeal really is the thought that you can carve your own path in life.

LL: That sounds really nice. I may look into this. Prince Liam, thank you.

LIAM BATES: I certainly hope you do

LL: Prince Liam Bates of Sealand. We reached him in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current today.

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Dec. 9, 2019 episode transcript

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