Dear Foreign Office…

Dear Sirs,

I read that you are currently giving away British territory to people who ask, and paying them to take it. I have always been interested in the Isle of Wight. I will gladly take it off your hands.

The island is a bit far from where I live, but nowhere near a thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean, which you consider to be adjacent.

It has been objected that you only hand out islands like toffee when the United Nations say you should, but I do not see this as a roadblock: the UN is largely made up of ex-colonies which want to humiliate old colonial masters, so it should not take much to obtain a ruling. I can see them smirking as I write. After all, your own records show that the Isle of Wight was illegally and forcibly invaded and depopulated by King Cædwalla of Wessex. I should have little difficulty proving Jutish ancestry (I expect I could find a great grandmother who lived in Kent) and so an unquestioned claim to the island, by United Nations standards, that is.

I do not wish to disturb existing naval and port installations. I will of course respect the vital environmental importance of Wight as an agricultural reserve. Indeed, farmers will be safer there than in Great Britain.

While protecting the environment of the island and its surrounding seas, there is still a need for sustainable development of this neglected territory when liberated. Through my contacts, the Bijou fu Cong-de-Xi PLA Tower will be sensitively designed in the style of the native gun forts, with a tower which will provide fine views over the Portsmouth Naval Base; and this is just the first of a string of such establishments that will dot the coast. A group of Somali refugees I have been working with are also looking forward to the opportunity to extend their maritime business to the Solent.

The many billions of pounds that other countries have received need not be as generous here: there is good capital to be received from investors who will be peeking. Nevertheless sufficient money to rub in the post-colonial reparations would be useful.

I have no doubt that you can obtain any parliamentary approval as may be needed: several MPs have been paid, and others are keen to assuage their post-imperial guilt-by-proxy for which this transaction will be ideal.

As to your responsibilities – you are the Foreign Office and, for good or ill, the care of the colonies has been entrusted to you, so you must by default consider them to be foreign. This would something of a surprise to those of my family resident in Gibraltar and Bermuda, but there is no arguing with bureaucracy, and no reasoning with it either.

I see this as the start of a positive relationship of mutual benefit, and so look forward to receiving your agreement.