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How Many Lifeboats Are There in the UK Again?
It is almost impossible to comment with more drama than the basic facts of this story. Almost. One hopes that eventually enough will become enough and (rather than rioting) subjects of hopelessly bankrupt sovereigns unable to put down the country's American Express will simply... leave. Of course, taxation on one's worldwide income complicates the more buoyant aspects of this particular lifeboat.
Almost three-quarters of Britons have considered emigrating this year, with Australia as the most popular destination, according to a new survey
The survey carried out by foreign exchange broker Currency UK found that 31 percent of respondents cited the poor state of the British economy as the reason for wanting to leave, while 23 percent blamed the lack of job prospects and 19 percent said they are worried about the outcome of last week's election.
Our survey highlights that many Brits are concerned by the prospect of a hung Parliament and that the next four years will be dominated by huge tax rises, cuts in public service and inflation....
What in the world gives you that idea?
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Austrailia is looking more and more interesting for anyone who can pull the pin on their current life, and seek out a new place to start over. I know that I have looked at it more then once...
Condottieri - curious, have you looked at all at New Zealand? If so, thoughts?
I spent a month in New Zealand. Great country with great people. Absolutely beautiful place.
Some facts on emigrating to kiwiland:
http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/stream/live/
I'm definitely considering it. I've spent several months there. It's not perfect - there are some racial tensions, and the damn biting sand flies are horrible. Climate is fairly good (Wellington aside - I think they have city-wide celebrations anytime there are three nice days in a row...).
Vineyards have got pricey, and I'd rather produce Syrah or zinfandel than Pinot or Sauv Blanc, but the Sauvignon blanc is superb...
I've been told the lamb, women and surfing are fantastic over there.
Yeah, that definitely covers it for me - I'll have to check with my wife. Ha!
So BB....aside from the surfing ...what's your preference? :>)
lamb, women, then surfing. In that order. It'd take Giselle, naked with sushi on her privates to tear me away from a good rack of lamb.
You should ask the boys @ the SEC the same question and see if they ask if you mean lamb as in food. ;)
Funny. The only New Zealander I ever met was living in Sweden. He described New Zealand as 4 million people and 40 million sheep and couldn't wait to escape while growing up.
I like NZ possibly the most, prob has been their immigration policys, which have been expensive and hard to get, at times.
I also have a god son named after myself in Oz, and a couple of friends or family members... so starting over in Oz would not be exactly lonely...
Thanks for the input. Wind seems to be an outlier.
From NZ: We are being flooded by hard working, educated, intelligent south african and english immigrants. Absolutely fantastic for the country and I can promise you won't be lonely. We have major debt problems (and a housing bubble) like the rest of western world. These will all crash at some point but NZ'ers will adjust to the new normal very quickly and pragmatically. The future after that is very bright as we have what asians want ... food and increasingly minerals, coals, oil and gas.
Ai yaaaa More pressure on Australian home prices coming. :)
Time to face Van Diemen's Land?
No wonder the Brits like the look of Australia.
Its just like the UK 3 years ago with 9 + times earnings mortgages & larger consumer indebtedness.
Australia will be no different as the debt cycle moves along.
cept maybe Australia has quite a lot of stuff to sell that people want.
Exactly. There is no escape. There is no safe haven in the "developed" world. And if you're not in the developed world, you are already enjoying the living standard to which the developed world will become accustomed.
U.S.? France? SPAIN?
Out of the frying pan and into the fire?
Watch for the same scene to be repeated in California.
Reverse Okie diaspora.
The UK should elect Hugh Grant as Prime Minister.
Hugh Grant IS the Prime Minister :-)
"Our survey highlights that many Brits are concerned by the prospect of a hung Parliament and that the next four years will be dominated by huge tax rises, cuts in public service and inflation...."
IMHO, this sentence is an example of propaganda assimilation. While we can't be sure if this is the opinion of the reporter writing the story or of the survey itself, my review of the UK papers over the past few weeks seems to indicate that the public was being fed the line that IF there was a hung Parliament, THEN the result would be higher taxes, inflation etc.
Sorry but that's a non sequitur. The higher taxes and inflation seem to be baked into the cake already. The hung Parliment is simply the excuse proffered in advance of the cake being served.
+1. The Brits have some very bitter medicine coming (Hello. Is this the IMF?) and this is one election where the loser was the winner. For us here in the U.S., the next year in the U.K. will be a preview of coming attractions so pull up a chair and make sure you have plenty of pop corn. This film is rated R.
If you read the sentence again you will note "...and that the next four years...". This is quite separate in their minds from the Hung Parliament. The UK population are quite aware of what is coming, having lived through the 80's and 90's. I certainly remember 15% mortgage premiums!
I was fully aware of the "and" in the sentence. Did you read my comment?
First I said the sentence (notice I did not say the UK people. I differentiated because surveys and the reporting of surveys are often used as propaganda) was an example of propaganda assimilation. I then said I was uncertain who's opinion was being expressed, the reporter or the survey of the people. Then I said the UK people were being FED the propaganda by the UK newspapers. I then said that a hung Parliment doesn't lead to higher taxes etc, that they were already in the pipeline.
"IMHO, this sentence is an example of propaganda assimilation. While we can't be sure if this is the opinion of the reporter writing the story or of the survey itself, my review of the UK papers over the past few weeks seems to indicate that the public was being fed the line that IF there was a hung Parliament, THEN the result would be higher taxes, inflation etc.
Sorry but that's a non sequitur. The higher taxes and inflation seem to be baked into the cake already. The hung Parliament is simply the excuse proffered in advance of the cake being served."
...and you are properly (and politely) chastised. Be glad you weren't commenting on one of JW's posts. He'd have let you have it. My butt is still burning after yesterday.
Maybe we could all chip in (all ZH posters) and buy a country somewhere and we can move there while the rest of the world collapses. I'm sure we can buy something in Africa at a reasonable price. Just a little something out of the way with some natural resources, farmland and a coastal region with one large city, an airport and a port. Nothing too fancy - just something for everyone to do.
I would suggest that we not join the IMF, the UN or send diplomats anywhere. To defend ourselves we just buy one large H-Bomb and tell anyone who sends an a single spy, warship or plane within the sovereign area that we will set it off and blow ourselves (and them) to smithereens.
I volunteer to handle the weapons...
I volunteer to handle the women.
I volunteer to be the king.
OK you can be the king, if I can be the Central Banker. The way we'll work it is - you give me apiece of paper saying $1 Trillion. And I'll credit you with $1 Trillion Doolars. Then we can force the other villagers to pay us a tribute on whatever banans etc they harvest - in Doolars of course. But they wont have any Doolars. So - for instance you can have one of them shine your shoes and give him a small tip in Doolars ( That I gave you- remember?). AAnother time you can get a villager to give you a back-rub, bananas whatever and pay him with the Doolars . Then at the end of each harvest season - we'll get most of the Doolars you spent back as "taxes".
This is going to be fun!
"This is going to be fun!"'
LOL
It's clear to me that not only have you been watching closely but you've been taking notes.
- yes, Ghana is a prime target, I've been there many times, great people, plenty of locally grown produce and livestock, wet and dry season, tropical climate...and lots of GOLD. An associate and I have built a house there in Kumasi as a place to go...
- here's a couple of videos I made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd86EXTIEn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAaOYjHb9K0
- snap shot of Kumasi, Ghana. (not my video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzmr8jkKn6M&feature=related
edit; lots of European, Australian and Americans expats have already made the move here.
My Maserati isn't going to like those muddy Ghana roads. Do you have anything in say.......umm.......paved? :>)
R-LMAO CD. Didn't ya know that Maserati was gonna produce a series of awd vehicles for the enjoyment of Jim Roger's new agrarian wealth system? Of course, Jim is still looking for his yellow submarine to make it to try land as Lamborghini follows Maserati. Again.
LOL CD, yes, most roads are paved, a lot of the images and pics I took were in remote areas of Ghana, as I was involved in a NSF funded biodiversity surveys of the rain forest in Ghana, so we were definitely off the beaten path.
What's funny though, most Ghanaians know more about America than Americans, and healthier too!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVsBPlRz0Po
I say we invade and take over cuba. It's about time somebody comes in there and repairs all the rotting structures that have been ignored for the last 60 years.
Ya, Havana would look so much better with endless rows of soulless glass & concrete structures lining its byways & waterways.
Don't forget McDonald's and KFC.
Curious that the United States is cited as the third most popular destination after Australia and Canada. So all those Brits will be replacing the Americans as they emigrate to their South American destinations of choice? France? What, didn't the Brits get the message about Ecuador? One could view this escapist mindset as the first step towards revolutionary thinking by the broad populace. After all it must dawn on most eventually that emigration is a fantasy solution and at that point they will be forced to turn their attention inward against their increasingly desperate, repressive and parasitical state.
Aah! England's green and pleasant land. Who would ever want to leave? Not 75% of the pop that's for sure - I think your poll had a "slight" bias - Forex traders tend to better understand what the bottom line is for the economy than your average reality TV watching moron. Then on the other hand....
There are some islands off the coast of Panama that could work... If we modify the Templers approach, a group of ZH certified outposts with well stocked bars sounds good to me.
Now you're talking. I hear the natives are friendly too. (and good looking too !!)
Maybe a few ZH Republics will pop up here and there and we can have some real trade. For currency I vote we use Zoohs. We can be like the dollar store, only call it the "Zooh Store" where everything cost 1 Zooh. Need a new car? That will be 1 Zooh. Beachfront house you say, that is 1 Zooh. Year's worth of groceries, that will be 1 Zooh.
Everyone will be issued 100 Zoohs upon arrival and NO fractional reserve lending. :-)
There are some opinion polls which are utterly pointless, and one of them is to ask a Brit if he's thought of emigrating (particularly if it's cold and raining at the time). A huge number of Brits will say "yes" - it is like a national in-joke - because for us emigration means "going somewhere dry and sunny". Only a tiny fraction of those people are seriously thinking about upping sticks.
I want to go somewhere where I can still own a gun.......any suggestions?
In rough order of friendliness to guns:
Canada (believe it or not)
Panama
Chile
New Zealand
Brazil (?)
If you can jump some extra immigration hurdles, possibly Switzerland and Finland.
Finland, Austria and Czech Rep. probably your best bets in Europe.
Does a faulty official stamp of approval bother you?
http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html
But since there is more to life than just guns, why not search their interactive database?
http://www.freeexistence.org/freedom.shtml
Don't forget that most countries work on the principle of the golden rule, but since gold is relative to your surroundings, you are going to make more of a dent with say $500,000 net worth in the Paraguayan Chaco (shudder) than in Santiago, Chile.
in Arizona you can pretty much bring a gun anywhere, including bars full of drunk people.
in Arizona you can pretty much bring a gun anywhere, including bars full of drunk people.
montana, wyoming .. even the eastern part on the south dakota border
utah ,, look into middle parts ,, water , from the mountains ,, lots of prepared folks , organized neighborhoods , heber valley john galts mountains .. farming going on , large mountains ranges protect for west and east ,
large protected areas from both sides with mountains ranges ,,
logan cold,, but they prepare
usuallly honest local government city councils m county commissioners, sherrifs office .. large blue collar population plumbers , electricians , firefighters. police not on the take
pan handle of idaho , boise , twin falls . up the eastern part of idaho idaho falls
eastern washington spokane ,
these english speaking areas ,, go visit now .. talk to locals ,, find a frendly farmer ,,offer to buy a share of farm output ,, get a storage place ,, put some things in now..
sure their are areas in the east ,, not familiar with
I posted this at "A Fistful of Euros" after the blog exulted over Britian being a "center-left" country. I frankly can't understand why anyone who could emigrate hasn't already left.
It is interesting to get a local persons view of England. I have always been an extreme Anglophile, or at least loved what I imagined England to be.
The more I read about England as it is, the less interest I have in ever visiting (this was always one of my dreams, to see the places I had read so much about and seen in so many films).
England appears to be moving toward a post-national phase were no one believes in anything other than that everyone should be made equally comfortable and no one should never care about anything enough to do anything to defend it. From being the nation with the longest history of individual freedoms, protected by legal tradition, rather than a formal constitution, England has descended into an extreme Nanny state where even defending one’s own life or family is illegal and anti-social. Personally, I see England as on the verge of collapse not from outside assault--maybe influence is a better word (although this influence is placing tremendous pressure on your society) but simply because no one really cares if England survives as a society that can be distinguished from Turkey, Greece, Russia, or Poland by anything other than weather and a few old buildings.
To me that is an indication that England does not deserve to survive, since if your own people don’t care enough about their own families to insist on being able to effectively defend them, their own legal system to demand that everyone in their boundaries be subject to the same laws, their own values to insist that, at least in the public sphere, that these must be honored, England is nothing but a name on a map for a large, green island.
The US is moving in the same direction as England, but is much further behind. My hope is that Americans will realize that we are not just losing our Constitutional rights, losing the values that made us successful and envied (and hated) by less fortunate lands, but we also are losing our identity as citizens of one of histories great nations and cultures. If we don’t care enough to fight to preserve America, as distinct from Mexico, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. we will be living in a country with the same level of opportunity and prosperity as these neighbors.
England, the reality, may have never been quite like what I imagined it to be, certainly I knew it was not a perfect place (as it could not be while inhabited by imperfect mortals), but to see the England of my heart, home of Shackleford, Shakespeare and Churchill, the country of fair play and great institutions of learning, the culture responsible for a world-wide empire about which was said, “never has the world had such gentle, boyish masters” descend to the level it currently inhabits leaves me more sad than I can express.
I would willingly give my wealth, my comfort and my life to prevent such a degrading fate for America. Would that Englishmen loved their country as much.
Well said. The indiginous, hard working, resourceful middle class people of England are increasingly dismayed by their spineless, `politically correct` government. The main stream media and Murdoch empire have pretty much ensured that being patriotic is now akin to being racist (which is needless to say, almost as big a crime as murder) And the Brown/Blair led Labour government of the last 13 years have created so many government `jobs` that they have in effect bought the complicity of a large portion of the electorate as they have run the country into the gutter. Tax the prudent, reward the profligate has been the name of the game.
We used to be a country where individual freedom was important and defended. Now we have leaders who are prepared to use 700 hours of parliaments time debating wether or not the nations citizens should be alowed to hunt foxes. This had NOTHING to do with Fox welfare either, but was the urban left flexing its muscles to show the traditinaly right wing countyside dwellers and landowners who was boss. Happily the ban is largely ignored.
Perhaps w need abit of austerity to get us to pull together and discover some national pride and identity - but you are right, we ned to get on with it.
I'm afraid that 3 terms of a socialist government, together with the rampant leftie world view (and associated indoctrination) from the educational establishment has left the British people neutered. I'm glad I moved out when I did TBH - the only thing now is to hope that there isn't much further to fall.
you misread the modest cynicism of typical englishman my friend...
I now live in London-England and have done a several years now, although I am not from here originally I would say on balance i'd certainly prefer to be a citizen of england and subject to its econmic and political virtues and demons, than to be a US citizen subject to the brutal tyranny of your masters.
Relative to the average US citizen, the english citizen is an order of magnitude more free, even in the face of all the cctv camera's capturing everyones move...
Perception is reality.
Good to see Marla out and about!
All are welcome in Canada, just leave your banker at home.
I live in the UK. I have my escape plan in place. Mostly we want to leave because:
1. The weather is shit 365 days of the year.
2. Our dear leader is a corrupt one eyed jock who has been stealthily shafting our asses and pensions for years.
3. All political parties are stocked full of corrupt, lying, cheating, arrogant, amateur bastards who are troughing tax payers money to buy shit for themselves.
4. Did I mention our wank politicians.
5. The police state is slowly gaining ground. National ID cards, Cameras that read number plates that are connected to databases, etc etc.
6. It is getting full of workshy lazy fuckers who spend all day pissed and beating up their brats that they had to get more welfare.
You think that's bad?
In the US, I'm forced to live under a frozen lake just so I can afford to keep an army in a country where there is no enemy, and to ensure the banks have enough money to run congress.
It's not that I want to, but I am forced to beat my children to sleep every night with a half empty bottle of gin. Things are just tough; you've got to beat them.
I did solve the ticket-by-camera problem, and I'm happy to share the solution with you: just send them a picture of the money.
Sounds like luxury to me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYtYBI6eZ3E&feature=related
If you move but keep your US citizenship you will owe US taxes . For instance , say you gather bananas and sell it to passing nomads in exchange for a chicken. You will have to file Form 1040 with several hundred pages of supplemetal forms to declar the value of the bananas you sold. If you dont, you'll be a wanted man and unable to travel on planes for fear of being nabbed somewhere.
If you get a passport in another country and give up your US citizenship - most of the developed world has higher taxes than the US. So not much gained there.
Move to a poor, tropical country - can do if you have a taste for rough living, spotty medical care, malarial mosquitos etc. Its not as idyllic as it looks in postcards.Possibly will have to deal with violent, machete weilding local chieftains that you will need to appease with gifts.
Americans have it pretty good. We may need to tweak a few things about how things are run but net net hard to find much better places on earth.
That pretty well sums it up. I don't plan to leave, but entertain the thought only for romantic delusions and movie scripts. You would do just as well to move far up into the rockies or out west somewhere remote. Drop off the grid and either use cash or barter ... or maybe figure out a way to fake your own death.
Again, sorry, you have it wrong. I suggest actually living outside the US, and then commenting, instead of the other way 'round.
Within 12 months of expatriating, I went from life-long debtor to the plus side of the balance sheet as a result of the tax advantages and lower cost of living (with higher QOL!). There is currently a sizable tax exemption if you spend time abroad and choose to retain citizenship.
If you pick the right country for residence and citizenship (key note: they need NOT be the same country), you can live a very long time without paying any taxes to anyone. Especially if you renounce citizenship.
There is a guide to Expatriation here at ZH that was posted a couple of weeks ago. Might I suggest a quick search of the archives, followed by a good read?
And your last paragraph is pure propaganda. I've been to more than enough countries to refute your wild claim. The only people who still share your vision of America are some of the natives of those third-world countries you mention that don't have access to the internet or a newspaper; they don't know it's crashing and burning any more than you seem to.
Whats in a name primefool...?
I've uploaded a DOW chart.
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/latest-market-outlook-0
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
i am one of these people! but my plan to leave the uk (australia is on the shortlist) has as much to do with the future state of the economy here than the situation right now.
I'd like to see a bigger sample size than 1000 but still... pretty grim. It would be more telling (and more damning I'd bet) to see where those survey repondants (the one's eyeing the lifeboats that is) fall on a tax revenue contribution scale i.e. some proxy that would indicate whether those folks are net additive or negative to the public fisc and by how much.
Will Richard Branson seize this opportunity and launch Virgin Country? If so I'm going to guess constitutional monarchy. He looks good in purple.
Crap survey by a FX firm shows people want to leave the UK (and make use of FX services?)
Let me count the biases...
We may be right that the UK is in the shitter, and that people should be heading for the lifeboats, but it's damn sure that 3/4 of them don't feel that way.
Stories like this one demonstrate how we [humans] are more willing to uproot our entire lives and move away than to attempt to stand up to this kind of abuse (no matter how futile such a stand would be, which is another discussion). We're gift wrapping ourselves for tptb; the launch of the new world order will be the easiest thing they've ever pulled to date as long as it is the case that all we can do is run.
I expect even more people to flee the US as they realize they are living in the biggest PRISON on Earth.
Ya GG, I keep hoping some Canadian like Lizzy will sponsor me through the give a break to a broke American program and sponsor me for 47 cents a day (Loony, I know). Hell, I would even include a picture from childhood. I was told I was a cute kid.
GG; you still stateside? if so got a geographic plan B?
They did build titanic, and the owner got out of that little thingy alive right?
The conservatives are coming to power and we're discussing capital flight. Oh boy, themes sure haven't changed since the last time the Tories came to power.
"...buy a country in Africa somewhere ..."
brilliant idea. Several years too late. The Chinese and the arabs figured this out several years ago and have been bidding up the arable land, building roads and schools, making friends, and marrying the most attractive women. They just "forgot" to tell the western media ...
No, they just were one hellhole speaking to another hellhole. Since they didn't have to deal with human rights issues, they could naturally speak to each other. It's not that the West wasn't paying attention, but that they had no reason to act.
It's not as if the West couldn't gang up on them in the name of antiterrorism and finish them off. Somalia could be used as a possible staging area if cleared out well enough. It's that there is no real motive to actually take that part of the world out, yet.
By no means did they forget, just that the West is watching for the right moment and motive.
I don't care; let them move to Australia, just so long as they don't come to the USA.
We don't need a bunch of little brown people swimming through the water, climbing over oil-soaked sandbags demanding tea and crumpets with their welfare checks.
And learn to speak the language, for christsake.
Learn to speak the language?
Wow...thats rich!
Pop quiz! - Who spawned the language pal!?
I'm thinking if enough of us relocate to Texas we could force a secession and vote Ron Paul as our president. Then we are not fleeing but re-establishing a Republic and making a stand.
Prayers for Marla's good health.
I think Texas secession should be a national referendum. I know how I'd vote.
Not bang up to date - but might be of interest. UK immigration / Emmigration stats in graph form
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=260
a million life boats .. all flat with no pond to float in
I vote for a string of ZH wholly owned Islands just off shore most major locations... Some ZH owned and operated planes & boats to move around on. My guess is we have some Dr's in the house already, so we probably already have internal medical care better than most of the world anyway. We just need to kick the revolution into the next gear... which is a string of privately owned estates available to members only...
Marla needs to roll out a really cool full sized flag that "WE" can purchase to fly locally... Its time to expand the marketing of the ZH revolution into a positive revenue generating event to fund the Island purchases.
A propos of migrating to subsaharan africa.... DONT DO IT! I cannot comment on Ghana (ref in post above - but would be greatly surprised if it differed substantially from my experiences in Namibia and SA). I went to Namibia in 2008 to look for a large farm and spent most of 2009 realising that there is a good reason why all the whites WHO ARE ABLE TO have already baled out of subsaharan africa. The natives live in abject poverty and display absolute apathy. Many of the Afikaaners I dealt with were petty crooks... even the lawyers! Perhaps due to the necessity of adaptation for survival. Perhaps natural proclivity. Who knows. It is true however, that the best and the brightest whites have LONG SINCE departed to OZ/NZ.This takes some time to get used to. Gun ownership is extremely difficult. Crime is soaring. Already endemic amongst the blacks but exponentially higher in terms of white casualties. Several farm invasions and gruesome murders near where I was in Northern Kalahari Omaheki province (4-5 hours north of Windhoek).
Often takes the theme of pissed off laborers who lock up and torture the family for a week before machete coups de grace are administered. No policing. No investigations. Nothing. Car jackings are commonplace in Windhoek. Angolan gangs often implicated. These boys do not fuck around. (Your) life is worthless. White women usually raped before release (if they are lucky enough not to be killed).
Heard about an old (76) white farmer who was robbed at gunpoint late one night near his farm. 2 lads wave you down while 2 more come up behind you. they cut his nose, lips and ears off because they thought he was too defiant. probably was. the old afrikaaners are as tough as coffin nails. All the ones in the generation older than 50-60 are great. It is the moral standards of the younger afrikaaners which, IMO, have really slipped. They just hustle to survive. Leave valuables in their safekeeping and... they get stolen etc etc etc. A lot of the younger afrikaaners just seem to survive by defrauding western tourists. Just an observation. They probably risk falling into real poverty if they dont. No other real sources of income around it seems.
Another farmer was shot in the back on the head by a "hitchhiker" in the back of his toyota pick up (the year before I got there). His (white) foreman and horse trainer kept on repeating that he had found his bosses tongue on the dashboard. Sorry for the graphic tales.
second hand (frequently first hand) reports such as these are ABSOLUTELY COMMONPLACE. the violence is as banal as it is horrifying.
The press is full of stories about whites who defended themselves with lethal force and are themselves incarcerated in local prisons for years without recourse. Not a happy outcome. So black law enforcement positively dangerous. I "helped" chase a group of poachers one midnight (I was a passenger in the landrover when we heard the neighboring farmers call for help on the CB and just had a couple of .308s between 4 of us). They surrendered (bizarrely) but each had a fully automatic AK. Many farmers dont bother to take them on. They often also have RPGs.
I am not too smart so it took the best part of a year to absorb and heed the local intel. The black beaurocracy is a nightmare to deal with. Namibia is second only to Botswana and Botswana aint much better. SA sinking rapidly with Zuma's ascension (it was under Mbeki anyway). The white south africans can be the last to warn foreigners about the stratospheric crime levels (misery loves company)... so be sceptical of what the locals tell you before you go (if they sound unduly positive). It (Namibia) can be lovely for a week's visit, but you must have your shit sorted. Dont just blast off in a Hertz car with your girl friend displaying her perks. A few tourists get waylaid. Get a guide at a bare minimum.
SA; Joburg/pretoria VERY DANGEROUS INDEED. Ditto for Cape Town. Razor wire everywhere! There is a good reason. When you comment on the amount of razor wire and security in Windhoek, Namibia... the locals always try to downplay it by saying "Oh, crime is not as bad as SA." This is kudu crap! You hear a lot of this silly/inaccurate negative relativity.
Example (happy ending); mate of mine a mountainous afrikaaner (6'6" and prob 360lbs). a big boy. stopped for a snack 2 hours north of Windhoek with girlfriend and 2 sons. 2 blacks ride up on a motorcycle. saunter past and grab one of the boys (8 years old). knife to the throat routine. wallets handed over. robbers depart. These anecdotes are so common there. many dont end so well.
Jim Sinclair is always touting Tanzania for agriculture and mining etc. All I can say is, it is quite different for private investors when compared with sovereign investors/SWFs. The latter, mainly PRC, are much in evidence.
Summary; FORGET sub-saharan africa unless you have a death wish. My family was associated with SA for a century and I baled after a year. Do not romaticise the place as I did. Apologies for long post but wanted ZHers to get the flavor of the place.
Well you're right about being not too intelligent for, in the first place, planning to buy a farm in an equatorial no-man's land that is the birthplace of AIDS and taking any family with you.
Didn't have to forget about it since I'm finding it impossible to believe any would even consider it.
- yeah, I've been to SA, Namibia, Tanzania, etc., etc., would not recommend it to anyone. I not going to comment on why it's the way it is, but it's a no brainer.
I can recommend Ghana though, it's not perfect, but it is very safe for Obruni's (caucasians).
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gh.html
Here in the states, we may not have to go anywhere. I'm kind of hoping that my state repos to China.