Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Scottish Independence? Och, awa an' bile ye sporran!


It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine’.
 
Never mind the EU elections; the most entertaining political event of 2014 will be the referendum on Scottish independence. The predictions are a melt-down in the ‘yes’ vote.
 
The Scottish Nationalists will be obliterated. The opinion polls show a massive lead for ‘no’ with  ‘yes’ getting only 27% vote. A much safer guide is the bookies’ odds. Currently the odds are 10/1 against a ‘yes’, 11 to 2 for a ‘no’. One punter has £200,000 riding on a ‘no’ vote, and another has placed a ‘no’ bet of £50,000.
 
There is no merit to their case, which entirely rests on sentimentality; the Scotland of Burns Suppers, tartan, and fried Mars Bars.
 
The economic arguments for ‘no’ are overwhelming.
 
The only real asset is North Sea oil. Not only is this a wasting asset but the price is likely to drop sharply as the US increases production. It accounts for a massive 18% of GDP, making Scotland vulnerable to  instability and risk for  the whole economy.
 
The subsidy to Scotland is £25 billion. The revenues from oil would be at best £7.2 billion. Spending per head in Scotland is 28% higher than in England, a difference of about £1500. Most Scots would reject independence if it left them only £500 a year worse off. Such is the price of patriotism. Yet they will find it almost impossible to maintain their  spending on free university tuition, free elderly care, free universal child care and more generous pensions, none of which are available in England but largely paid-for by English taxpayers.
 
Then there’s the EU membership problem.
 
Salmond has repeatedly said, against all the legal advice, that Scotland would automatically continue as a member. It won’t. It will have to go through the whole lengthy rigmarole of the application  negotiations. So good bye to farm subsidies for all those Highland crofters for several years.
 
And then they will be refused, because membership requires a unanimous vote of all EU members, and the Spanish will vote it down for fear of setting a precedent for Catalonia.
 
There’s the currency issue.
 
If they stay with the GB£, their fiscal policy will be controlled by the Bank of England, which would create the kind of monetary union without fiscal union that has proved so disastrous in the Eurozone. If not they will have to set up their own central banking system. In the unlikely event of joining the Euro, a central bank would be pointless and unnecessary, but Scotland would be then controlled financially from Brussels. Threadneedle Street seems a much safer potion.
 
Creating a viable economy requires massive expansion of manufacturing, commerce, and financial  services. Since the collapse of RBS and HBOS, (and what would have happened there had Scotland been independent?), financial services have performed poorly. Scotland could also be landed with the banks’ £187 billion of toxic assets.
 
And Scotland would be in  direct competition in all economic categories with the City and England generally. No contest!
 
Scotland could go the way of Greece. Edinburgh was once dubbed the ‘Athens of the North’. History could repeat itself.
 
Happy Hogmanay, Wee Eck! What will be your raison d’etre after you lose?
 
 

Monday, December 30, 2013

Do Pakistanis pervert polls?


Despite the onset of geriatric amnesia, I recall that in the old days it was not a good career move for a politician to be caught lying, even if being economical with the truth is part of the stock-in-trade. At the least it would have involved a grovelling apology on the floor of the House.
 
Jack Profumo was not ruined for discussing Africa with a call-girl, but because he told the most egregious lies to the Commons.
 
Times have changed.
 
The Attorney- General, discussing vote-rigging with the Daily Telegraph, said that much of the problem lay with constituencies having a large ethnic minority vote.  He said ‘…they also come from societies where they have been brought up to believe you can only get certain things through a favour culture.
 
‘One of the things you have to make absolutely clear is that that is not the case and it’s not acceptable.’
 
Asked if he was referring to the Pakistani community, Mr Grieve said: ‘Yes, it’s mainly the Pakistani community, not the Indian community. I wouldn’t draw it down to one. I’d be wary of saying it’s just a Pakistani problem.’
 
In Pakistan it is normal for vote-rigging to take place, despite the best efforts of international monitoring teams; it is difficult to detect because the rigging takes place before the actual poll. I know because I supervised both the Bhutto and Sharif elections in the Punjab and Sind.
 
But who suggests that Asian vote rigging is a problem in the UK? Why, the Electoral Commission itself. It says ‘ There are strongly held views, based in particular on reported first-hand experience by some campaigners and elected representatives in particular, that electoral fraud is more likely to be committed by or in support of candidates standing for election in areas which are largely or predominately populated by some South Asian communities, specifically those with roots in parts of Pakistan or Bangladesh.’
 
Between  2010 and 2012, there were no less than 946 cases reported to the police; it surely follows that there were many more that were not. Modern criminal profiling is able to track with great accuracy where the crimes are being committed. No prizes for guessing the chief offenders.
 
Burnley, which has a large Asian population, heads the list with three different elections compromised. But others include Hackney, Peterborough, Bradford, Slough, and Walsall. In Derby five Asians received prison sentences. Six were jaied in Slough and Peterborough.
 
Five were jailed following the Birmingham scandal, the first such case for over 100 years (the Returning Officer had to resign; she is now top dog at HMRC).
 
Tower Hamlets, which registered over 7000 new voters in just a  month before a recent election, seems to be almost permanently immersed in election fraud; it has already started to prepare for the elections in May.
 
So what is the cause of this epidemic? Tony Blair, mostly. To encourage larger turn-outs he relaxed the law on postal voting, so that this was available almost on demand whereas previously the voter had to be either immobile through sickness or disability or on official duty.
 
In close-knit communities nothing is easier than for the leaders simply to collect-up all the postal ballot papers and vote for their candidate. Supporters of all main parties have been implicated. The offence is so prolific it can alter not only the constituency result but also the national outcome in these hung-Parliament times.
 
Step forward Narwaz Numpti MP. Inevitably he accused Mr. Grieve of racism, insulting the Pakistani community and all that guff.
 
Did Mr. Grieve rebut it? No, he issued a shame-faced and gutless apology.
 
So no longer is lying by politicians reprehensible. Telling the truth is the new offence.
 
So there we have it; the truth is lies and lies the truth.
 
Welcome to 1984.
 
 

Friday, December 27, 2013

A spat between the Ugly American and the Hysterical Indian is certain to add to the gaiety of nations.
 
The three stars in this farce are Ms Khobragade (I  know; I can’t pronounce it either), the Indian Deputy Consul in New York; the lady’s maid with the unlikely name of Richards, and the State Attorney-General, Preet Bharara (an all-Indian caste, no pun intended, but Ms K is an Untouchable. So calm down, dears. After all, she’s only a Dhalit).
 
She was arrested for alleged visa fraud; that she was paying her maid a measly $573 a month plus full board and lodging and air-fares (a pretty good deal by Indian standards) instead of the $4500 she declared to the US authorities in the visa application for the maid.
 
This monumental cock-up has separate strands.
 
It reveals almost unbelievable diplomatic blunder in arresting Ms K in the first place. A quiet word from the State Department would have ensured Ms K’s farewell to the Big Apple with no fuss or awful publicity.
 
It reveals the barbarity of the US law enforcement.
 
She was arrested in the street just after taking her kids to school, and handcuffed. Why? Was she offering violence? Drunk and disorderly? Likely to do a runner?
 
She was strip searched. Again, why? Worst of all, she had vaginal and anal examination (denied by the A-G, who said at the same time that this was ‘routine’). Best not to ask what they got from this indecent assault.
 
The AG fouled the footpath by making totally uncalled-for comments to the media. He particularly remarked that there appeared to be more concern for Ms K than for the maid. Why should there be any concern for the maid? She absconded 6 months ago and is now an illegal in the US minus a passport that was withdrawn by the Indian Government.
 
India retaliated by removing the concession to US diplomats for importing booze duty-free. That should bring Johnny Yank to heel. They also removed the security barriers outside the US Embassy, but so far Al Qaeda has not accepted the invitation.
 
Now she has been transferred to the UN where she has solid diplomatic immunity, so that looks like game, set and match to the wily Indians.
 
It would seem that US diplomacy is as useless as its national security. And India has needlessly damaged its relationship with the US.
 
And here’s the real kicker.
 
The A-G completely misread the visa application.
 
The salary of $4500 a month was not the maid’s.
 
It was the Deputy Consul’s own stipend.
 
Oh dear!

 

 

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christian charities use Xmas to demonise Israel

Please go to this very important link to the piece in The Commentator on the abuse of Israel by Christian charities under the cloak of Xmas messages.
 
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4503/charities_abuse_christmas_to_demonise_israel

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Foreign aid: Cameron's cunning plan.............

Why is Cameron so wedded to his foreign aid policy? There is little in his life or career that suggests a dedication to helping the poor, the sick, the lame and the lazy. This must be a major vote-loser amongst a baffled public.
 
The aid budget has been ring-fenced, protected by statute so that the Chancellor can’t cut it. It has been increased by a massive 37% which DFID does not have the institutional capacity to spend and is parking funds with the World Bank, and all at a time when other budgets are suffering swingeing cuts.
 
Most worrying of all is the blood-letting at Defence.
 
We live in an increasingly dangerous world, one that is far more threatening than the Cold War because the enemies of the west are shadowy and widespread.
 
And yet the army is at its lowest ebb since before the Napoleonic War, the Royal Navy is the smallest since the far-off days of Henry VIII (for the first time in history we have no warship stationed in British waters), and important parts of the RAF strike force are grounded because so many technicians have been made redundant.
 
Aid is a stimulus for corruption and the public service in ‘developing’ countries is largely corrupt.
 
The cause is that they are badly paid. When I asked the Permanent Secretary of a major Ministry in Bangladesh why corruption was the order of the day, with ten stages of ‘rent-seeking’ to get a simple licence, he replied that he had an Oxford degree but his pay was only £150 a month. He owned a luxury house in the expat cantonment.
 
They are badly paid because tax revenues are low due to poor collection efficiency.
 
There is little incentive to improve because foreign aid provides the cash. In doing so, it severs the nexus between Government and taxpayer, so corruption is not the political issue it would have been if it was the voter whose pocket was being picked. It’s foreigners’ money, after all.
 
There is an apocryphal story about exchange visits by two African Presidents.
 
The host showed his guest a new freeway which finished in a dead end.
 
‘Why did you build a road to nowhere?’ asked the guest.
 
‘10%’ said the host, tapping his nose.
 
On the return visit, the host showed him his new road. It didn’t exist.
 
‘Why are you showing me a road that doesn’t exist?’ asked the guest.
 
‘100%’ replied the host, tapping his nose.
 
Quite so.
 
Donors do not seem overly concerned.
 
One of my Cabinet Office duties in a ‘developing’ country was to scrutinise financial proposals by consultants bidding for projects, and to appraise tenders on a ‘value for money’ basis.
 
Not only did the donor organisation never once make any inquiry about this, but never came to my office to have a look at the books. And despite have a large office in the capital, they had delegated the financial oversight to another country’s office (whom I never saw or spoke to).
 
Despite massive evidence to show that aid has failed except in creating kleptocracies, Cameron persists. There must be a discrete back-story here.
 
The first inference is that aid is not about development at all. It is about buying political influence. If aid accounts for 36% of total government revenues, as in Malawi, the donors can dictate.  Withdrawal of aid, as the UK government has done twice recently, will bring the country to a virtual standstill.
 
It is likely that Kaunda was forced into multi-party elections in Zambia by the threat of aid withdrawal at a time when the state of the economy was dire.
 
Kamuzu Banda similarly may have agreed to elections in Malawi that were ‘free and fair’ (which they were: I was a supervisor!) under the pressure of the donors.
 
Aid is a powerful instrument of foreign policy. If it doesn’t achieve its avowed objective of improving the lot of the poor, that is not of primary consequence.
 
At least not to Dave.

 

 

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Shock horror: Kenya Police shoot terrorists (BBC World News scoop).

BBC World News scoops again with a report of  scandalous human rights abuses in Kenya. That the story has more whiskers than Santa is of no consequence to Auntie, because she knows that viewers have the intellect of a privet hedge and the attention span of a mayfly.
 
The Kenyan Police Anti-Terrorist Unit has been shooting terrorists. Shock horror!. Auntie might prefer a caution or a fixed penalty ticket for blowing up the supermarket, but in Kenya they do things differently.
 
Although the BBC implies that the PATU is on the rampage,  they only quote a single incident.
 
A extremist cleric who had been preaching violence was taken out in  Bonnie-and-Clyde style; the car looks like a colander.  In fact, this looks like a Special Forces operation, but who cares about accuracy if it spoils a good story.
 
So to the back-story.
 
Al Shabab sent terrorists to  Kenya. Nothing is easier. There are no boundary fences; all they needed to do was to walk along the endless beaches until they reached Lamu, a major and beautiful tourist resort.
 
There they kidnapped and killed foreign tourists, not a smart move in Lamu because although it is 100% Muslim it is also 100% tourist-dependent.
 
It was inevitable that Kenya would hit back ruthlessly because its economy is highly tourist-dependent. The military carried the fight into Al Shabab’s back yard and caused mayhem, sending hundreds to meet their virgins.
 
So Al Shaba infiltrated Nairobi where they spent 3 months in Little Mogadishu, getting all the local support they needed for planning an atrocity. Then came the mall murders. The police are still  not sure how many of the terrorists were killed and how many escaped, but there are two certainties -  that there will be a ‘slum-clearance’ programme in the Somali areas of Nairobi and elsewhere, and that there will be Israeli-style retaliation. It could end in ethnic-cleansing.
 
So back to the BBC, the leftist Guardianista, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, pro-EU, pro-labour propaganda machine presided over by Lord Fatpang. ‘We don’t just report the story; we live it!’ Yeah, right!
 
There was even more indignation that the British police and military is providing the training for PATU. We are all guilty!
 
Some perspective would have been achieved if the Beeb had mentioned that Mossad, the CIA and most intelligence agencies have assassination as a stock-in trade, including radio-active poison to remove tiresome Russian exiles in London (MI 6 says bumping people off by their operatives is all John le Carre, but he was also MI6, so who to believe?).
 
And of course we have our drones. Operating from Nevada and Lincolnshire, these regularly take out children, wedding parties, and whole families.  But this is done to protect us from something or other, not Africans. And it’s the explosive that does the killing, not someone playing a lethal computer game thousands of miles away.
 
So that’s all right, then!

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Bad times in Bangkok.

Farce or pantomime? The street demonstrations in Bangkok seem to have put-off foreign tourists; there are few here in Chiang Mai at peak season, although hundreds of miles from any trouble.
 
The leader of the mob is an ex-Deputy PM who is naturally as bent as any of the other corkscrew Thai politicians.
 
He considers that ordinary people are too stupid and ignorant to be allowed to vote so he wants to set up a national council led by – er -  him.
 
There are three political divisions here.
 
The Yellows are the King’s party -  self-described, of course. The King is scrupulously above politics. They represent the wealthy establishment, the army and the privileged classes.
 
The Reds are the ordinary people and peasants, overwhelmingly strong in the North; Thaksin’s party led by Yingluk, the most beautiful PM in the world (against little competition).
 
The piggies-in-the middle are the Southern middle classes who, unlike the elites, actually pay taxes and keep the country prosperous.
 
The security forces’ handling of the street demos was masterly; no shooting, no tear gas, no casualties inflicted by them and only water cannon with a blue dye.
 
When the demonstrators besieged the HQs of the police and military, the cops and soldiers simply opened the gates and let them in, where they stood around sheepishly and then wandered back outside.
 

All is quiet, but the leader, Suthep. Says that this is only a lull. Yingluk has called an election in February that she will win hands down.
Indeed, the secretary of the Democratic Party has already said that it will face meltdown, and is considering not contesting at all for fear that the Party will be destroyed utterly.

 

Suthep has promised to completely derail the election; How; he doesn’t say, but it can only be by force. So there is a clear and present danger that this relatively amiable state of affairs will degenerate into violence and killings on the scale last seen when the Reds and Yellow last demonstrated against each other.

 
Suthep, having called for the overthrow of the state, has two arrest warrants out on him for treason. The police have 20 years in which activate the warrants. They also have long memories.

 

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Aid and corruption......another nice mess!

This is a woeful but depressingly but familiar tale of corruption in foreign aid programmes which has gone largely unreported in the Western media, perhaps on the reasoning of ‘What else is new?’
 
The country is Cambodia. The donor is the Global Fund, which has been hugely financed by Bill Gates.
 
The money at risk is about $330 million.
 
The lid came off after an investigation into bribes to government officials to fix contracts for the supply of mosquito nets worth $20 million. The kickback was 15%. Two officials trousered $500,000 each. The Director of the National Malaria Centre got $351,000. The nets were useless as they had not been treated with insecticide, and had to be entirely replaced.
 
Other scams have been played, such as double-invoicing and false accounting. Up to two-thirds of some funds have been lost to fraud.
 
And how have the donors reacted?
 
In two ways.
 
‘Like zombies’ says one expert. ‘Keep it quiet’ is the attitude. The donors simply plus-up the grants to take account of the money that goes walkabout on the reasoning that it would be damaging to the end-recipients, the poor and the sick, if a tougher line were to be taken. Action for recovery of stolen funds seems not to be on the donor’s critical path. This makes them complicit in the crime.
 
And they appointed a top finance man, an Ex-Treasury mandarin. He rapidly uncovered the extent of the frauds and blew the whistle. And how was he rewarded? That’s right. In the usual tradition they shot the messenger.
 
The irony is that these scams are usually crudely simple and easy to detect.
 
There are the tenders that come in before the tender documents are published. There’s the ‘withdrawal’ scam, when all the bidders except one pull out before the opening of tenders, all the companies being owned by the same person. There are the identical arithmetical errors admitting collusion. There’s the double invoicing trick where the supplier submits two invoices – the actual cost of the service, and the cost to be submitted for payment by the client, and splitting the profit. There are the ‘ghost’ consultants. There are the fake business accounts for siphoning-off the money.
 
One simple solution is for the contracts to be awarded by the donor, not by the receiving Ministry. Too easy?
 
Cambodia is not an isolated case. Massive fraud has been uncovered in Mali, Mauritania, Djibouti Uganda, Zimbabwe, Philippines, Ukraine and Zambia.
 
This is charity money. Perhaps the moral is that charity really does begin at home.

Friday, December 13, 2013

South Africa...'The past is another country. They do things differently there'

A feisty and lengthy comment on my Mandela post implies that my qualifications to write about Mandela and his South Africa are – well - woeful. So let me set out my stall, so to speak.
 
First up, experience.
 
I first went to SA in the 60’s. I have lived, worked and travelled in the country over a period of 50 years. I have been there during apartheid (which in the early days was of little consequence to the outside world; after all, racism was worse in the southern states of the US); during the peace process; and during Mbeki’s misrule. I have been to every province. I am qualified in South African law.
 
I have also worked in a raft of other African countries, so I can compare and contrast – up to a point.
 
The comment urges me to get with it on the history especially where Afrikaners are the topic.
 
So let’s get started.
 
There is scant understanding that South Africa is nearly as old as the US. The Dutch East India Company took possession of the Cape of Good Hope in the late 18th century. It populated it with mainly Dutch but also French Huguenots after the abrogation  of the Treaty of Nantes and the subsequent persecution of Protestants. At that time the ’native’ population was scanty. The whites stole land from no-one. You can’t steal something that has no owner.
 
Cut to the 19th century and the creation of Cape Colony by the British.
 
The Dutch/French settlers had begun to develop as a distinct race, not as Europeans but as the white tribe of Africa. Afrikaans morphed out of a mixture of mainly Old Dutch but also French, English, local dialects, Malay and more, although it was still described as Dutch right up to the early 20th century.
 
‘The ‘Dutch’ as the English called them, were at the bottom of the heap in the Colony, below Asians, coloureds and blacks.     The   English masters regarded them contemptuously as lazy, dirty, ignorant, and fit for nothing except procreation. A court appearance meant the humiliation of having a black interpreter. To some extent that attitude still prevails. ‘Thick Dutchman’, rock-ape, yarpie, are common derogatory words used against Afrikaners.
 
Afrikaners were admitted to the snooty Rand Club only after Jews were let in.
 
I often wondered whether I was the only Englishman in the country who actually liked them for their congenial nature and admired them for their sheer fortitude and ability to fight against all odds.
 
Come the Great Trek. This was not because of the abolition of slavery, which was not possible in the vast empty spaces of Africa because the slaves would simply melt into the bush.
 
It was because Afrikaners had huge families. Under SA law, the land inheritance had to be divided between the sons, as is still the case in parts of Europe. So farms got progressively smaller.
 
Afrikaners were cattle men who needed large expanses of land . Their attitude was that the hard work of ploughing for crops was ‘kaffir’s work’.
 
And so they pushed off north to the Transvaal and the Free State where they ran into the next batch of immigrants arriving from the north, and so it all began.
 
Leaping forward to late in the century, the huge influx of British after the discovery of gold on the Rand led to all sorts of conflicts with the Transvaal Government and the people.
 
But the origins of the South African War – the ‘boer’ war – lay not in Rhodes’ greed to monopolise the mining industry, or not entirely. The Imperial Government was playing a political strategy.
 
It was very alarmed that the growing strength and geographical location of the Transvaal would cut Britain off from Africa to the north of the Limpopo. It was already blocked to east and west by the Portuguese.
 
The first spark was the disastrous Jameson Raid that very nearly did for Rhodes. But it was a mistake. The infamous telegram from Jameson to Rhodes contained a comma. But commas are not transmitted by telegraph. Its omission gave the message a contrary meaning. So watch your grammar!
 
The comment has a totally different perception of the conduct of the real war – horrendous atrocities and all  that hyperbole. On the contrary, this was probably the last ‘civilised’ war in which both sides conducted themselves honourably. An excellent account is given in Denys Reitz’ ‘Kommando’ which is deservedly still in print as perhaps the best description of the war from the Boer side. There was no hatred or animosity. The British soldiers had the highest regard for both the courage and the shooting-prowess of the enemy.
 
When Winston Churchill was captured (every day I used to drive past the school where he was imprisoned), he was visited  weekly by the Foreign Minister of the Transvaal, who carried a bottle of Scotch concealed in the lining of his frock coat, and gave Winnie a briefing on the progress of the war from the Boer side for Winston’s despatches to the Morning Post.
 
Not much animosity there, then.
 
(Denys Reitz became High Commissioner in London after the war. Whilst there, the regiment that had captured him presented him with the rifle that had been taken off him as a POW! He became as pro-British as that other great South African, General Smuts).
 
So now we come to that perpetually running sore, the so-called concentration camps.
 
These were not set up as an act of cruelty. Their objective was to deprive the Boers of their food source by closing down their farms. The result was the opposite, for instead of restricting their fighting season to the needs of the harvest, it released them to fight full-time.
 
The camps full of women and children were an affront and cruel abuse. Thousands died of cholera and other epidemics due to totally incompetent management by the British whom totally failed to provide proper sanitation and safe water, but it was not a deliberate act of cruelty. It caused outrage in the UK, and many prominent figures, such as Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, who was a volunteer surgeon to the military during the war, and Rudyard Kipling, condemned it out-of-hand. It brought international condemnation and support for the Boers.
 
It was an act of unbelievable stupidity that turned the tide for the enemy and made the war an international issue.
 
The truth of the matter is that Britain may have won the last battles after taking a fearful pasting in the early days (see the photos of the slaughter at Spion Kop), but the Afrikaners won the war.
 
After the Act of Union, the colonies of the Cape and Natal were merged into the Dominion of South Africa. The Afrikaners ruled from 1903 to 1994. There was never English-speaking governance again.
 
Fast forward to the 20th Century and for the first half SA went on quietly under a relatively benign regime, apart from WW1 and 2 in which SA/Rhodesian forces acquitted themselves well in SW Africa, Tanganyika and Nyasaland in the first and, and Ethiopia (where they were the first ground troops to see action) and the Desert campaign in the second.
 
Then came 40 years of apartheid, and here we are. On the downside, security, education, health and most things Government-run are in a sorry state. On the upside, SA has a massive economy relative to the continent; for example, SABM is the second largest brewing firm in the world, and SA firms have spread all over sub-equatorial Africa
 
I had the feeling in 1994 that SA would go the way of Zimbabwe except that it would take longer because there was more to steal. I now feel more hopeful. The younger generation in Africa is rejecting the ‘big man’ approach to politics, and wants jobs, education, and clean government. The freedom fighter generation is passing and with it the old crooks who believe, with Nkrumah, that ‘you only get one chance to milk the cow’. And the Afrikaner will survive and prosper; he is a chameleon, very adept through history and culture at adapting to extreme change.
 
The ‘Mandela’ effect may be more than transitory.
 
As for white South Africans, there seem to be two choices.
 
To follow many compatriots to the UK, the US and Australia (where I live Afrikaans is the second most widely-used language).
 
Or to accept what you can’t change, change what you can, remember that you still have one of the highest standards of living, and stop living in the past.
 
‘The past is another country; they do things differently there’.