14 ms·

The inadmissible truth about corruption in the UK is that it's endemic. And not just money laundering; the very way governments (both Labour, Conservative, and

by cstross 10y ago

The inadmissible truth about corruption in the UK is that it's endemic. And not just money laundering; the very way governments (both Labour, Conservative, and Coalition) have pursued the business of privatization of state assets since 1979 is uniquely corrupt, on a massive scale. Hint: corruption isn't just about simple bribery and envelopes full of banknotes passing hand. Ask yourself why so many cabinet ministers retire and end up on the boards of large conglomerates that specialise in bidding for government outsourcing contracts, or why so many long-term viable agencies of government (the Post Office, the Land Registry, the National Air Traffic Control System, the NHS ...) find themselves in need of privatization in the name of "efficiency". You can make any agency -- however potentially profitable -- fail if you run it into the ground through deliberate mismanagement, then show a rebound improvement when you sell it (or the service it provides) off to your golf-course cronies. And when you roll up to the banquet later, there's no evidential chain that can prove beyond reasonable doubt that what you did was grand theft.

branchless 10y ago
Exactly. Blair. Alistair Darling now on a major US bank. The UK establishment have perfected the art of making the immoral legal. They are patient and wait for their reward. Let's have another enquiry into it all! A "thorough" one that takes 5 years and costs millions only to find "systemic" issues with no individuals to blame. The UK's USP is "no time for financial crime".
- blowski 10y ago
  There's nothing new about this, and nothing unique to the UK. Rich and powerful people tend to use their wealth and power to protect their wealth and power. And London has a lot of people with a lot of wealth and power. The banking system is where most of the world's wealth resides, and since the London banking system dominates most of the global financial system, a lot of dodgy dealings happen in London. If you move it to the jungles of deepest darkest Peru, then the deepest darkest jungles of Peru will become corrupt. I'm as disappointed as anyone about the cesspool of immorality that is modern finance, but David Cameron passing a few laws or conducting some kind of investigation is not going to change human nature. These are essentially the same problems that the Ancient Romans and Greeks complained about.
  - mootothemax 10y ago
    > not going to change human nature I dislike this kind of argument. Sometimes you see it trotted out regarding crime, and that it's impossible to e.g. stop people killing or burgling or thieving in general. Except - we're doing a pretty good job of reducing such crimes. It's easy to write off pretty much well any undesirable action as being "human nature" and I implore you to reconsider.
    - blowski 10y ago
      You missed out the first half of my sentence: > David Cameron passing a few laws or conducting some kind of investigation is not going to change human nature I agree that change is possible, but it's not going to come from the top. We the people need to push for that kind of change, but half the population is too busy repeating the establishment's line that "it's all the fault of immigrants".
      - mootothemax 10y ago
        > not going to change human nature I'm doing a poor job of explaining myself; it's reasoning corruption as "human nature" that I have the bigger issue with. (I do agree that few issues are ever going to be solved with politicians' soundbites!)
        blowski 10y ago
        How do you define corruption? (Serious question, not snarky. I suspect we are on the same side of the fence here.)
  - scribu 10y ago
    I agree that it's nothing new in a general sense, but the reason this is catching people's attention is because there is this lingering perception that there is less corruption in the UK (and in western Europe, in general) than in other places.
    - 10y ago
mootothemax 10y ago
>Hint: corruption isn't just about simple bribery and envelopes full of banknotes passing hand. While I agree with you, I find the bare-faced cheek of publicly-advertised "donor clubs" that promise access to the Prime Minister for a mere £50k/year absolutely sickening: https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor-Clubs https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor-Clubs
- blowski 10y ago
  Blimey, that's a fascinating link to be so public and explicit. They boast about not being funded by Trade Unions, and then invite big business to donate £50K so they can have lunch with the PM to "defeat the rise of socialism".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I was genuinely surprised that they use that phrase - what does socialism mean in that context? The NHS, opposition to zero hour contracts, basic human decency?
    - pixel_fcker 10y ago
      Pretty sure in this context it's the redistribution of wealth part they're not keen on.
      - _0ffh 10y ago
        I think they're very much in favor of redistributing wealth. It's just the socialists' preferred direction of the redistribution that they don't agree with.
        ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
        Funny how they're massive socialists when it comes to supporting the military, but not when it comes to healthcare? They're just self-hating socialists.
vijayr 10y ago
What are some examples of democratic countries where corruption is low? Ask yourself why so many cabinet ministers retire and end up on the boards of large conglomerates that specialise in bidding for government outsourcing contracts, or why so many long-term viable agencies of government Doesn't this happen elsewhere too? Example - revolving door in financial institutions
- funkyy 10y ago
  Maybe Switzerland? Direct democracy (kind of) sounds like best bet...
  - cstross 10y ago
    Note that direct democracy has its own drawbacks: for example, in some cantons the franchise was only extended to women on February 7th, 1971: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/7/newsid_2738000/2738475.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/7/... (Pressure for social change tends to come from the young, voters skew old, so in practice many direct democracies tend to be very slow to adapt to widespread grassroots social change.)
    - rmc 10y ago
      > in some cantons the franchise was only extended to women on February 7th, 1971 It's worse than that. One small place didn't extend it till 1990.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Unless you have some sort of constitutional provisions protecting people from each other, 51% of your fellow citizens will trod all over the other 49%. And you may or may not have noticed, but most citizens don't seem to take the time to be up on the pros and cons for each and every provision of each and every piece of legislation that are debated today on the floor of parliamentary bodies. In other words: it might solve what economists call the "principal-agent problem", but at a (potentially very high) cost. A person who should not necessarily be considered a political system theorist once declared that freedom and democracy are incompatible. This may or may not be true, and for those pushing for democracy, maybe freedom is a non-issue from the start, but I think it needs to be at least considered whenever pushes for "moar democracy" come around.
yeureka 10y ago
Sounds like my native Portugal. Spain has similar issues. Not sure about Greece and Italy but I wouldn't be surprised if the same was going on.
- intAligned 10y ago
  Every time i read news about corruption i check if Italy is being mentioned. This is how i found your comment. This is how i decided to reply that yeah in Italy corruption is a second state (voluntarily lowercase).
niccolop 10y ago
Is that also evidence that companies hope they will be able to influence government by having an "insider" on their team? And they can show their investors that they have someone on the inside as well? Even if that individual is completely unable to in fact influence policy. Also, what is your definition of corruption?
clumsysmurf 10y ago
> or why so many long-term viable agencies of government (the Post Office, the Land Registry, the National Air Traffic Control System, the NHS ...) find themselves in need of privatization in the name of "efficiency" A few articles in The Guardian recently on neoliberalism: First, from Goerge Monbiot's book, "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... and secondly "You’re witnessing the death of neoliberalism – from within" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witnessing-death-neoliberalism-imf-economists http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witness...

by cstross 10y ago

branchless 10y ago

Exactly. Blair. Alistair Darling now on a major US bank. The UK establishment have perfected the art of making the immoral legal. They are patient and wait for their reward. Let's have another enquiry into it all! A "thorough" one that takes 5 years and costs millions only to find "systemic" issues with no individuals to blame. The UK's USP is "no time for financial crime".

blowski 10y ago
There's nothing new about this, and nothing unique to the UK. Rich and powerful people tend to use their wealth and power to protect their wealth and power. And London has a lot of people with a lot of wealth and power. The banking system is where most of the world's wealth resides, and since the London banking system dominates most of the global financial system, a lot of dodgy dealings happen in London. If you move it to the jungles of deepest darkest Peru, then the deepest darkest jungles of Peru will become corrupt. I'm as disappointed as anyone about the cesspool of immorality that is modern finance, but David Cameron passing a few laws or conducting some kind of investigation is not going to change human nature. These are essentially the same problems that the Ancient Romans and Greeks complained about.
- mootothemax 10y ago
  > not going to change human nature I dislike this kind of argument. Sometimes you see it trotted out regarding crime, and that it's impossible to e.g. stop people killing or burgling or thieving in general. Except - we're doing a pretty good job of reducing such crimes. It's easy to write off pretty much well any undesirable action as being "human nature" and I implore you to reconsider.
  - blowski 10y ago
    You missed out the first half of my sentence: > David Cameron passing a few laws or conducting some kind of investigation is not going to change human nature I agree that change is possible, but it's not going to come from the top. We the people need to push for that kind of change, but half the population is too busy repeating the establishment's line that "it's all the fault of immigrants".
    - mootothemax 10y ago
      > not going to change human nature I'm doing a poor job of explaining myself; it's reasoning corruption as "human nature" that I have the bigger issue with. (I do agree that few issues are ever going to be solved with politicians' soundbites!)
      - blowski 10y ago
        How do you define corruption? (Serious question, not snarky. I suspect we are on the same side of the fence here.)
- scribu 10y ago
  I agree that it's nothing new in a general sense, but the reason this is catching people's attention is because there is this lingering perception that there is less corruption in the UK (and in western Europe, in general) than in other places.
  - 10y ago

mootothemax 10y ago

>Hint: corruption isn't just about simple bribery and envelopes full of banknotes passing hand. While I agree with you, I find the bare-faced cheek of publicly-advertised "donor clubs" that promise access to the Prime Minister for a mere £50k/year absolutely sickening: https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor-Clubs https://www.conservatives.com/donate/Donor-Clubs

blowski 10y ago
Blimey, that's a fascinating link to be so public and explicit. They boast about not being funded by Trade Unions, and then invite big business to donate £50K so they can have lunch with the PM to "defeat the rise of socialism".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- arethuza 10y ago
  I was genuinely surprised that they use that phrase - what does socialism mean in that context? The NHS, opposition to zero hour contracts, basic human decency?
  - pixel_fcker 10y ago
    Pretty sure in this context it's the redistribution of wealth part they're not keen on.
    - _0ffh 10y ago
      I think they're very much in favor of redistributing wealth. It's just the socialists' preferred direction of the redistribution that they don't agree with.
      - ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
        Funny how they're massive socialists when it comes to supporting the military, but not when it comes to healthcare? They're just self-hating socialists.

vijayr 10y ago

What are some examples of democratic countries where corruption is low? Ask yourself why so many cabinet ministers retire and end up on the boards of large conglomerates that specialise in bidding for government outsourcing contracts, or why so many long-term viable agencies of government Doesn't this happen elsewhere too? Example - revolving door in financial institutions

funkyy 10y ago
Maybe Switzerland? Direct democracy (kind of) sounds like best bet...
- cstross 10y ago
  Note that direct democracy has its own drawbacks: for example, in some cantons the franchise was only extended to women on February 7th, 1971: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/7/newsid_2738000/2738475.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/7/... (Pressure for social change tends to come from the young, voters skew old, so in practice many direct democracies tend to be very slow to adapt to widespread grassroots social change.)
  - rmc 10y ago
    > in some cantons the franchise was only extended to women on February 7th, 1971 It's worse than that. One small place didn't extend it till 1990.
- ci5er 10y ago
  Unless you have some sort of constitutional provisions protecting people from each other, 51% of your fellow citizens will trod all over the other 49%. And you may or may not have noticed, but most citizens don't seem to take the time to be up on the pros and cons for each and every provision of each and every piece of legislation that are debated today on the floor of parliamentary bodies. In other words: it might solve what economists call the "principal-agent problem", but at a (potentially very high) cost. A person who should not necessarily be considered a political system theorist once declared that freedom and democracy are incompatible. This may or may not be true, and for those pushing for democracy, maybe freedom is a non-issue from the start, but I think it needs to be at least considered whenever pushes for "moar democracy" come around.

yeureka 10y ago

Sounds like my native Portugal. Spain has similar issues. Not sure about Greece and Italy but I wouldn't be surprised if the same was going on.

intAligned 10y ago
Every time i read news about corruption i check if Italy is being mentioned. This is how i found your comment. This is how i decided to reply that yeah in Italy corruption is a second state (voluntarily lowercase).

niccolop 10y ago

Is that also evidence that companies hope they will be able to influence government by having an "insider" on their team? And they can show their investors that they have someone on the inside as well? Even if that individual is completely unable to in fact influence policy. Also, what is your definition of corruption?

clumsysmurf 10y ago

> or why so many long-term viable agencies of government (the Post Office, the Land Registry, the National Air Traffic Control System, the NHS ...) find themselves in need of privatization in the name of "efficiency" A few articles in The Guardian recently on neoliberalism: First, from Goerge Monbiot's book, "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... and secondly "You’re witnessing the death of neoliberalism – from within" http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witnessing-death-neoliberalism-imf-economists http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witness...