Despite hating Europe so much, the Tories seem to have a lot in common with their continental cousins. Particularly a propensity for corruption.
Over here we've had:
Jeffrey Archer
Jonathan Aitken
Neil Hamilton
Cash For Questions
Cash For Access
Lord Ashcroft
The Zinoviev Letter
Winston Churchill's oil bribes
Reginald Maudling
Andrew Mitchell
Al-Yamamah
Shirley Porter's gerrymandering
Derek Conway
Liam Fox and Adam Werritty
And of course there's the whole bankrupting-the-taxpayer-and-cutting-public-services-to-bail-out-the-banksgate.
So it looks like British Tories and right-wingers in general (look at UKIP's record: a conveyor belt from the European Parliament to prison) are pretty keen bribe-hoovers. But let's spread the net wider, and ask this question: Does Toryism Lead Inevitably To Corruption?
Ireland:
The Mahon Tribunal revealed that the entire state had been suborned by bribery and corruption through the method of bribing and buying Fianna Fail politicians. The previous Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern was judged to have taken bribes and lied to the enquiry. The party has been in government for most of the Republic's existence and essentially sold itself to business. They too managed to bankrupt the country.
France:
Former president Chirac funded his party through a network of fake public sector jobs for party activists.
Righwing politicians jailed for arms-smuggling, while they accuse each other of secret bank accounts.
Sarkozy's been taking suitcases of (tax-evading) cash from France's richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, the L'Oréal heiress.
Germany:
The Christian Democrat (i.e. Tory) German President has just had to resign due to a corruption scandal.
Austria:
The Austrian Tories (ÖVP) are in massive disarray as it turns out they're riddled with corruption, enriching themselves and their friends through bribery related to government contracts.
Slovakia:
Their Tories have been taking massive bribes for contract and privatisation deals. The same goes for Croatia's HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), while over in the Czech Republic, a businessman nicknamed Voldemort ran his own shadow government by buying up the Czech Tories, the Civic Democrats.
What makes Tories so open to sleaze? It's in their DNA. They believe in individual capitalism and enterprise. Sharp practice is simply individual entrepreneurialism. They also believe that financial success is a mark of spiritual and intellectual strength, so anyone with massive amounts of cash is automatically admirable. They believe that what's good for business is good for everyone, and they see government as a drag on achievement which should be subverted or captured for their own interests (hence Mitchell's tax scam and the al-Yamamah deal). Little wonder then that they're so susceptible to the charms of rich men filling their ears with seductive words and their pockets with cash. They're incapable of discrimination. When the world means little more to them than the circulation of cash, they'd be fools not to dip their hands in the river of corruption: it's ideologically natural.
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Friday, 30 March 2012
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Competition leads to corruption? Say it ain't so!
The media are leading today with the news that an exam board has been running seminars for teachers to show them how to get the kids to pass the exams. The Secretary of State for Education has launched an enquiry!
This is my cue to play - again - one of my favourite moments from that wonderful film, Casablanca.
Why? Because corruption is exactly what happens when things that shouldn't be businesses are made to compete against each other for profit. In the old days, exam boards were state institutions, or run by universities, with the aim of discovering a) what the kids had learned and b) whether they'd benefit from a university education. Seems simple enough.
Then they were privatised. They needed to attract 'business', e.g. schools which would use their exams, and would pay for the privilege. It doesn't take a genius to work out that there aren't many ways to do this. One is to reduce the cost, by farming the marking out to underpaid individuals on a piecework basis, which is why the standard of marking is so low, and making the questions more 'tick box' than discursive. The other is to make sure that the exams are easy to pass. Every school is now judged by the sledgehammer of league tables, so of course they're going to go for the exam provider which helps them achieve a high pass rate.
This is the insanity of a competitive privatised exam system allied to a functionalist, audit-obsessed regime. What's entirely irrelevant is the intellectual development of the children. You can't quantify that. Audit culture is entirely fraudulent.
So who's Captain Renault? At the moment, it's Michael Gove, and before him the Tory and Labour ministers who swallowed whole the depressing and reductive and totally untrue line that business is efficient and audit = facts and competition drives up quality. These are lies. His enquiry should run along these lines:
Amusingly, I heard this exam boards question (not the one about Gove-as-pimple) being discussed on Radio 4's Today programme. The very next item was about separating water companies and retailers. There wasn't a hint of irony or opposition as two guests and the presenter repeated exactly the same tired old lies: competing companies will reduce prices and improve quality. Hello? Rail? Gas? Electricity? Have they not noticed that there's no true competition (how could there be, with the water coming out of the taps?)? Do they not know that bills have increased massively?
I hate knowing more than nationally prominent commentators, politicians and company directors. I want to leave it all up to better qualified people while I truffle around for pork scratchings and weird books. But every time I look up, these utter morons are either deluding themselves or lying to us.
Now go away, I'm toweringly angry.
This is my cue to play - again - one of my favourite moments from that wonderful film, Casablanca.
Why? Because corruption is exactly what happens when things that shouldn't be businesses are made to compete against each other for profit. In the old days, exam boards were state institutions, or run by universities, with the aim of discovering a) what the kids had learned and b) whether they'd benefit from a university education. Seems simple enough.
Then they were privatised. They needed to attract 'business', e.g. schools which would use their exams, and would pay for the privilege. It doesn't take a genius to work out that there aren't many ways to do this. One is to reduce the cost, by farming the marking out to underpaid individuals on a piecework basis, which is why the standard of marking is so low, and making the questions more 'tick box' than discursive. The other is to make sure that the exams are easy to pass. Every school is now judged by the sledgehammer of league tables, so of course they're going to go for the exam provider which helps them achieve a high pass rate.
This is the insanity of a competitive privatised exam system allied to a functionalist, audit-obsessed regime. What's entirely irrelevant is the intellectual development of the children. You can't quantify that. Audit culture is entirely fraudulent.
So who's Captain Renault? At the moment, it's Michael Gove, and before him the Tory and Labour ministers who swallowed whole the depressing and reductive and totally untrue line that business is efficient and audit = facts and competition drives up quality. These are lies. His enquiry should run along these lines:
- Do I tell everyone that private businesses lead to lower prices and higher quality?
- Is there a teensy flaw to this?
- Might companies take shortcuts?
- So is this development due to my own ideological stupidity?
- Should I nationalise exam boards, abolish competition and concentrate on children's needs?
- Am I a suppurating pimple on the face of humanity who should do the decent thing with a glass of whisky and a revolver?
Amusingly, I heard this exam boards question (not the one about Gove-as-pimple) being discussed on Radio 4's Today programme. The very next item was about separating water companies and retailers. There wasn't a hint of irony or opposition as two guests and the presenter repeated exactly the same tired old lies: competing companies will reduce prices and improve quality. Hello? Rail? Gas? Electricity? Have they not noticed that there's no true competition (how could there be, with the water coming out of the taps?)? Do they not know that bills have increased massively?
I hate knowing more than nationally prominent commentators, politicians and company directors. I want to leave it all up to better qualified people while I truffle around for pork scratchings and weird books. But every time I look up, these utter morons are either deluding themselves or lying to us.
Now go away, I'm toweringly angry.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Michael Gove and the Palin Manoeuvre
You may have seen today's newspaper reports that aides to the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, deliberately moved sensitive discussions away from official e-mail accounts onto private free ones, such as Gmail.
On the face of it, this is a security matter: government officials discussing the future of this country using accounts which are frequently hacked. More seriously, this is a deliberate evasion of accountability: private accounts aren't subject to Freedom of Information requests, so any government business conducted this way can never be subject to the scrutiny of the public.
Sarah Palin did the same thing - which is why some naughty boy hacked and released her emails, and why media outlets in the US took legal action to examine them. At the root of this is actually a serious philosophical question. In an ideal world, our political overlords are in the job to do what they think is best, secure in the knowledge that the electorate has decided to trust their judgement by voting them in. This should give the confidence to do everything in an open and honest manner.
However, when you see government officials behaving like this:
then one has to doubt their commitment to the public good. If they were convinced of their altruistic motives, they wouldn't move discussions into private, unaccountable spaces. It gives me a strong whiff of not quite guilt, but certainly awareness that the kinds of things they're up to - in this particular case inventing a special class of schools run by and for their political and social allies - are not in the best interests of the country, and automatically require evasion and dishonesty to achieve their aims. This isn't corruption in the classical sense of filling one's own bank account, but it's clearly moral and political corruption of the most corrosive kind.
It suggests that they consciously see government as a vehicle for their private interests, a fat cow to be milked for selfish gain rather than used to feed the masses: in a very real sense, this is class warfare from the top. There's no principle involved here: like Palin, they publicly denounce government as an oppressive enemy of individual enterprise, while distorting its authority for their own purposes. They've captured the government and they're going to extract every penny they can for as long as they're there.
In Kenya, political corruption is so institutionalised that one incoming government minister announced that the new regime merely wanted its own turn at the udders: 'It is our turn to eat', rather than cleaning up the system. I can't see any difference between that and the hole-in-the-corner corruption of the Goves and Palins, other than the Kenyan minister's honesty.
On the face of it, this is a security matter: government officials discussing the future of this country using accounts which are frequently hacked. More seriously, this is a deliberate evasion of accountability: private accounts aren't subject to Freedom of Information requests, so any government business conducted this way can never be subject to the scrutiny of the public.
Sarah Palin did the same thing - which is why some naughty boy hacked and released her emails, and why media outlets in the US took legal action to examine them. At the root of this is actually a serious philosophical question. In an ideal world, our political overlords are in the job to do what they think is best, secure in the knowledge that the electorate has decided to trust their judgement by voting them in. This should give the confidence to do everything in an open and honest manner.
However, when you see government officials behaving like this:
The FT reports that Dominic Cummings, Gove's chief political aide, wrote to colleagues shortly after he was appointed stating he "will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account …"
The email continued: "i will only answer things that come from gmail accounts from people who i know who they are. i suggest that you do the same in general but thats obv up to you guys – i can explain in person the reason for this …"
then one has to doubt their commitment to the public good. If they were convinced of their altruistic motives, they wouldn't move discussions into private, unaccountable spaces. It gives me a strong whiff of not quite guilt, but certainly awareness that the kinds of things they're up to - in this particular case inventing a special class of schools run by and for their political and social allies - are not in the best interests of the country, and automatically require evasion and dishonesty to achieve their aims. This isn't corruption in the classical sense of filling one's own bank account, but it's clearly moral and political corruption of the most corrosive kind.
It suggests that they consciously see government as a vehicle for their private interests, a fat cow to be milked for selfish gain rather than used to feed the masses: in a very real sense, this is class warfare from the top. There's no principle involved here: like Palin, they publicly denounce government as an oppressive enemy of individual enterprise, while distorting its authority for their own purposes. They've captured the government and they're going to extract every penny they can for as long as they're there.
In Kenya, political corruption is so institutionalised that one incoming government minister announced that the new regime merely wanted its own turn at the udders: 'It is our turn to eat', rather than cleaning up the system. I can't see any difference between that and the hole-in-the-corner corruption of the Goves and Palins, other than the Kenyan minister's honesty.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
One simple rule for public servants
One of the reasons the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had to resign was that he'd accepted a free stay at a health spa. A day before I went on strike, the Chancellor of the Exchequer - fresh from attacking us for not working - turned up at Wimbledon. The head of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has frequently had slap-up feeds in posh restaurants with the companies who he subsequently let off their taxes. A lot of golf is played by businessmen trying to butter up councillors and planning officers - often excluding women of course.
There's a culture amongst politicians, civil servants and other public servants of socialising with their class, regardless of propriety. There is - in Anthony Sampson's terms - a political class which is educated in the same schools and universities, lives in the same areas (of London), goes to the same events and dines in the same restaurants.
So let's end these cosy deals with a simple rule.
If you're paid by the taxpayer, your meetings are held in the office, with a minute-taker.
Is that clear? So Murdoch doesn't sneak into the back door of Downing Street. Party donors don't murmur sweet nothings into the ears of Cabinet Ministers at Glyndebourne. Policemen don't go to dinner with News International hacks and councillors don't shake hands with developers down at the Masonic Lodge. Weapons manufacturers don't - as now - second their staff to the Ministry of Defence. I won't accept lobster from academic textbook publishers.
Instead, if people want to talk to public servants, they come to our cramped, bleak offices and drink bitter coffee, while every word both parties say is recorded. Every citizen is under surveillance all the time, so this seems a small price to pay.
It will take some adjustment, but it's a small requirement for anyone who wants to live off our taxes.
There's a culture amongst politicians, civil servants and other public servants of socialising with their class, regardless of propriety. There is - in Anthony Sampson's terms - a political class which is educated in the same schools and universities, lives in the same areas (of London), goes to the same events and dines in the same restaurants.
So let's end these cosy deals with a simple rule.
If you're paid by the taxpayer, your meetings are held in the office, with a minute-taker.
Is that clear? So Murdoch doesn't sneak into the back door of Downing Street. Party donors don't murmur sweet nothings into the ears of Cabinet Ministers at Glyndebourne. Policemen don't go to dinner with News International hacks and councillors don't shake hands with developers down at the Masonic Lodge. Weapons manufacturers don't - as now - second their staff to the Ministry of Defence. I won't accept lobster from academic textbook publishers.
Instead, if people want to talk to public servants, they come to our cramped, bleak offices and drink bitter coffee, while every word both parties say is recorded. Every citizen is under surveillance all the time, so this seems a small price to pay.
It will take some adjustment, but it's a small requirement for anyone who wants to live off our taxes.
Monday, 2 August 2010
To go or not to go
I've been planning to volunteer for the 2012 Olympics for a long time. I'm too late to take qualify as an FIE (world-class referee) for the fencing, but there's probably something I can do.
So I filled in all the forms, which took 40 minutes because the website is so badly designed. Then, on the very last page: a McDonald's logo. No previous mention, though perhaps I should have known. It's there on the webpage now, though I went through British Fencing.
Oh dear. Either the IOC's ideals include making billions with little regard for the health of its consumers and the wellbeing of its workers (minimum wage, union-busting), or MacDonald's really is a big fan of corruption, patronage and physical perfection.
It's a real dilemma. I strongly disapprove of junk food manufacturers associating themselves with sport, even an organisation as morally compromised as the Olympics (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, this BBC timeline of corruption, here, this compendium of disgraceful shenanigans, and this scandalous story in particular.
Perhaps it's a bit too much to expect clean hands and morality from an organisation with so much money and patronage to dispense, led for so long by unrepentant (and official) fascist and roller-hockey honcho Juan Antonio Samaranch, from his 5-star hotel in Switzerland (here he is in 1974, giving the old Nazi salute), or by Avery Brundage the American Nazi cheerleader, mysogynist anti-semite who took Jews off the US team in 1936, campaigned against female inclusion, made sure that a former opponent was unjustly stripped of his medals, supported 'Rhodesia' (white-rules Zimbabwe) against exclusion attempts and expelled Smith and Carlos from the 1968 Olympics for their Black Power salute, despite supporting the Nazi pageantry and salutes of 1936.
Should I volunteer to help my sport at what is still the greatest competition on earth, or is it too tainted by 'presenting partner'? Does one person's participation or not matter in the slightest? What do you think?
(I know, it's just me going on as usual. I actually love sport - but I find it difficult to separate it from its political and cultural contexts. And football's worse - FIFA's a disgrace).
So I filled in all the forms, which took 40 minutes because the website is so badly designed. Then, on the very last page: a McDonald's logo. No previous mention, though perhaps I should have known. It's there on the webpage now, though I went through British Fencing.
'MacDonald's has supported the Olympic Movement for more than 30 years and we share many of the same ideals.'
IOC President Jacque Rogge
Turin, February 7, 2006
Oh dear. Either the IOC's ideals include making billions with little regard for the health of its consumers and the wellbeing of its workers (minimum wage, union-busting), or MacDonald's really is a big fan of corruption, patronage and physical perfection.
It's a real dilemma. I strongly disapprove of junk food manufacturers associating themselves with sport, even an organisation as morally compromised as the Olympics (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, this BBC timeline of corruption, here, this compendium of disgraceful shenanigans, and this scandalous story in particular.
Perhaps it's a bit too much to expect clean hands and morality from an organisation with so much money and patronage to dispense, led for so long by unrepentant (and official) fascist and roller-hockey honcho Juan Antonio Samaranch, from his 5-star hotel in Switzerland (here he is in 1974, giving the old Nazi salute), or by Avery Brundage the American Nazi cheerleader, mysogynist anti-semite who took Jews off the US team in 1936, campaigned against female inclusion, made sure that a former opponent was unjustly stripped of his medals, supported 'Rhodesia' (white-rules Zimbabwe) against exclusion attempts and expelled Smith and Carlos from the 1968 Olympics for their Black Power salute, despite supporting the Nazi pageantry and salutes of 1936.
Should I volunteer to help my sport at what is still the greatest competition on earth, or is it too tainted by 'presenting partner'? Does one person's participation or not matter in the slightest? What do you think?
(I know, it's just me going on as usual. I actually love sport - but I find it difficult to separate it from its political and cultural contexts. And football's worse - FIFA's a disgrace).
Monday, 22 March 2010
Our turn to eat
I've always hated the Tories and New Labour because they've never pretended to care for the citizens they wish to govern. Instead, they've seen the state as something to capture for their own and their friends' interests. This is the 'our turn to eat' syndrome (as invented in Kenya).
The weekend's story about Stephen Byers MP ('I'm a cab for hire), Geoff Hoon (wanted 'something that frankly makes money'), Patricia Hewitt ( for a fee of £3,000 a day, she could help "a client who needs a particular regulation removed, then we can often package that up") and others is utterly symptomatic of this attitude. For people like him, a period as government minister isn't the pinnacle of a life devoted to serving the public: it's a period of political glory which leads on to wealth and comfort obtained by using the contacts made in the service of whichever corporation buys his time. Ex-soldiers and defence ministers work for arms manufacturers, ministers for health work for private health companies, treasury officials go to the City, all betraying their beliefs (if they're Labour).
There's no sense that Byers has any political principles which might restrain him - it's all about the money (£3000-£5000 per day, he says).
What really shocked me, and which summed up the ideological vacuity of New Labour, was Byers' use of pronouns. He told the undercover reporter that he'd lobbied ministers to save millions of pounds for National Express railways and helped Tesco weaken food labelling laws. All the way through, he used 'we'. Not referring to the government of which he was a minister, nor to the party he represents as a member of parliament, nor to the people he claims to represent. No. To this man, elected by the citizens and paid by us, 'we' referred to these corporations.
That is a resigning matter.
This is the kind of thing that makes me a socialist. And keeps me away from elected office.
The weekend's story about Stephen Byers MP ('I'm a cab for hire), Geoff Hoon (wanted 'something that frankly makes money'), Patricia Hewitt ( for a fee of £3,000 a day, she could help "a client who needs a particular regulation removed, then we can often package that up") and others is utterly symptomatic of this attitude. For people like him, a period as government minister isn't the pinnacle of a life devoted to serving the public: it's a period of political glory which leads on to wealth and comfort obtained by using the contacts made in the service of whichever corporation buys his time. Ex-soldiers and defence ministers work for arms manufacturers, ministers for health work for private health companies, treasury officials go to the City, all betraying their beliefs (if they're Labour).
There's no sense that Byers has any political principles which might restrain him - it's all about the money (£3000-£5000 per day, he says).
What really shocked me, and which summed up the ideological vacuity of New Labour, was Byers' use of pronouns. He told the undercover reporter that he'd lobbied ministers to save millions of pounds for National Express railways and helped Tesco weaken food labelling laws. All the way through, he used 'we'. Not referring to the government of which he was a minister, nor to the party he represents as a member of parliament, nor to the people he claims to represent. No. To this man, elected by the citizens and paid by us, 'we' referred to these corporations.
That is a resigning matter.
This is the kind of thing that makes me a socialist. And keeps me away from elected office.
Friday, 5 February 2010
And the award for brazen cheek goes to…
BAe, the weapons manufacturer.
They've just agreed to hand over £300 million in fines and legally accepted guilt in several corruption cases worth £43 billion to avoid going to court and have the details made public.
Despite the worst corruption occurring in British jurisdiction, the fine here is only £30m, because the UK government encouraged it all (especially Jonathan Aitken, the government minister who was essentially BAe's salesman to the Saudis) and because the Serious Fraud Office here is useless (and Tony Blair cancelled one investigation 'for reasons of national security'). The Americans take this stuff much more seriously. Especially when it's foreign companies…
What's their public statement? Boilerplate PR bullshit
BAE, which expressed regret and accepted "full responsibility for these past shortcomings", said the settlement would allow it to "deal finally with significant legacy issues" that had overshadowed the company.
They've just agreed to hand over £300 million in fines and legally accepted guilt in several corruption cases worth £43 billion to avoid going to court and have the details made public.
Despite the worst corruption occurring in British jurisdiction, the fine here is only £30m, because the UK government encouraged it all (especially Jonathan Aitken, the government minister who was essentially BAe's salesman to the Saudis) and because the Serious Fraud Office here is useless (and Tony Blair cancelled one investigation 'for reasons of national security'). The Americans take this stuff much more seriously. Especially when it's foreign companies…
What's their public statement? Boilerplate PR bullshit
BAE, which expressed regret and accepted "full responsibility for these past shortcomings", said the settlement would allow it to "deal finally with significant legacy issues" that had overshadowed the company.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Now this is proper sleaze
Our politicians (in Britain and Ireland) are often shallow, careerist, greedy, arrogant and sometimes corrupt. However, it's sometimes instructive to look elsewhere for comparison, and a couple of stories provide the opportunity to do just that.
Over in Italy, the Prime Minister owns most of the TV, radio and print media, and controls the state channels. He's been accused of consorting with prostitutes, very young girls, evading taxes, dealing with extremely shady elements, and a British government minister's husband has been convicted of accepting a bribe to lie for him. He also thinks it's hilarious to joke that Obama has a 'good tan'. Now his immunity from prosecution while prime minister (a law he passed to protect himself) has been declared unconstitutional, and he's very upset…
Meanwhile in France, the Minister for Culture's autobiography reveals that he was in the habit of paying Thai 'boy' prostitutes a few years ago…
Over in Italy, the Prime Minister owns most of the TV, radio and print media, and controls the state channels. He's been accused of consorting with prostitutes, very young girls, evading taxes, dealing with extremely shady elements, and a British government minister's husband has been convicted of accepting a bribe to lie for him. He also thinks it's hilarious to joke that Obama has a 'good tan'. Now his immunity from prosecution while prime minister (a law he passed to protect himself) has been declared unconstitutional, and he's very upset…
Meanwhile in France, the Minister for Culture's autobiography reveals that he was in the habit of paying Thai 'boy' prostitutes a few years ago…
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Pigs in pools
I'm loving this MPs sleaze story. Every news broadcast finds another red-faced cheat saying 'the system's totally rotten'. They all agree that it's totally rotten and has been for years. It's obviously a complete coincidence that they've realised it's open to corruption in the same week that a national newspaper paid some thief a lot of money for the details. Very brave.
I'm also enjoying it because the details reveal that the class structure is alive and well. All the New Labour class traitors are behaving like the 80s yuppies they so admire: John Prescott charged the taxpayer for some beams to make his house look more Fake Tudor. Others claimed for designer goods and posher houses. The dear old Tories, meanwhile, lived up to their image of Lords of the Manor by claiming for chandeliers and, my personal favourite, Douglas 'Viscount Hailsham' Hogg's MOAT maintenance. Isn't that wonderful? Presumably their are also claims for mantraps, armour-polishing, drawbridge oiling and jousting equipment. Michael 'Marquess of Lothian' Ancram, a millionaire many times over, charged the taxpayer for maintaining his swimming pool heater.
Other highlights:
Sir Michael Spicer - thousands for trimming his helipad.
James Arbuthnot - swimming pool cleaning paid for by us, despite the fact that he managed to pay for a £2 million house without even needing a mortgage.
David Davis: £5,700 on a 'portico' (essential to his work for the nation).
Essentially, the Tories appear to feel that their expenses are a kind of National Trust fund: they get a second, third or fourth stately home, and we get to pay for it.
(Paul Flynn, the honest, decent Welsh Labour MP, is similarly outraged).
You all know that I think Hazel Blears is the epitome of everything that went wrong with the left. It appears that Steve Bell agrees (click here for the original):
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