Why isn’t British ‘sleaze’ called what it is?
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Not sure on what grounds you make that statement.
Just actually reading the Wikipedia article:
“as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys”
And
“A study published in 2012 found a ‘very strong significant correlation’ between the Corruption Perceptions Index and two other proxies for corruption: black market activity and an overabundance of regulation.
All three metrics also had a highly significant correlation with real gross domestic product per capita”
And not saying there’s not corruption in UK or other western nations, but the aljazeera piece comes across like propaganda without much in the way of concrete data.
It's called the "Corruption Perceptions Index," or the index of perceived corruption. It's purely based on the opinion of people about the corruption in countries.
The correlation to the black market and overregulation further demonstrates my point, the British corruption I discussed needed no black market and was enabled by a complete lack of regulation. None of those three measurements would consider clear corruption to be corruption.
I love when people don’t actually read the Wikipedia article:
“performance assessments from a group of analysts. Early CPIs used public opinion surveys. The institutions are:[
African Development Bank (based in Côte d'Ivoire) Bertelsmann Foundation (based in Germany) Economist Intelligence Unit (based in the UK) Freedom House (based in the US) Global Insight (based in US) International Institute for Management Development (based in Switzerland) Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (based in Hong Kong) The PRS Group, Inc., (based in the US) World Economic Forum World Bank”
> It's correlation to the black market and overregulation further demonstrates my point, the British corruption I discussed needed no black market and was enabled by a complete lack of regulation.
This makes no sense. Black markets are fostered by corruption. That’s why they exists. The fact that western countries have less black market activity points to less corruption not more.
>The fact that western countries have less black market activity points to less corruption not more.
Western corruption needs no black market, that $24 billion dollars awarded to friends of MPs and government officials can be deposited in banks and spent in stores like any other money.
edit From the wiki article.
>The CPI measures perception of corruption due to the difficulty of measuring absolute levels of corruption.
It wasn’t “my” Wikipedia article. Another commenter posted it. I just read it before commenting.
> fancy term for an opinion unless they detail their methodology with evidence.
You mean this methodology? Which is linked at the bottom of the Wikipedia article?? So you clearly didn’t read it.
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020
When I make comments on things online, I try to educate myself first rather than just asserting things with bias.
Here's the first criteria for a source from the methodology. It must
>Quantify perceptions of corruption in the public sector
Beyond that, as mentioned I did read the Wikipedia article, and your personal attacks are unnecessary.
Your first comment was
> [the CPI] would be subject to the same bias the article discusses. Even when the British government gives away $24 billion dollars to people recommended by MPs and government officials, that isn't perceived as "corruption" in the same way.
You may say that it’s a “perception” of corruption, but since we’re talking about corruption it usually has to be, since if it were just out in the open, usually that’s not where most corruption lies.
Instead the CPI asks people who are effected by corruption their assessments.
For example, members of the African Development Bank were asked questions along the following lines:
“the extent to which the executive can be held accountable for its use of funds and the results of its actions by the electorate and by the legislature and judiciary, and the extent to which public employees within the executive are required to account for the use of resources, administrative decisions, and results obtained“
Asking people effected by corruption seems like a pretty effective way to gauge corruption. In fact in your MP example, you would definitely get people pointing out that the current “sleaze” is corruption on those criteria. In fact the CPI ranks the UK at number 11 with 77 out of 100, meaning that the surveys uncovered corruption. Again that goes against your initial comment that the CPI isn’t perceiving UK corruption.
And the reason the other person posted the CPI was to provide data pointing out how the article was biased based on some concrete evidence. If on the other hand, there is some concrete data about why the CPI is biased and over reports African corruption relative to UK, and how it does so, then that’s useful information. But hand-wavy “it’s all opinion” isn’t helpful or honest.
In the end there’s clearly some reason that most African nations rate poorly on the CPI. Trying to pretend it’s all bias, that the CPI levels of African and Middle eastern countries are low only because of survey bias, requires some significant proof. (Especially if taken in the context of everything that is known about the strength of law in those countries).
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
And since when did lots of regulations === corruption? What even counts as "an overabundance"? There's not even a clearly defined measure of regulatory abundance, let alone over.
This study sounds fishy as hell.
I don't think it matches the big stuff that politicians do. In the US, politicians have "speaking fees", and regulators use the "revolving door" between the public and private sector. Are those bribes, too? I think often so, despite the green color.
Coincidentally, I’ve travelled a lot and lived in the USA, EU, and Asia. But I actually disagree.
Most Western citizens believe that there’s no corruption in their countries, while the reality is that it’s just less visible. In most developing countries, even the lowest levels of government get an opportunity to take a cut, but in developed countries, this is reserved for the upper levels. The amounts of money involved are still quite massive - and as most SV residents note on this site often, everything is riddled with inefficiency and favoritism with lots of corruption.
That’s just completely untrue. I don’t know what people you talk to, but here in the US I can guarantee 90% of Thanksgiving dinner conversation is going to revolve around someone complaining about the corrupt politicians.
But in percent of GDP terms, the USA is still leagues ahead of places like Afghanistan or most countries of Central Africa. Even Vietnam and Ukraine had much higher corruption than the USA, in my experience, and I'm friends with some interesting people like military contractors and business owners, accountants for Gazprom, etc.
Seriously, anyone who reads this article should also spend some time reading about Robert Mugabe or similar warlord frauds before pointing fingers at the likes of Boris Johnson.
I always thought that the Daily Prophet (of Harry Potter fame) was a parody of certain British press that really want overboard. Now that I've experienced British politics as a young adult, I am astounded by how much it wasn't a parody at all. The appeal to emotion is definitely real for the lower-end press, and the spin is there in almost every publication.
Correct! In Canada, "Postmedia" fills this role. They own essentially all of the important papers in Canada, and are 66% owned by an American hedge fund (Chatham Asset Management), and 22% owned by an American billionaire noted for his successful insider trading (Leon Cooperman). [0] Postmedia felt that their papers needed to be more "reliably conservative", and so in 2018 appointed a dude who'd just successfully fought off a unionization drive, Kevin Libin, to take charge of all their papers' political reporting and analysis, to ensure they'd be more friendly to the poor shivering right wing.
Their only meaningful competition, ideologically, was the Toronto Star as owned by Torstar, a corporation deployed in 1958 after the province of Ontario decided that charities couldn't operate newspapers. The Toronto Star, once a relatively left-wing voice known for its investigative journalism, was controlled by the families of the original charity trustees, but in 2020 it was sold to a private investment firm!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmedia_Network
[1] https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/08/27/opinion/postmedi...
World news always seems very refreshing to me in this regard: BBC World, Al Jazeera, Reuters. But yes, national and local news just seems to be a cesspool in many places and spreading.
BBC world news seems to focus quite a lot on Russia, for instance, maybe in response to RT's focus on UK.
Al jazeera also cant be trusted on anything involving qatar, assuming it even reports the story.
It's a bit lower down the front page than usual.
IIRC yesterday their top story had a bit about putin being accused of orchestrating the migrant crisis in belarus.
There's almost always something every day. Often they're not really very newsworthy which made me think that there might be a quota or something.
Other times it's registering an official US/UK disapproval of something they did as above.
I could understand if the stories were all internationally relevant but they're often oddly specific Russian domestic news (e.g. like https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58315926).
RT seems to do a similar thing. I remember walking around London one day and seeing a lot of protestors, although I couldn't make out their signs. I learned what was up from /r/london (they were antivaxxers). The BBC reported on it but buried the story while RT had it prominently displayed at like #4 on their world news page / #1 on their UK news page.
edit: Some of this unavoidable - you have to make judgments on what to cover and what makes the front page, and you're never going to eliminate people's biases or agendas completely. Not that it makes that acceptable, but I don't read World News and feel like the whole institution is beyond recovery and worthless. Cable news in the US? Yeah - I do feel that way.
For similar reasons, most political comedians seem to be left-leaning.
Bring back the original Spitting Image, Yes, Minister, Boys From the Blackstuff!
Depends on the topic. Since having had Tory donors and Tory politicians appointed to various positions, their domestic politics reporting has become decidedly pro-Tory.
And the 'media' is pro-Tory all the way ( even to some ridiculous degree ), then the other media just run with it because it's mostly copy & paste.
As far as survival goes, Bozo Johnson is a top performer. He only talks to the media he vets, that's why the UK is something like a mix of Truman Show with a sprinkle of 1930's Germany.
Why didn't they do this at any point in the past 10+ years? Because the press are owned and operated by the Tory party (sometimes once-removed, sometimes not) and understand that their primary function is to distribute pro-Tory propaganda.
So why are they doing it now? Because a) the opposition has been thoroughly defanged after the wholesale demolition of the left-wing Corbyn project and b) a lot of top Conservatives do not like Johnson because he makes them embarrassed at dinner parties, and would prefer someone like Gove. In other words, it's a Barclay twins vs Murdoch ruling-class squabble.
Maybe I'm just too cynical but I think if you're the media you need to shake down your favourites from time to time, even if you do prefer them over the opposition. If you can make a storm, you can make it blow over as well.
Senior politician cheats on his fiancée with a former stripper? Not corruption. But definitely sleaze.
That same senior politician gives £25,000 of taxpayer money to the former stripper - but giving 'business development' grants is within his power? Arguably corruption. But definitely sleaze.
A lot of the Tory stuff is plainly corruption, but expect Tory papers in particular to soft pedal it. They don't want to get called out for not reporting a huge story, but they needn't emphasise how bad it really is.
* The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country
* The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country
* The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country
* Financial Times is read by people who own the country
* The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country
* The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
(The Sun readers do not care who runs the country as long she's got big tits!)
Also the "big tits" version of the joke is clearly funnier and it's on the way interesting to watch people embrace this or be uncomfortable with it. I expect with Page 3 in practice consigned to history we'll go back to uncomfortable. By now there are probably a considerable number of Sun readers today who aren't aware the Sun used to feature topless model shots every day with essentially no excuse beyond people like looking at tits.
Except for the Daily Mirror, the Guardian and the BBC.
The apparent acquiescence of so many in the face of encroaching tyranny is the most frightening thing I've ever seen in my life. The vaccines don't work properly ('my vaccine only works if you're vaccinated too!'), the long term effects are unknown (despite their claims of safety for which they simply have no long term evidence), it is all obviously being used as a precursor to a social credit system, there is no evidence that masking the public works, the WHO etc. in an act worth of Orwell changed the actual definition of vaccine and herd immunity (nothing fishy there eh!) to suit their interests, the UK intentionally recorded any death within 28 days of a test (including being run over by a bus!) as a COVID death etc. etc. etc.... The whole thing stinks, and I won't be silent.
Any downvoters please respond with evidence to refute me. Bet you can't.
I have this in my reading list: "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic "
"Sleaze" is less tangible and probably harder to challenge, but carries similar weight. I think sleaze also covers non-corruption activities too - general face-saving in light of embarrassing-but-legal things like quirky sexual activities, substance misuse (where legal), questionable (not not "bad") moral decisions, questionable (but not illegal) business decisions etc etc
It's sad that this is the only mention of libel so far in the thread. UK libel laws are some of the easiest to get damages through; look at how many times Private Eye has been taken to court. MPs can use the corruption word easily due to parliamentary privilege, the media however don't have that privilege.
Though, having said that, and agreeing with almost everything they said, I hope the response is "here's some global principles and standards to stop this everywhere" rather than, "as long as we're not much worse than the hypocritical British we can carry on".
Graft, sleaze and corruption can have a disastrous impact on a society. More and better democracy is a good start I feel.
It is a tricky problem and a constant fight though.
One key difference in the UK is that it is at least, less intentional corruption and more a case of 'what can I get away with?', just like stealing a pen from your employer and taking it home. The UK MP equivalent is employing your spouse as office manager (when you don't really have an office), and paying a full salary, or claiming absurd travel expenses, or a second "home" in London close to Westminster.
It seems though, that over the last 20-30 years, "corruption" with UK politicians has gotten worse. Perhaps that's just because of the Internet making it easier to report it.
Amongst many recent ones, I always remember this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Anderson_(politician)#Arre...
mostly because of former Liverpool Mayor, Joe Anderson's typically British nickname. Oh, and giving building contracts to your friends. Tut tut.
Corruption of course happens everywhere, but the difference between British MPs and some other 'oil-rich nations' is several zeros.
> ..., which is plagued by tribal separatist movements in the regions of Scotland and Northern Ireland, ...
really got me :P
So when death rates were rising exponentially and the world was trying to make sense of covid, it's a bad thing that regulatory red tape was cut? I personally would like to see a crackdown of corruption in UK politics, but this seems like a really weak argument.
It's also worth noting that whilst there's corruption in the UK, we all really know that it doesn't amount to the full capture of states like Russia.
OTOH, who could oppose it? When the British sleaze-machine can Photoshop damning pictures of opposing politicians supporting terrorism and the press raises an barely-there protest, who fucking cares? "Consequences"? From whom? It's open season!
[0] https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...
Author has a vast megathread on Twitter using similar language: https://twitter.com/gathara/status/1351038226581118986
"Winter storm batters huge swathe of covid-ravaged, politically troubled US, as it struggles to emerge from deadly coup amid dire humanitarian crisis that has killed nearly 500,000 and left one in seven households, including 18 million children, without enough to eat."
[0] Episode 481 11/3/21 https://freakonomics.com/archive/
https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/b...
https://web.archive.org/web/20101030015416/http://www.deigla...
If you don't like someone you amplify the bad (or make it up entirely). If you do like someone you minimise the bad (or deny it entirely). You know, if you don't care about truth or fairness or any of that shit.
> tribal separatist movements in the regions of Scotland and Northern Ireland
What's unclear? Yesteryear's elites drew lines on maps dividing or trapping people who don't look or think like them, and today's elites, sitting in distant enclaves, expect economic productivity and quiet passivity from their thralls. Now those people want self-determination!
Am I talking about Kurds or the Scottish?
[0] - other than the bit about us being much handsomer in Scotland, of course ;-)
Maybe he can be convinced by a tap water sample?
Thats unfair the Scottish aren't that ugly.
:P
(The explosives meanwhile came from Libya; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-57488196 it is ludicrous to sue post-Ghadaffi Libya about it, though)
> It is not the first time the public in the ethnically divided country, which is plagued by tribal separatist movements in the regions of Scotland and Northern Ireland, is being fleeced by its politicians
So I think this is parodying the way the UK (and the "developed" world in general) often talk about current events in South and Central America or Africa - being very dismissive, usually boiling complex conflicts down to simple tribalism and painting the country in broad, inaccurate strokes.
I suppose you could maaaybe talk about Scots, English, Irish and Welsh as separate "ethnicities" but as someone who identifies as one of those, I would describe them as "nationalities". That is based purely on gut-feel though, maybe I'm just squeamish about drawing hard lines and bringing potentially charged terms like "ethnicity" into some discussions.
So ethnically diverse? Definitely. Ethnically divided? Eh I’m not so sure.
But as you say, I think this is the point of the article isn't it? People in the west are squeamish about using those terms in their own backyard but are often much less squeamish about using those terms when talking about places far away.
Nature abhors a vacuum and into that vacuum has rushed a new class of capitalists who, often unfettered by governance constraints at publicly traded companies, seem prepared to indulge in the 'sleazy' practices we see here.
Which is not to excuse what we are seeing. Just to highlight how much the Tory party has changed.
David Edgerton is really good on this.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2019/11/how-britain-wa...
https://www.google.com/search?q=boris+johnson+sleaze&source=...