Quote:
Originally Posted by Mel Asher
Here in Britain, the ' mother of Parliaments ' is experiencing a crisis unlike any in the past 300 years. The elected representatives of the British People have many of them successfully exploited weak regulations when claiming ' expenses ' so as to tap taxpayers' money for their own personal gain, over the years benefitting to the tune of many thousands of pounds. Clearly acting, many of them, within an elastic interpretation of the guide-lines, their ' self-regulation ' has become ethically quite unacceptable to the average Brit. Their actions echo the disastrous handling of Hedge Funds in the financial markets of the US and the UK which has been a definite trigger for Recession.
My questions are these : [/LIST]How is it that many institutions in the West continue to reward failure and mishandling of public funds, while the person in the street who picks up an wallet and fails to hand it in the the authorities is penalised by the Courts ?
How can corruption be countered if regulations are written in such a way as to benefit those who wrote them ?
I'd be most interested to read the views of members resident outside the UK on what is presently happening to our country.
My views on our present governments are quite definitely heavily  |
My humble contribution, Hi Mel,
We here in the West are all guilty of being complacent, thinking this only happens elsewhere. When we read about such scandals in S.E. Asia, South America, China etc, we accept it as part of their undemocratic or uncivilized way of life. When it hit Italy, we accepted it as just the 'lovable' Italian way and didn't express too much concern. We were smug too long and this 'exploiting of weak regulations', which is just a form of fraud, theft and corruption, is being played down. The talk is of a 'crackdown' as in the slapping of wrists, whereas the likes of you and I would be screwed for fraudulent theft.
I've worked in a few places outside the UK, Thailand, Philippines, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain, Italy and Germany so I have a bit of experience. Even here in what is thought of a faultless Germany, the motor and backbone of the European Union, similar scandals have come to light. Since years, politics are run by coalitions here, each party constantly trying to dig out the dirty washing of their coalition partners. E.G. some high ranking politicians were using the air force planes (that are responsible for official flights) for private trips costing the tax payers many 100's of 1000's of €uros. The war cry of this coalition (before the global meltdown) was, the working man has to tighten his belt to keep Germany competitive and secure jobs. But the first thing this existing government did was to increase the expenses of the politicians by some ludicrous amount and at the same time increasing tax on petrol and raising the V.A.T. to an unprecedented 19%.
Whilst I was working in Thailand, the ex prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, that the poor rural workers are now fighting for the end of his exile, made his billions through transferring his personal fortune to US $ while the Thai Baht was at its peak. He then let the Baht fall dramatically to an all time low through senseless, negative predictions of the Thai economy . Needless to say , he then cashed his dough back to Thai Baht. I only know this because the Thai business men talked about nothing else. A short time later, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra bought a famous English soccer club, I seem to recall it was Manchester city, sorry I'm not a football fan.
What I'm trying to say Mel is, all the politicians are crooks to some extent , regardless of where you live. They are a bunch of arrogant, snobby individuals that are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. What pisses me off is that these creeps forget, THEY WORK FOR US, WE EMPLOY THEM , not the other way round.