Saw someone elsewhere assert that Britain is “one of the least corrupt countries in the world”, and couldn’t let that go unchallenged, so here’s what I said:

Only because of this one weird loophole, which I will explain below:

For the last decade, the previous government has been awarding public contracts for infrastructure, etc, to what are essentially shell companies run by their mates. These companies then do the bare minimum for as long as possible, which if you drive round the UK, is why you see all those road “improvement” works which do nothing and take forever and never seem to have anyone working. It took two years to replace a roundabout with a set of traffic lights near my apartment, for example. Other examples: large amounts of “PPE equipment” during Covid which turned out to be useless junk.

Obviously they aren’t actually spending anything but a trivial amount going through the motions, so what happens to the rest of the money, which let’s remember, was raised by taxes.

Well, it gets donated back to the ruling party as “political donations”, and then if the pretend contractor does a good enough job of this, they get an knighthood, or even a seat in the House of Lords for “services rendered”.

Now you might think that this sounds corrupt, and you would be right. It sounds deeply corrupt, but apparently it’s not because a lot of the global agencies which work out corruption indices are based in, checks notes, London, and are probably in on the scam, and get to define what “corruption” means, and define it to mean, “not this”.

Et voila! You have a country with one of the biggest wealth gaps in Europe funnelling vast amounts of public money to populist spaffers in government, all legal, laundered and sanitised.

The whole of UK society is like this. It’s how it works, and once you see it you either join in, or walk away in disgust.

My timeline, this week and any week…

Climate people: “we're facing a climate emergency, why aren't politicians listening to us about this?”

COVID people: “the virus hasn't gone away, why aren't we doing the basics to stop people getting re-infected?”

Transport people: “we know how to get more people and goods onto the trains, but why can't we make it happen?”

Tech people: “why do we have to endure lots of people talking about AI who don't know about AI?”

One of the great things about Christmas with kids is “helping” them play with their new toys.

Today we’ve begun making crystals.

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