The UK and US have sunk to new lows in a global index of corruption, amid a “worrying trend” of democratic institutions being eroded by political donations, cash for access and state targeting of campaigners and journalists.
Experts and businesspeople rated 182 countries based on their perception of corruption levels in the public sector to compile a league table that was bookended by Denmark at the top with the lowest levels of corruption and South Sudan at the bottom.
The Corruption Perceptions Index, organised by the campaign group Transparency International, identified an overall global deterioration, as 31 countries improved their score, while 50 declined.
In particular, the report identified backsliding in established democracies, warning that events during Donald Trump’s presidency and the revelations contained in the Epstein files could fuel further deterioration.
The country with a leader who accepts any and all bribes + the country with a leader so spineless that you don’t even need to pay him? Who’da thought?
Yeah the US should be a lot worse in this list than they are. They were just afraid to drop them so many points in a single year.
Being spineless is not corruption.
Being simultaneously spineless and desiring power tends to be a reliable indicator, though, and nobody who doesn’t desire power (for good reasons or bad) seek high political office.
Sorry but what do you mean by this? I’m struggling to see how this is bad. Would you rather a leader took all the money they could get their hands on? Because that’s how you end up with Trump.
Well how did it turn out with Biden? He handed the government over to fascists that are trying to fix their party into power permanently, and the whole nazi thing. All of the nazi thing. We knew they were going to do that, but our leader was to weak to do anything about it.
He also let things get worse, let captured government continue to be so, to be corrupt. It absolutely is bad to have a spineless leader, now more than every. Starmer is a poster child for how our “left” options have been seized by the rich, and are corrupted enough, through weakness to oppose it as much as outright corrupted against freedom and western values, which Starmer IS. And if it wasn’t clear to you yet, that status quo governing leads to the far right running as reform winning. Not just in the US, in the UK, in France, it will happen everywhere unless we get popular reform. But, and no offense, you [redacted] motherfuckers don’t get it, keep defending and supporting these tools throwing us into the arms of fascists by surrendering us, and our ancient freedoms, to the oligarchy.
I’m not quite sure what it was that I said to trigger that response but I was referring to a leader not accepting a salary to do the job, rather than a leader who doesn’t even have to take bribes which is what the user meant. It was a misunderstanding that was cleared up further in the comments.
I have no idea what part of my comment you’re responding to though. I apologise of this isn’t the case but it looks to me as though you’ve interpreted something in a particular way and used that to go on an angry tirade against Kier Starmer and the rise of right wing politics.
That’s fair enough but not what I was talking about. I’ll leave you to it.
I am disagreeing with ‘Sorry but what do you mean by this? I’m struggling to see how this is bad. Would you rather a leader took all the money they could get their hands on? Because that’s how you end up with Trump. …’
That how we ended up with this president is exactly by trusting leaders like Starmer to be the opposition to them. By allowing our captured political parties run as the status quo in a rapidly degenerating plutocracy, not only are they just running as the lesser of two evils, they are actively making things worse themselves. Never more true than with Starmer, guy has presided over more damage than happened in the last 20 years arguably.
ie Losing the right to protest when disfavored, right to a jury trial for up to 3 years in prison, creating a masterbaitorbase to keep a database of every web page you considered whacking off to, age checks, which together with the porn laws are the most insidious, the trojan horse brought behind the walls of liberal democracy, with Peter Thiel’s crack soldiers hidden inside it so to speak. A surrender to the worst of the technofascists for a cut of the information and some control on whose secret social scores are what and how they are treated. Then bad faith terror proscriptions and other perversions of the justice system. Starmer is full on fascist, and it’s more insidious because the groups that most oppose it are “his side,” and therefore allowing the ancient freedoms of English Common Law to be taken from them, without a fight, by a captured political party of the oligarchy, that is throwing the country into the arms of fascists, in league with the US and Russia, that plan on fixing elections.
Even if Reform doesn’t know they plan on fixing elections, even if you guys think that wouldn’t be accepted there, that is what is going to happen. And having powerful foreign intelligence agencies involved in your politics is extremely dangerous, not something to just slough off. All it takes is a leader to champion some popular reform, to sweep the country and negate the death of democracy in all but name to put the worst people in the world in charge indefinitely, but we still refuse to do that, believing the “safe” choice, is the sold out corporatists that no one likes and is actively betraying us, and western values.
Sorry to be so long winded, I was just trying to explain to you where I was coming from in that, I could’ve written a whole lot more this is me holding back.
You’re struggling to see how Starmer’s support of genocide is bad? You’re struggling to see how Starmer’s capitulation to the right is bad? You’re struggling to see how Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ speech is bad? You’re struggling to see how Starmer’s refusal to stand up for trans rights is bad? You’re struggling to see how Starmer’s appointing of Mandleson is bad? You’re struggling to see how the UK sinking to new lows in the global corruption index is bad? You’re struggling to see… Should’ve gone to Specsavers.
But to answer your false dichotomy. We dont need to chose between a spineless government or a government that “took all the money they could get their hands on”. We can choose a government that is neither spineless or corrupt.
His making a masterbaitorbase, for the kids, he needs to know every web page you considered whacking off to. Age restricitions which just so happens to let them put a name and face to every account and run everything they do through ai threat detection run by palantir types.
The making protest illegal, disallowing defenses to protests, cancelling jury trials for up to 3 years in prison with their hand picked by the old boys magistrate just imperiating your guilt, in a direct repudiation, cancellation of our ancient freedoms in the Magna Carta. And of course their bad faith proscription of protest groups as terrorists, of their corrupt treatment of those accused of being terrorists. Their pleasure in abusing them, laughing, ha ha. It’s fun to beat up the do gooders, it’s funny because they can’t fight back. Get it? I feel like you don’t get the joke, …
I didn’t say any of that. I’m simply asking why not having to pay someone is a negative? Or makes them spineless?
Because we have both a spineless (see examples in my comment) and corrupt (see headline) government.
You didn’t say those things, but they are the setting for which your comment was made. Kier is spineless, you’re struggling to see why that’s bad.
I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re misinterpreting what I am asking.
I haven’t made an argument as to whether he is spinless or not. I am purely interested in why you think not having to pay a leader is a bad thing rather than a good thing.
That’s all I want to discuss. I’m not arguing for or against his actions. You’ve gone off on a tangent.
So why do you think not having to pay a leader is a bad thing? Because I personally would view that as a positive as they are not motivated by financial gain. From your point it sounds like a leader should demand to be paid a decent amount?
I don’t think I am.
Why do I think a spineless leader is a bad thing rather than a good thing? You’re struggling to see how having a spineless leader is a bad thing just as I asserted.
Which brings us back to my first comment and all the products of this government:
To be clear, their increasing of corruption is bad too. Which brings me, again, to my first comment:
I get it, you think he’s spineless and corrupt. That’s obvious.
My point is only why does it make a leader - any leader - that doesn’t accept payment for their duties spinless?
That’s what I’m interested in. Why you’re conflating the two. Why does not accepting a salary to be a political leader make someone spineless?
You don’t need to repeat that you think he’s spineless and corrupt. I get that. That’s up to you. I’m talking about the broader sense of any leader here.
I was hoping for a discussion around that topic, rather a repeat of of your views on Kier Starmer. You’ve made them clear. Thanks.
Cause and effect are reversed here. Spineless people do things regardless of payment.
Silly example, I see you’re a spineless person in the playground. I walk up to you and demand your lunch. You, being spineless, give it to me, no payment necessary. Not taking payment isn’t, in and of itself, a noble act.
Apply that to a position of leadership, apply that to politics. Apply that to his policies I listed. Do you now understand why I believe him being spineless to be a bad thing?
For example there’s a big bully in the playground called Trump, Trump took something from Venezuela, what was Starmer’s response? It was spineless is what it was.