Sweden is possibly one of the most highly developed societies on Earth and regularly tops leagues for ethical societies ....... so imagine the shock to their self psyche when a story suggested all was not as squeaky clean as they believed ...... shock horror! The Swedish news headlines are dominated by a scandal in Gothenburg, with police investigating allegations that local government officials had accepted bribes from a major construction company.
Now by most countries standards this would hardly be headline news, or certainly not for more than one day, but in Sweden, this is a shocking revelation ..... when you consider that outside of the first world economies (and there is a tie in with this fact), most countries are corrupt, with the very poorest societies also the most corrupt, then the Swedish problem is minuscule.
In fact some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt in the last few years, which is a sad indictment on the state of the world. What makes this even more depressing is that most bribes are paid to the Police.
In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India more than 50% of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police. Bur even so they are not considered the most corrupt institution .... Political Parties were regarded as the most corrupt institutions with 80% of people regarding them as corrupt. Political parties also topped the list in Transparency's 2004 barometer, with 71%.
Religious bodies experienced a sharp rise in people regarding them as corrupt - 28% in 2004 increased to 53% by 2010. And with one in four of those polled saying they had paid a bribe in the past year, its not hard to make the correlation between corruption and poverty around the world.
NB: Sadly this morning the Swedish are discovering once again that being a civilised country only makes you apparently a target for the new barbarians with two apparent 'jihadist suicide' bombers attaking them ..... but they are not alone in this regard, and even so, I would argue that more people are affected by Corruption, than by Terrorism.
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| Stockholm, Sweden |
Now by most countries standards this would hardly be headline news, or certainly not for more than one day, but in Sweden, this is a shocking revelation ..... when you consider that outside of the first world economies (and there is a tie in with this fact), most countries are corrupt, with the very poorest societies also the most corrupt, then the Swedish problem is minuscule.
In fact some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt in the last few years, which is a sad indictment on the state of the world. What makes this even more depressing is that most bribes are paid to the Police.
In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India more than 50% of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police. Bur even so they are not considered the most corrupt institution .... Political Parties were regarded as the most corrupt institutions with 80% of people regarding them as corrupt. Political parties also topped the list in Transparency's 2004 barometer, with 71%.
Religious bodies experienced a sharp rise in people regarding them as corrupt - 28% in 2004 increased to 53% by 2010. And with one in four of those polled saying they had paid a bribe in the past year, its not hard to make the correlation between corruption and poverty around the world.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, 67% of bribes were to avoid trouble with the authorities.
- In the Arab world and Latin America most bribes were paid to speed things up.
- In Asia-Pacific, 35% of people bribed to get a service they were entitled to.
- In North America and the EU, most bribe payers said they could not remember why they had paid (about 5% of those polled said they had paid a bribe).
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| (90,000 polled over 86 countries for the results) |
NB: Sadly this morning the Swedish are discovering once again that being a civilised country only makes you apparently a target for the new barbarians with two apparent 'jihadist suicide' bombers attaking them ..... but they are not alone in this regard, and even so, I would argue that more people are affected by Corruption, than by Terrorism.
