Hard times for Brit expats and visitors...

Foxbat, you are spot on again. I do think any country/organization would have to go a long way to beat the EU in corruption, non accountabilty, inefficiency, arrogance and immorality. Every time I think of the EU and all those MEP's and commissioners my blood just boils............. and please don't even say the name Tony Blair.......But nothing will change until the serfs make it happen.

"Power corrupts, absolute power corrups absolutely."  (Lord Acton 1834-1902).

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" (Pitt the elder 1776-1788).

We cannot all be equal in all things. Honest men and women tend to hang back from power because they do not yearn for it, but there are those in all nations and all levels of society who will with good intent seek power, but become corrupted by it. It is human nature.  There are some systems that have control mechanisms, but it often takes too long for them to function.  In some countries, there is no such mechanism that works the levers of the law to return matters to equilibrium.  An example of the former is the UK, the latter, Spain, but even in the UK the maintenance of law regularly spins out of control because someone in charge looses their moral sense to the opiate of power (usually accompanied by money).

The great leveller is revolution, but in every regime chage I have ever seen or heard of there are those waiting for a vacuum enabling them to step up and grasp the reins of powerin the name of the people.  You end up with a despot.  It's the way of the world, there is no stopping corruption because it permeates at all levels through society, only by the ballot box can you attempt to control it.  Spain is still so close to dictatorship that neither the people, nor the politicians have grown used to the rule of law.  Give them a century or so and a reasonable accountable system might evolve.

An excellent posting, Xetog.  Your first quote just took the words out of my mouth.

You say:

"...there is no stopping corruption because it permeates at all levels through society, only by the ballot box can you attempt to control it.  "

Yes.  The ballot box.

Of course there are people with good intentions who seek a position of power with the initial objective of righting wrongs of changing the system.    But unfortunately it seems that everyone has a price.

P

That's exactly why we need effective and transparent regulation with inbuilt external audit checks and an equally effective justice system to back up the regulation . All too often the procedures are in place without due care to check that they are enforced. A classic case is Spain in this regard.

I think that we are getting a bit off the subject of this thread, but I cannot resist quoting a 35 year old history book that I am reading at the monment:

"In the year AD410 Britain ceased to be a Roman colony and became an independent state.  The inhabitants of the offshore island - or rather the lowlands that we now call England - shook off the shackles of a vast European system, which tied it and took charge of their own destinies."

Clearly we have done it before, let's do it again!

Erm.. Xetog, is that really the precedent you want to cite?

There may be arguments against leaving the EU, but suggesting it would reduce us from an advanced civilization to living in mud-huts, and usher in centuries of war, pestilence and marauding Scandinavians is probably a bit harsh.

If that's what it takes!  But no, just leave us as we were to get on with our own lives free from the malignant influences that now control us.

My last word on this thread.

We're all accidental soldiers in the army of life.  ~Terri Guillemets

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.  ~Douglas Adams