Saw someone elsewhere assert that Britain is āone of the least corrupt countries in the worldā, and couldnāt let that go unchallenged, so hereās 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 āimprovementā 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 āPPE equipmentā during Covid which turned out to be useless junk.
Obviously they arenāt actually spending anything but a trivial amount going through the motions, so what happens to the rest of the money, which letās remember, was raised by taxes.
Well, it gets donated back to the ruling party as āpolitical donationsā, 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 āservices renderedā.
Now you might think that this sounds corrupt, and you would be right. It sounds deeply corrupt, but apparently itās 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 ācorruptionā means, and define it to mean, ānot thisā.
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. Itās how it works, and once you see it you either join in, or walk away in disgust.