Re:Venice test brings up floodgates for first time
by brnt on Sunday July 12, 2020 @10:31AM
(#23811582)
Naming matters. (As a northern European,) My impression is that since we won't use that word to describe things here it's easier to look away. What's corruption in Greece and Italy is called a budget overrun or government support in the Netherlands and Germany, and you won't convince many Dutch/Germans to see it any other way. After all, we don't do corruption 'round these here parts.
Re:Venice test brings up floodgates for first time
by Udik on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:20PM
(#23812425)
The Italians' perception of pervasive corruption also works as a very handy excuse for further misbehaviour. Given the three corners of the so called "triangle of fraud"- motivation, opportunity and rationalisation- a widespread knowledge that everyone is corrupt provides a very handy rationalisation (everyone is screwing me, so it's my right to do the same to the others whenever the smallest opportunity arises).
(Note: I'm Greek)
Edit: Actually, I live in the UK. People over here know how to do corruption the right way and our, Mediterrannean, pathetic excuses for corrupt politicians should really study their ways. In the UK, it's not that there is no corruption, it's that everybody who is anybody is buddy-buddies with everyone else who is anybody (say, they went to the same college, i.e. Eton), so they don't call it corruption, just "doing business". For a recent example, look up the recent non-scandal about giving an 840k quid contract to the buddy-buddies of Mike and Domz:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/10/firm-with-l...
So let's not all take too big a dump on us poor, corrupt Southern Europeans, because we may have invented the art (in the ancient times of old) of handing public monies to our cronies but Western Europeans turned it into a science (in modern times and not so modern times).