Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

lostinrates

zagubov wrote: »

I'm seriously incapable of joined-up-thinking on the relationship between an individual and the state.

Its something on a small scale I do here everyday....managing a herd and a flock of birds.:D Its not easy and one gets it wrong sometimes..but on the whole I do it ok. I'd have a stab at running britain (if I could get the right team to delgate to) but I wouldn't be very popular. They's probably make a cartoon about the cuddly Thatcher compared to me.

chewmylegoff

michaels wrote: »

Not really a nice people topic I know but: It's interesting though even though most of us probably know/know of someone who is receiving benefits they should not or perhaps declaring less incoem for tax than they should how many of us have actually ever shopped someone?

I've shopped a couple of people I know for blatant tax evasion. I'd shop anyone quite frankly, I really cannot stand it. If I knew anyone claiming benefits fraudulently I'd shop them too. I made my oh stop evading IR35, I reckon there's a 50% chance I would have shopped her if she hadn't.

silvercar

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I've shopped a couple of people I know for blatant tax evasion. I'd shop anyone quite frankly, I really cannot stand it. If I knew anyone claiming benefits fraudulently I'd shop them too. I made my oh stop evading IR35, I reckon there's a 50% chance I would have shopped her if she hadn't.

Would that have made her the ex-OH?

I was worried about a court case once (only a car knock that ended in court). I was worried because the other car driver had her boyfriend in the car with her as witness, I had been travelling alone.

I thought that any witness was better than none, but people were telling me that a boyfriend would be expected to be totally honest and wouldn't be seen as a biased party.

(In the end the boyfriend didn't appear and she denied that there had been anyone else in the car. Making her look unreliable IMHO.)

vivatifosi

zagubov wrote: »

Closer to the UK, the Swiss and the Swedes seem exact opposites; the Swedes publish everybody's tax returns so its totally transparent and have a vast welfare state and the Swiss go the opposite way for privacy and state stinginess. One elevates society over the individual and the other elevates the individual over society, or so it seems to me.

Possibly a good time to introduce the Transparency International Corruption Index. 10 is impossibly inscrutible, 0 is impossibly corrupt. UK scores 7.6, by comparison Switzerland 8.7 and Sweden 9.2; so in spite of different attitudes to transparency, they have similarly low levels of perceived corruption. Contrast that to Italy at 3.9 and Greece at 3.5.... You can still live in the South of Europe though, Spain scores 6.1.

There's a map of countries with scores at the link below, if you hover over a country then you can see its specific score:

http://transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

Possibly a good time to introduce the Transparency International Corruption Index. 10 is impossibly inscrutible, 0 is impossibly corrupt. UK scores 7.6, by comparison Switzerland 8.7 and Sweden 9.2; so in spite of different attitudes to transparency, they have similarly low levels of perceived corruption. Contrast that to Italy at 3.9 and Greece at 3.5.... You can still live in the South of Europe though, Spain scores 6.1.

There's a map of countries with scores at the link below, if you hover over a country then you can see its specific score:

http://transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

I've little experience of corrupt countries. I'm intrigued that a lot of the countries I admire show up well.

Once worked in a place where a colleague was trying to get back from the other side of the world. She had to stop at shall we say a major south Asian country but kept on getting bumped from suitable connecting flights unitl the penny dropped (in both senses ) and she got the necessary connection to complete her journey .

She was mortified she hadn't spotted how everybody else was greasing the wheel automaticallyand she hadn't twigged (a newbie at global travel).

This was decades ago so hopefully there's less of this going on.:A

michaels

Sad how little of the world is anyhting but red - corruption means it is who not what you know that matters and life can revolve around arbitary decisions. When it is said Asia is the future I'm not sure how it can be unless they manage to clean up?

chewmylegoff

zagubov wrote: »

A big chunk of the population were monitoring and informing on the rest. The schoolteachers would ask the primary school kids to draw the logo from the news programme from last night's telly. Problem was, sometimes it was the West German/West Berlin logo. Bonus for the teachers, trouble for the parents. Very wary of this doing the state's job for them.

Having said that, it could save the public pursde a fortune; a Swiss whislte-blower sold the German government a disc of details on vast numbers of German tax avoiders money they'd salted away in Switzerland.

Charged the German government millions of euros which they paid up and regarded as money well spent.

IMO there's a big difference between informing on your neighbour for holding "unacceptable political beliefs" and reporting tax or benefits fraud in agree society.

If your neighbour breaks into your house and steals your tv, you wouldn't think twice about phoning the rozzers. So if you know that they're commuting benefit fraud, which is also stealing from you and every other taxpayer, what's the difference?

chewmylegoff

silvercar wrote: »

Would that have made her the ex-OH?

I was worried about a court case once (only a car knock that ended in court). I was worried because the other car driver had her boyfriend in the car with her as witness, I had been travelling alone.

I thought that any witness was better than none, but people were telling me that a boyfriend would be expected to be totally honest and wouldn't be seen as a biased party.

(In the end the boyfriend didn't appear and she denied that there had been anyone else in the car. Making her look unreliable IMHO.)

Well, I don't think she would have been too happy, but since hmrc have only ever prosecuted about 4 people for ir35 evasion I doubt we would have had a big ruck about who was going to pay the tax penalty!

chewmylegoff

michaels wrote: »

Sad how little of the world is anyhting but red - corruption means it is who not what you know that matters and life can revolve around arbitary decisions. When it is said Asia is the future I'm not sure how it can be unless they manage to clean up?

There were three things that surprised me about the map:

1) Ireland being less corrupt than uk...

2) the depressing amount of red brings the mps expenses scandal into some context! They may be liars and thieves, but at least they're not those other liars and thieves.

3) surely Iceland is nowhere near that big!!!

neverdespairgirl

vivatifosi wrote: »

UK scores 7.6, by comparison Switzerland 8.7 and Sweden 9.2; so in spite of different attitudes to transparency, they have similarly low levels of perceived corruption. Contrast that to Italy at 3.9 and Greece at 3.5.... You can still live in the South of Europe though, Spain scores 6.1.

That's fascinating - my perception is obviously close to global perception, as I wasn't much surprised by most of the results. Oddly enough, Afghanistan and Iraq came near the bottom of the list....

I was suprised to see Rwanda rated significantly better than its neighbours, though. And surprised to see South Africa coming higher than Italy and Spain, too.