Rule of Law under attack

One thing I know – ALL POWER CORRUPTS. I know that because I was a senior politician for 22 years and could feel and see its effects on both myself and my colleagues. And that was the 1970s when - despite the swirling doubts - idealism was still in play, understood and respected.

But power brings yes-men, groupthink and conceit. Politicians have generally been well-intentioned and, by nature, seek applause. Criticism they will attribute to malevolence – journalists are written off as purveyors of gossip who are too cynical to appreciate the good intentions of the policy-makers. Sadly, however, those with power make little attempt to run their policy ideas through critical testing - unless they are in a political system which forces them to seek consensus – such as Germany and, increasingly, mainland Europe with their coalition government.   

But the negotiation which is central to the political system of many European countries is actually a dirty word in England. Britain, like the US, has chosen an adversarial two-party system – in the belief that this can better smoke out the truth. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth – with groupthink being strongly evident in both countries. A senior Conservative Minister indeed once argued in an important lecture (in the 1970s) that the UK was “an elective dictatorship”. And that was in an era when the civil service still functioned to challenge simplistic policy ideas - nowadays the echo-chamber of political advisers has replaced neutral civil servants. One prominent political commentator put it very aptly - this Prime Minister is so weak that he has surrounded himself with  "courtiers"

The absence of a constitution is certainly a curious feature in the modern age – and british citizens were stunned to learn in 2019 that their Prime Minister apparently had the power to send parliament packing when he found it troublesome. Only an appeal to the country’s new Supreme Court by a citizen saved parliament’s skin – but a supine press which had branded such judges as “enemies of the state” gives the government full scope to rein in such judicial cheek. 

I had actually wanted to write about a great paper which was commissioned by an Irish member of the European Parliament about the rule of law in European countries (which now excludes the UK) - but find myself sidetracked by the scandal which has blown up this week by Boris Johnson’s typically ham-fisted attempt to protect one of his parliamentary friends from scrutiny.

The details are boring – what it boils down to is that not only was a British PM prepared to throw out an agreed system of scrutiny and bring in a new one simply to protect a friend but that he actually required his conservative MPs (at 24 hours’ notice) to vote that way. With some protests 250 obeyed him – an honourable few refused. When all opposition parties refused to participate in the new system, Johnson backed down. You can imagine how many of those 250 now feel about themselves....They have been made to look craven lapdogs. This was a good article on the debacle – just the latest of a long line of stupidities from the British government 

There is an Arabic expression that warns against the perils of an abundance of wealth: “Loose money teaches theft.” Britain has the dubious honour of being the home of the loose money of the global rich, facilitating its movement through secret offshore companies, setting up entirely legal means to profit from these opaque transactions. 

Taking liberties in office tends to work the same way. Loose power teaches corruption, which in turn happens through technically above-board means. That loose power broadly requires three further conditions to trigger misconduct –

·       a craven or cowed press,

·       a lack of what is seen as a viable political alternative and

·       a large section of the public made quiescent, either through apathy or tribalism. 

Sound familiar? Welcome to the global community of those living under corrupt governance. The good news is that you are not alone. The bad news is that, once corruption starts to set in, it becomes very hard to reverse. It becomes (this will also sound familiar to you), “priced in” to people’s expectations of the political class, even institutionalised. 

People in those other countries – the ones you more easily associate with corruption than your own – will explain the subtle evolution: what was before a furtive cash bribe that you needed to pay for a government stamp becomes an official fee that you are handed a nice crisp receipt for. What was before an outrageous grab of power from a democratically elected government becomes a legal process blessed by an election, perhaps one even overseen by international observers. The unprincipled will not be shunned but enriched and honoured. 

The press will contradict what you have seen with your own eyes. Conspiracy theories will begin to flourish because everyone is in the business of making up narratives, so the truth becomes a matter of spinning and selling the most convincing lie. Ministers might even, after attempting to rig a regulatory system in their favour, tell you that their government is trying to “restore a degree of integrity and probity in public life”. It will begin to exhaust your sense of outrage and warp your sense of right and wrong.

Eventually what will begin to settle is a sense that you as an individual have no control, no matter how many freedoms – voting, protesting – you feel you can exercise. Those rights will feel like levers that aren’t connected to anything. And so you give up. The main political emotion I grew up with in the Middle East and north Africa was not that of suffering oppression, but of jaundice – a sort of cultivated cynicism that protected us against the despair of life under regimes that stole from us and then remade the rules in their favour. 

I have felt this creeping up on me in the UK. It is an impulse that I recognise in the continuing support for the Conservatives, or the tepid resistance to them despite their proven malpractice, their endless scandals, their failure to deliver on what were once considered basic criteria for governments: that the state does everything it can to protect its citizens’ lives in a pandemic, and that most people’s material circumstances get better with time.  

Once the state withdraws from that role of honest broker and facilitator, the result is a fatalism: we must carry on and make do with what we have. 

I will return in the next post to the European aspects of the attack on the rule of law

Rule of Law?

If the relevance of research in ….political science is understood as how it may improve human well-being and/or political legitimacy, research has to a large extent been focusing on the least important part of the political system, namely, how ‘access to power’ is organized (i.e. electoral and representative democracy and processes of democratization).

This focus on elections, democratization processes and party systems ignores what we consider to be the more important part of the state machinery for increasing human well-being, namely, how power is exercised or, in other words, the quality of how the state manages to govern society

(Bo Rothstein 2011).

In the autumn of 1990, I made a fateful trip across the North Sea to take up a short-term assignment in Copenhagen with the World Health Organisation to help its Head of Public Health map out strategic options for what were then regarded as “the newly independent states” of central and eastern Europe. The difficulties these countries faced in their “transition” to a “better” state were soon reflected in the literature of “transitology”, “democratization” and of “capacity development”.

One of the many fields into which my new line of work took me was that of “corruption” – which the academics made typically complex by designating it, variously, “particularism”, clientilism or “patrimonialism”. Bo Rothstein is one of the best analysts in the field and explains in the linked article that the very word wasn’t acceptable until the early 1990s – after which it became essentially a stick with which to beat nations judged to be inferior.

The European Union and Commission bear a particular responsibility for first pushing privatization on the countries seeking membership of the Union; and then corrupting their new institutions with tens of billions of European Regional Funding.

This may initially have had the elites licking their lips – but the scale of the bureaucracy required to access the goodies and the subsequent monitoring and fraud investigations has now made this a much less attractive proposition. The use of these funds were recently analysed in painstaking detail in "Europe's Burden - promoting good governance across. borders" by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2019)

Of course, “it takes two to tango” – and I’m not disputing the need for effective anti-corruption strategies - but there is too much rhetoric and lip-service evident in the way this work is carried out. The sources of the wealth which seduces and corrupts are Western – those who are presented with the opportunities are Bulgarian, Czechs, Greeks, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Slovaks. 

And the corruption is not just systemic but moral and, thanks to the European Union, has seeped into the very bloodstream of society. The average monthly pension and wage in Bulgaria and Romania is just over 300 euros but their judges, generals and MEPs earn 10,000 euros with a cascading effect on senior salaries.

Is it any wonder that the result is totally alienated societies???

Whatever happened to good governance and anti-corruption?

Romania’s Presidency of the Council of the EU has come – and almost gone…It has not been the disaster many people predicted not least the President of the country, one Klaus Johannis who takes himself very seriously but has great difficulties conveying much sense and has done the country no favours with his all too predictable carping from the sidelines of a so-called socialist government.

The Romanian Presidential system is modelled on the French and found an effective (if rather eccentric) performer in Traian Basescu who managed to ride out some serious challenges to his legitimacy between 2004-2014 and to embed a prosecution system which has, however, become a bit of a Frankenstein. Indeed, its anti-corruption Agency (DNA) was exposed a couple of years ago as being in cahoots with the security system; being politically-motivated in its selection of those to prosecute; and using massive and illegal wiretaps.

Its Head Laura Kovesi was duly removed from office in July 2018 by the Justice Minister (an act duly approved by the Constitutional Court) and is now the subject of criminal charges.

Half-way through Romania’s 6-month term of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, the country therefore found itself in the invidious situation of its ex- Prosecutor Kovesi (who had received the support of the European Parliament for the new post of European Prosecutor) being banned for 60 days from travelling abroad.  

But President Klaus Johannis, sadly, seems as much a criminal as the leader of the Social Democratic party Liviu Dragnea (barred from holding office due to a prior conviction for “electoral fraud”) who has just been jailed for 3 years – on an Al Capone type charge…. Johannis and his wife gained hundreds of thousands of euros from renting property which, a court judged in 2015, had been gained by them fraudulently. The full details are here

Things are never simple in Romania and the sad reality, as the country approaches the 30^th anniversary of its release from communism is that very little has changed for the better and – as I explained in a series of posts last year – most serious people have now given up hope of any possibility of positive change.

I know that pessimism hangs heavily in the air these days throughout Europe ….most societies are suffering from one malaise or another……but it is the countries who broke free 30 years ago who are most at risk these days since few of their institutions are yet working in an equitable manner     

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is one of the few people who has been trying to raise the profile of this issue - a prolific and high profile Romanian academic/social activist (with a base for the past few years in the Hertie School of Government in Berlin) who has been exploring Romanian political culture and the wider issue of corruption for the past 2 decades. In 2006 she contributed a chapter on “Fatalistic political cultures” to a book on Democracy and Political Culture in East Europe. In this she argued (a) that it was too easy for people (not least the political elite themselves!) to use the writings of Samuel Huntington to write Balkan countries off; and (b) that we really did need to look more closely at what various surveys (such as The World Values Survey) showed before jumping to conclusions….In 2007 she gave us even more insights into the Romanian culture with a fascinating and learned article - Hijacked modernisation - Romanian political culture in the 20th century 

Chasing Moby Dick across every sea and ocean – contextual choices in fighting corruption (NORAD 2011) is not the best of her writing – a bit scrappy to put it mildly - but it asks the right questions. In particular – how many countries have actually managed to shake off a corrupt system and build a credible system of rule of law? And how did they manage that feat? 
That the answer is remarkably few - and that it took many generations - should make us all pause 

A decade ago the issues of “good governance” and “anti-corruption” were all the rage for bodies such as the OECD and the World Bank - and academics. Now they look a bit sheepish if people use the phrases….Silver bullets have turned out to be duds…..But it is time to resurrect that debate...

Further Reading on Romania and institutional inertia

Academic articles/booklets on political culture and Romania

Romania Redivivus ;Alex Clapp (NLR 2017). One of the most incisive diagnoses

A Guide to Change and change management for Rule of Law practitioners (INPROL 2015) a well-written guide which assumes that a "rule of law" system can be crated within a generation!

The Quest for Good Governance – how societies develop control of corruption; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2015). One of the most up-to-date analyses which demonstrates the weakness of data-driven analysis. Difficult to see the wood for the trees....But some very sharp insights...

Hijacked modernisation - Romanian political culture in the 20^th century; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2007) marvellous case-study

Poor Policy-making and how to improve it in states with weak institutions; Sorin Ionitsa (CEU 2006) One of the most acute assessments

books

In Europe’s Shadow – two cold wars and a thirty-year journey through Romania and beyond; Robert Kaplan (2016) - a fascinating book by a geopoliticist which has an element of the “Common Book” tradition about it with its breadth of reading

A Concise History of Romania; Keith Hitchins (2014) Very readable..

Mapping Romania - notes on an unfinished journey; Ronald Young (2019) just updated with posts from the last couple of years which get more and more fatalistic

Romania and the European Union – how the weak vanquished the strong; Tom Gallagher (2009) great narrative
Theft of a Nation – Romania since Communism; Tom Gallagher (2005) powerful critique
Romania – borderland of Europe; Lucian Boia (2001) Very readable and well translated

Triumph of the political class

Thunder has been reverbating around the valleys in the last couple of days, knocking out my electricity several times. But that is not the reason for my silence. I have been absorbed by one of the books in the latest Amazon package (which arrived within 2 days of my ordering them) – Peter Oborne’s The Triumph of the Political Class. Some months ago I said that noone seemed to be celebrating the anniversary of Robert Michels’ Political Parties which appeared a hundred years ago and which was one of the seminal books of my university years – suggesting that trade unions and social democratic parties were inevitably destined to betrayal by their leaders through the “iron law of oligarchy”. Havong tasted the perks of power, they don't easily let it go. Oborne’s book appeared in 2007 - but is a worthy successor and offers important perspectives to the various posts I’ve made about the collapse of our democracy -

Lewis Namier (1888-1960) argued in his masterwork "The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III" that talk of great battles of principle between the Whigs and Tories of Hanoverian England was nonsense. Ministers were in politics for the money and to advance the interests of their cliques. MPs who boasted of their independence were forever seeking favours from the public purse. Ideology mattered so little that 'the political life of the period could be fully described without ever using a party denomination'.

You can do the same today, argues Peter Oborne in this thought-provoking polemic. Members of the 21st-century 'political class' are as isolated and self-interested as their Georgian predecessors. The political class is very different from the old establishment. It despises the values of traditional institutions that once acted as restraints on the power of the state - the independence of the judiciary, the neutrality of the Civil Service and the accountability of ministers to the Commons.

If you are young and ambitious and want to join, Oborne sketches out a career path. First, you must set yourself apart from your contemporaries at university by taking an interest in politics. You must join a think-tank or become researcher to an upwardly mobile MP on graduation. Before getting to the top, you will have eaten with, drunk with and slept with people exactly like you, not only in politics but in the media, PR and advertising - trades the old establishment despised, but you admire for their ability to manipulate the masses.
You will talk a language the vast majority of your fellow citizens can't understand and be obsessed with the marketing of politics rather than its content. You will notice that once in power, you can get away with behaviour that would have stunned your predecessors. You can use your position to profit from lecture tours and negotiate discounts, as the wife of PM Tony Blair uniquely did. Politics will be your career. You will have no experience of other trades and be a worse politician for it. Despite the strong language you may use against other political parties, you will develop a stronger loyalty to parliamentarians (regardless of political label) than others and will close ranks if their privileges are under threat.

I have only two quibbles with the book - first that he attributes the decline of parliament to the new political class - but its decline goes back several decades before that. He makes an interesting point, however, about the Whip's power being challenged in the past decade by the power of the Press Secretary (whipping the media into its place). And, although he mentions Mosca's famous book on the political class of a hundred years ago, he fails to place his critique in the wider critical literature. See tomorrow's post for more on this.

Eight Horsemen of the Apocalypse

In recent years, bankers have become a hated group. However, before the politicians could do any damage to their privileges and excesses, the British right-wing media was able to make an issue of some excessive financial claims made by numerous member of parliament (average 20k) and neuter what remaining power politicians had in that country. The ongoing media scandal in Britain has now (finally) exposed the moral bankruptcy of the “tabloid” newspapers who had politicians fearful of taking actions which would offend newspaper moguls. A joke which beautifully illustrates the perversion of these papers has the Pope in a rowing boat with the leader of the miners’ union of the 1980s then in deep conflict with the government. The oars are lost and Scargill (the miners’ leader) gets out of the boat and walks across the water to retrieve the oars. The next day’s newspapers headlines are “Arthur Scargill can’t swim!”!!
The ongoing scandal has now also brought police corruption into the frame in England.
So, in the course of 3-4 years, 4 core professions of the British Establishment (or Power Elite) have been demonised – bankers, politicians, media and police. Perhaps the most powerful professional group, however, has managed to stay out of the spotlight – but needs now to be “outed” and ousted from its privileged and corrupting position. And which group is that? They began to come into the frame at the recent exchanges between the Murdoch mogul and his son and members of the UK Parliament’s Select Committee on Culture and media. Of course the questions (ranging from dum to clever) were interesting - and also the answers (clearly carefully prepared). But, for me, most interesting were the faces and body language. I was particularly struck by the faces of those who sat in the row immediately behind the 2 Murdochs – not just that of his (beautiful, young Chinese) wife but those of two elegantly dressed and elderly consiglione whose impassive features recalled nothing less than those in mafia films. These were his lawyers – and it was (corporate) lawyers whose advice had been sought by the Murdochs we heard about time and time again during the exchanges. Britain and America have more lawyers than most of the countries of the globe put together – and they basically protect the amorality of corporations. And it is these poeple who then go to become judges - Craig Murray has a short post today on the amorality of our judges. And those with any optimism remaining for the future of the planet will be disappointed to learn that the majority of graduates these days still want to go into either the finance or legal sectors. If our churches had any morality left they would be focussing on this – and discouraging our youngsters from such decisions.
I think it was Harold MacMillan who suggested at a meeting of ex-Prime Ministers that the collective noun for a group of political leaders was a “lack of principles” (He also, interestingly, said that “we did not give up the divine right of kings to succumb to the divine right of experts”! ). So I offer you the 5 groups who are destroying our civilisation - investment bankers, politicians, corporate lawyers, tabloid journalists and corrupt policemen. But what about the accountants/economists, academics and preachers??? Damn! There seem to be 8 horses of the apocalypse! Let me in conclusion, offer this quotation from mediaeval times -

Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other human beings - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends

I have never heard of the painter John Atkinson Grimshaw – but would recommend these videos one of which has the music of Thomas Newman whose soundtrack helped make the film Road to Perdition such a fascinating one for me
I have chosen Durer's version of the Four Horsemen genre.

Evasion, amorality and Bulgarian tomatoes

OK Confession time – I did spend 5 hours of my life last evening hooked in front of the screen watching MPs of the british Parliament’s Select Committee on Culture and Media "cross-examine” first Murdoch Senior and Junior (who control so much of global media); and then Rebecca Brooks who was, until last week, the editor of one of their trash newspapers. It was a gripping and wonderful encounter between powerful people and a small cross-section of elected representatives of the british parliament – who revealed, each in their own way, both the weaknesses and (potential) strengths of that institution. I’ve put the verb in inverted commas simply because I could not believe how pusillanimous most of the the questions were (with the honourable exception of one Labour (Tom Watson) and one Conservative MP) – and how little follow-up and comment there was. Basically Rupert Murdoch has such a large empire (News of the World accounted for less than 1% of it) that he was rarely briefed; and his son’s comments could be reduced to two statements – "I only took up my appointment in 2007" and "I don’t want to prejudice the ongoing police inquiry". Rupert Murdoch clearly does not even begin to understand the meaning of responsibility – when reminded of the several occasions when people employed by his empire were publicly revealed as having committed serious misdemeanours and asked what action he had taken, his answer was simply that the law had to take its course. There were clearly no internal disciplinary processes. His further comment that "the people I had trusted had been let down by the people they had trusted" also reveals an interesting viewpoint, in which the more lowly you are, the greater a moral responsibility you bear.
The Guardian has useful video excerpts and commentary. Here's a great update of a song the Queen's drummer (Roger Taylor) gave us in the 1990s about Murdoch. Two Guardian correspondents give rather different perspectives (the strength of that paper) here and here. But Boffy’s Blog probably expresses it best.
And this media fixation effectively distracted me (yet again) from taking any real action on my bank savings. I had visited my three banks here to try to make a judgement of what to do with my cash – with a firm proposal being made to me for the first time to move into gold. Everyhere I look there are huge risks – inflation; banks failing; the euro failing; gold coins purchased neing duds.
So best thing is to bury oneself in (a) novels – eg Amos Oz’s Fimaand here and (b) in the delicious Bulgarian vegetables and wine. I don’t think I have yet paid tribute on this blog to Bulgarian tomatoes.

Let me therefore quote on the latter from an ex-pat -

I spent half of July and all of August on the Bulgarian sea coast, starting the day with thick slices of tomatoes on buttered toast, continuing with tomatoes and feta salad for lunch, and ending it with more tomatoes and roasted long peppers or eggplants in tomato sauce, or stuffed zucchini with tomatoes, or nibbling cherry tomatoes straight from the vine, or… you get the picture.
The sun ripened tomatoes from my aunt’s garden are the second reason I go back to Bulgaria every summer – the first being my family and friends. The fact that my parents live ten minutes from the sandy beaches of Varna – the best city in the country – is also a big plus.
I’ve never found better tasting tomatoes – heavy, meaty, sweet. Bulgarians are crazy about their tomatoes, and most of them will grow their own in every available plot. August will be dominated by tomato topics such as the prices on the market, a disease threatening the crop or the extinct local varieties.
The pungent sweet fruits will even overshadow yet another cabinet crisis or new corruption scandal and everybody’s weekends will be spent not on the golden beaches, but plucking or watering the mighty tomatoes. Growing, eating and canning tomatoes is our national sport. And though I’ve been living abroad for many years now, I’m more than happy to participate in those late summer games. By September I have tomato juice flowing in my veins instead of blood.

. See the photo I've just taken - this is an average tomato (note its relationships to the coaster or "biscuit" beneath - there are much larger ones which weigh in at a kilo apiece)

Rating agencies are part of a criminal set-up

With all the focus on Greece, I had missed the latest news about the rating agencies cutting Portugal's rating - here's a powerful response from a Portugese journalist

The rationale for Portugal’s rating cut makes no sense. Portugal was targeted with a streak of rating cuts that put us in the verge of “junk”. But then everything changed, a stable majority in parliament, a 78 billion euro loan, a programme designed by the troika, a committed government, a prime-minister obsessed with compliance. No matter what. We weren’t even given a full week: we’re junk.
The reasons for a rate cut are now absurd: the challenge of reducing the fiscal deficit, the need for more money and the troublesome return to the financial markets in 2013 are topics being addressed by the government. By the Country. This rating cut doesn’t identify these challenges, it precipitates them. This decision carries with it severe and immediate consequences. Not only because Portugal takes one step backwards in the path back to the financial markets. But because many investors will now dispose of Portuguese assets. Because collateral on our debt will have to be reinforced. Because today all Portuguese assets lost value. Portuguese companies, Portuguese banks, everything lost value between yesterday and today. At a time when privatizations are being prepared. When stress tests are underway. There are no coincidences. Today, thousands of investors who’ve been short-selling Portuguese stocks and bonds are richer. Buying stocks in EDP and REN will now come cheaper. We’re not on sale, we’re being ransacked.
Portugal was a mad MAN, he threw himself into a cliff and now clings to a rope that was thrown in his direction. He’s trying to hold on with all its strength, lucid and humble in the way only those in ruin are lucid and humble. Then came Moody’s, spitting to the side and saying climbing the rope is tough – thus cutting the rope.
This is not about Portugal, it’s a matter of war between the US and Europe, it’s about profits for private investors in the shadow of ratings agencies. Two weeks ago, an outstanding piece by the journalist Cristina Ferreira, at newspaper “Público”, illustrated that corrosion. Another journalist, Myret Zaki, wrote the remarkable book “La fin du Dollar”, which documents the “system” on which these agencies thrive and the underlying euro-dollar tug of war.
Yesterday, Angela Merkel condemned the power of rating agencies and promised to fight back. In less than 24 hours came the response: S&P’s warning that the Greek debt roll over will be considered a selective default; and Moody’s rating cut on Portugal.
We’re in the middle of a scam and the European Union is impotent. Four years after the crisis that these agencies allowed, Europe has been unable to put out a recommendation, a threat, a European rating agency. What has China done? They created their own rating agency. What does that rating agency say? That Portugal is BBB+. That US debt is no longer triple-A. The Chinese have power and courage, Europe has hung itself in the American bargain-price shop.
The troika is worried about the lack of corporate competition in Portugal… What about competition in rating agencies? Two days ago, Stuart Holland put forward, along with Portuguese former Presidents Mario Soares and Jorge Sampaio, the proposition for a European “New Deal”. He told this newspaper “we need government governing instead of rating agencies ruling”.

We’re not asking for pity, we want fairness. Europe crosses its arms. Let us not do the same. The European Central Bank must stand up against to this despotism. In October, a report by the Financial Stability Board, led by Mario Draghi, advised private banks and the central banks to build their own models for assessing the eligibility of financial instruments, putting a stop to the mechanical evaluations made by rating agencies. Draghi will soon become chairman of the ECB’s governing council. He doesn’t need to terminate rating agencies, he needs to rise up in look into their eyes.
This rating cut is uncalled for, and it will cost us. Portugal is now Europe’s junk. Rating agencies are the undertakers, wealthy and euphoric, of a ridiculously impregnable system. The agencies assure us they don’t hold anything against Portugal. As the man said, “it’s nothing personal, it’s strictly business”. That man was a mob boss.

The rating agencies, are of course, utterly incompetent and corrupt - since they are funded by the companies they rate. This has been admitted by a senior manager. I would normally choose a georg Grosz painting or caricature for a subject like this -for a change I've used James Ensor, the Belgian painter of the early part of the 20th century since the picture captures the corrosive characters of those set in judgement over us.

Money, money, money

Good old BBC! They’ve saved me the airfare to Davos! At least two BBC journalists are there and blogging on their interesting conversations – Robert Peston (see links sidebar) and Stephanie Flanders. And I don’t even pay the BBC licence fee!

I was trying to check my statement about Bulgaria being one of a handful of net contributors to the EU budget – and came across this useful post about the consultation on the future of cohesion funds - from a blogsite - EU Law - I should add to my links.
The project here in Bulgaria in which I have a marginal involvement is the closest I have come to Structural Funds. I generally stay away from anything to do with European integration – since it smacks of „The man in Whitehall (Brussels) knows best!” I always prefer to work with governments which have a free agenda; and are actively choosing to engage in reform - not passively „complying” with EU requirements for membership.

Eastern Approaches has a good blog about the Hungarian government's clash with the EU on its media restrictions
And Transition Online have started a series giving some rare detail on the sources of finance of political parties in central europe – here’s one useful paper on the close links between commerce and Romanian political parties.
I suspect the figures are considerable underestimates – the benefits of political favour in Romania (and Bulgaria) are so great that I doubt whether a 40,000 euros contribution is going to get you very much!
The lyrics of Money, money, money are here.