Rank Corruption

No, I'm Not Going To Post Pictures of Gangrene Or Compost Beds

Please!  I'm still consuming food, thanks to having to do the weekly shop and thus getting around to eating late in the evening.  Not that my appetite is that great, thanks to being infected with a Dog Buns! cold, which has severely impacted my balance.  Any passing police officer would have breathalysed me instanter if they saw me in the kitchen, thanks to exhibiting all the grace and poise of a man imbibing sixteen pints.  Art!

     This is Santa Monica, which we have referenced earlier this year, back in July when I was reading those three Raymond Chandler novels-in-one.  It was notoriously corrupt in the Thirties and into the Forties, with all the local politicians and police being on the take and not being very subtle about it.  Ol' Ray decided he wanted to set parts of his novels there, without becoming a person of interest to all the purulent police and politicoes, so he disguised it as 'Bay City'.  

     So, let us parse the noun itself.  Inevitably it hails from Latin <hack spit> and 'Corruptus', meaning 'Spoiled'.  Art!

     This serious-looking chap is Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist, who is an expert on the Ruffian economy, and whose speech on 'Times Radio', hosted by the rather tasty Kate Gerbeau, was worthy of annotating.  NO!  NO, YOU WILL NOT GET BIKINI PICTURES! 

     ANYWAY Ol' Andy took up the cudgels on the issue of 'Corruption' as it affected Ukraine, because pre-Special Idiotic Operation they were rather struggling with corruption at all levels of society.  Not a few of the Ukrainian's senior commanders were worried if their subordinates would obey them when the orders to mobilise went out.

     This is where Ol' Andy mentioned a fantastic resource: the 'Transparency International' website, where the good folks dedicated to uncovering corruption work to being daylight to the darkness.  Art!

     The closer to scarlet, the worse that country is for corruption.  Let's have a look at the table for openness and honesty.  Art!

Scores out of 100

     Ol' Andy explained how Ukraine is adapting to stamp out dirty deeds done dirt dear.  He mentioned a book he wrote on Ukraine in 2015, which is telling as this is after the incredibly dirty President Yanukovich fled the country in 2014, and before the Special Idiotic Operation began.

     At that time, nine years ago, Ukraine stood at Rank 142 out of 180 countries.  They are nowhere near perfect but have improved hugely.  Art!

     There you are, Rank 104, jumping 38 places and increasing transparency in the past three years, when a lot of Western countries are backsliding a bit.

     Ol' Andy explained the background to this sea-change.  One seemingly-minor yet verrrry important adjustment is that most permits and licences are now actioned on-line.  Ukrainians no longer have to put up with meeting bureaucrats face-to-face and being screwed out of money by little tin Herr Schickelgrubers.  Public official HAVE to declare their income, and in detail, so no hiding their extortion monies or bribe funds any longer.  Not only has Ukraine established anti-corruption courts, and anti-corruption institutes, they have an extremely active investigative journalist tradition.  These people can publish the sordid dealings of corrupt businessmen, soldiers and politicoes without fear of libel suits being lodged.  Art!

     NO! It's not "HAbY", it's "NABU"- the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.  

     Of course - obviously! - it wouldn't be BOOJUM! if we didn't knock a few metaphorical nails into the carcass of Modern-day Mordor.  Art!

     Back in 2000, when the Little Tsar had only just taken over, they were at Rank 90.  If you can resolve the dates on that chart, you see that the nose-dive takes place in 2020, almost as if there was a major event in the background, influencing corruption, gosh, what could it be?  So in the past 10 years they have gone backward. 

     If you want an illustration of how thoroughly corruption permeates Ruffian society, culture and institutions, look no further than Dmitri Zakharchenko.  Art!

     He was a high official in the Ruffian Anti-Corruption service, and here you see him behind bars after being arrested when a search of his home turned up $123 million in rubles.

     Just out of interest, Art!

     Not bad, could do better.

Post 10 Again

We've not featured the intrepid Youtube vlogger 'Post 10' for a geological age.  If you're not familiar, he's a South Canadian who takes it upon himself to unblock culverts and drains, all the better to prevent flooding.

      Being in South Canada, one of the problems he has to cope with is -

     Beavers.  Don't laugh!  These critters are never happy unless they are carrying out construction work to create dams and thus deep water for their abodes.  Art!

     This is a stretch of road I recognise from his previous exploits. The large pond to port is a beaver pond, formed when the paddle-tailed rascals blocked up culverts in order to raise the water level.

     Posty then informed that the US Government - probably Parks and Wildlife - relocates beavers from sites like this to drought-stricken areas, not out of petty hatred, rather because they can be relied upon to create beaver ponds.  These will trap and retain water, helping to ameliorate the drought conditions, and also to recharge the underground aquifers beneath them, besides helping to keep surrounding forests alive.

     We'll come back to this, Ol' Posty really struts his stuff here.  Art!

   The picture above shows a culvert that replaced an earlier, lower one, a barrier against beaver-intrusion - not a phrase you expected to see today - and an extension pipe leading out to a large, submerged inlet also protected by a wire cage.  Canny Posty emphasised the lack of beaver activity here and that the flap-tailed rodents must have been relocated.

And A Good Thing Too

The Beeb is making much of an architectural award being given to the Elizabeth Line, part of the London Underground network.  Given that Your Humble Scribe does not live in London, nor it's satellite towns, and is unlikely to ever visit The City Of Sin without overweening reason, why am I lauding this event?  Art!

Looking rather cathedral

     Partly because Perfidious Albion invented railways and trains, and also the concept and practice of a subterranean rail network, is why.  Football may not be coming home, but the locomotive certainly is.  Art!

This is what the Sixties thought the future would look like

A Bit Of A Mystery

If you are familiar with photographs of the Second Unpleasantness, then you will have, at some point, seen pictures of 'Dragons Teeth'.  These are traezoidal concrete structures put in place to restrict and obstruct vehicular movement.  Art!

     These things are pre-cast and then transported to where you want to stop transport.  The orcs used tens of thousands of them last summer.  Fair enough.

     Except - who is putting up dangerously unmarked dragons teeth in Kursk and Crimea - those in Crimea being 100 miles from the front lines?  Art!

     As you can see - or, rather, cannot see - these DTs have no warning signs or hi-viz stickers upon them.  In the lower photo you can see the trail the DT left across the tarmac where a car ran into it.  Dragon's Tooth = 1 Car = 0.

     Nobody seems to know who is placing these, and Conrad estimates that they must weigh half a ton each, so this isn't a couple of drunken teenagers on a dare, you'd need a substantial vehicle with a derrick to load and off-load these.  Given Ruffia's long tradition of administrative bumbling incompetence, it's quite possible these have been done officially, with the officials now realising they made a bit of a boo-boo and Suddenly! all the paperwork was hit by lightning (see Intro for more background data).

Our Journey With Berni

Ha! Forewarned is forearmed, I made sure to check for the artwork before starting this item.  Art!

     Hmmmm.  Hardly simple.  Notice how Berni strategically places her long flowing locks to do a bit of self-censoring, just in case FPG get sued by angry parents or over-zealous evangelical types.

Finally -

Apropos of nothing, Day Seventeen of Conrad being sober for October, with a sober November to look forward to as well.  I can't think of anything abstemious that rhymes with "November" so shall have to get the Brain-Boosting Bowler on and cogitate.