15 hours ago, Chicog said:

 

Er.... When perks turn into corruption is when perks are illegal.

 

The fact that it's maybe cheap to do in comparative terms has no bearing on its legality.

 

 

 

 

That's kinda been answered in the following posts about Malaysia.  To define the difference between a "tip" and  "corruption" would need an army of lawyers. Corruption has a aspect of expectation - maybe that's the difference, but there's corruption everywhere, EU< UK< USA< et al......

If you are in farangland and you want good service from a hotel doorman -- you tip him, or a waiter in a restaurant - sometime even when there is a service charge, or a bar if you want continuous top-up, even in a non-self-service petrol-station.   These are the service staff perks they get for doing "better than normal" for the customer who is in front of him.  Did you not give your postman and milkman, etc a bottle or a cake for Xmas?

Where perks turn into corruption is when the "perks" are an expectation.  Given the level of salary of government workers, it's no surprise they want a little extra and are very grateful for appreciation expressed, but when it is added to the price, then it is corruption...

5 minutes ago, Ralf61 said:

Sorry Sir, here you are wrong...

 

That really is most unhelpful.  What is your version of reality?

19 minutes ago, elgordo38 said:

How could you disagree with Wolfgang Schnauble. Angela you better get out of your ivory tower and start mingling with the voters. Take lots of bodyguards. Polls are terrible indicators of what is happening maybe your down by more than 1 point. Time to start reading the help wanted column. Forget that big businesses must be lined up a mile long to get your name on their letterhead. Then there are the press barons looking for a book from you and you could be looking at about a 30 million dollar windfall here. My advice ditch the job collect your pension and move on to greener pastures. 

Many politicians do very well when they quit, even if they were lousy in the job.  Look at Tony Blair!

Looking at this in another way -- Schultz appears to be more determined on the construction of EU as a federation controlled by Germany, and getting rid of UK actually will make that easier for him.  Let's see how he gets along with that now....

Hang on --  from the syntax of the OP, it would appear that English is not his first language, so it would be unfair to ladle the blame on the girl.  Having said that - if someone is worried about "getting bored",  "She is not interested much about myself " ,  " She is just lazy I think. " ,  etc, etc,  it's probably time to look for the girl who is more to your liking.  Thai girls come in all flavours -- there are some who want to know absolutely everything, so  -- be careful what you wish for.....  

Run Forest, Run!!!

10 hours ago, sandyf said:

Not surprising when you look at the size of the brexit department. Its only going to get better as they take on the additional staff for drafting all the new paperwork, customs control etc etc. 

With all the farming, NHS and service industry vacancies that will be available shortly there should also be huge savings to be made on closing Jobcentres.

At least they could streamline that archaic system. 

Something I didn't know was that Estonia went from virtually no health service to a fully functional digital health service since joining the EU, but UK still wallows in the murky victorian administration systems -- as does France, if it makes folks feel a bit better.  :)

It's a good example of what the EU was meant to do, but it is remarkable only because it's the only one.

Britain will attempt to offset Brexit cost with €150 billion worth of European Union assets

Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, is understood to be preparing a list of up to £51bn of liabilities.

An independent think tank in Brussels has already estimated that Britain's assets could be worth almost £130bn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/16/britain-will-attempt-offset-brexit-cost-150-billion-worth-european/

7 minutes ago, SheungWan said:

Please don't confuse the accretion of vaporings from nonsense websites with any systematic study of history.

You'll need to be more specific before I can reply.  There are plenty of sources of history and the only variance is when they start to speculate about intentions and opinions.  Historical facts are pretty much irrefutable.

The point about history is well made.  Every politician should be made to pass a tough history exam before being allowed to stand     The thing about history is that it is a strong indicator.  Germany's history is of being rebuilt on UK and US money, not spending any substantial amount on defence, and joining all the clubs but not paying their dues.   Schauble's recent outburst is another glimpse of what is actually going on in their heads, and DT's commentary about NATO funding serves to highlight Germany very well.  Now are they waiting for the EU to have it's own army so that Germany can get away without paying more than token membership?

9 minutes ago, pitrevie said:

Not sure how I was able to display it but this in part is what is said.

 

Peugeot offered Nissan-style Brexit promises to save Vauxhall

The British government has offered the potential new owners of the Vauxhall car plants in the UK assurances similar to those given to Nissan in an effort to save thousands of jobs. The Japanese carmaker was persuaded last year to expand its operations in Sunderland after the government offered it a package of measures designed to shield it from the impact of Brexit. These included support for electric car development and incentives for suppliers to locate to the area. The measures were designed to ensure that trading conditions at the Nissan plant would not change after Britain had left the EU, the company was told.

 

Thanks ---  Sounds like business as usual for a government making attractive offers to employers.  UK jobless is well down now, isn't it?  It'd be nice to keep it that way.

5 minutes ago, pitrevie said:

https://www.ft.com/content/3137c028-f517-11e6-8758-6876151821a6

 

Paywall.... 

1 minute ago, SheungWan said:

You have to be on FT Sub Breaking News or maybe Twitter feed to pick this up as only released in last few minutes.

Ah -- ok --  I'll wait for the daily mail to carry the story....  hehe!!  :)

5 minutes ago, SheungWan said:

Peugeot offered Nissan-style Brexit promises to save Vauxhall, reports the FT in Breaking News.

Link?

20 minutes ago, hugocnx said:

May I kindly correct you. Better have left 'obviously' out. 

Not at all -- his idiocy has been highlighted many times now.... 

5 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

The US pays 70% of the cost of NATO. NATO was set up as a defense to Communist USSR or any other regime from invading Europe . In the last century it has cost The US billions of dollars and the deaths of many Americans going to defend The UK and Others after they could not defend  them self's..

NATO is/has been deployed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and others where the "defence of Europe" would be highly questionable.  USA gets to park it's domestic defence missiles in Europes backyard, making it the target of first strike. There's no easy answer to all this while the EU - as a non-nation - can not pass a simple trade deal with Canada in less than 3 years.  Once UK gets out of EU, and the Eu reforms to be a properly federated Germany, then NATO might well become redundant.  When was the last time anyone saw a big bureaucracy being dissassembled and it's funding clearly being used for the more immediate needs of the country?

1 minute ago, Shaksey said:

How is perpetually bankrupt Greece managing to spend 2.38% of it's GDP on defence?!?

Maybe it's a negative number?  hehe!!   

2 minutes ago, Baerboxer said:

 

Germany and some others have for very many years not met their NATO spend obligations. Now Merkel says they might. How nice of her, but of course no mention of all those missing spend amounts being paid up.

 

Germany economy - good when spending others money.

So true.  Germany doesn't contribute it's weight in anything external.  Nato. UN, EUPol, etc etc all have a hole where the german contribution should be.  UK picks up the EU slack, US picks up NATO's slack, etc, etc  But Germany's economy is booming, excellent roads and rails-links, good social services, etc. 

2 minutes ago, anotheruser said:

 

Looking at the article the USA is paying 3.61% of it's GDP. The recommended amount it seems to be 2%. So the USA over pays by 273,700,000,000 (1.61% of 17 trillion) every year. That is no small amount. The USA could effectively pay off it's the national debt in a decade with that kind of money. 

 

Even if everybody paid the recommended percentage the USA would still have the highest burden because it has by far the highest GDP. These numbers are disgraceful and I just can't imagine how anybody can justify this. If Trump could do one worthwhile thing correcting this immediately would be the one I would like to see. 

 

I hope my math was right as I am not used to dealing in billions and trillions. 

 USA now pays 650Billion and that represents 3.61%.  If they only paid their 2%, that would be

650 / 3.61 x 2 = 360 This gives the USA 290 billion to play with.

US national debt is quickly heading towards 20 trillion -  so it'd take 69 years to clear the current national debt......

57 minutes ago, hawker9000 said:

It's all meaningless if all the members fail to see the value of contributing their fair share. The same is true of the UN. Everyone else constantly belly-aching about "US leadership", but when the hat's getting passed they're all of a sudden afflicted with chronic followeritis... Putin's dreams of a resurrected Russian empire aren't going to be overcome by the US paying everyone else's bills. If Europe is determined to play the deadbeat, the US is going to have to cut the cord. Better sooner than later.

Don't forget that USA relies on friendly European countries to park their first-line missiles pointing straight into the heart of Russia, with about 25% of the flight time of US based missiles.

10 minutes ago, Srikcir said:

Canada? Strategically it's worth 1% GDP just having that huge landmass between the US and Russia in securing the Northwest Passage.

I agree with Junker that other security factors should count towards contribution of security and especially America's global security needs. But in the final analysis, NATO is about collective security (aka block) and not about individual security. It's more than about money. It's about the "synergy of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts."

http://www.tewealth.com/the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

 

Putin understands the value of security synergies as a KGB agent in the former USSR and now as PM as he seeks to rebuild the USSR. He knows the value of a security bloc and the security challenge Russia faces with a strong and united NATO. America should not help Putin weaken NATO.

 

 

 

There's a huge difference.  Russia has not gone "abroad" to get new members of it's block.  They have traditionally relied on a solid landmass of russian interest.  NATO, otoh, is a disparate and sometimes argumentative group of independent countries only held together in NATO because of their mutual dislike of the russian block -- thought even that is fragile, given Turkey cosying up to Putin now....

5 minutes ago, Orac said:

Looks like there is finally something being done to get everyone to pull together to get brexit sorted by having someone slightly less popular than Garry Glitter spearhead a pro-EU stance.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38996179

Good grief !  Not him again!!  Fortunately he'll only be talking to the remain disciples, and being paid handsomely for his evenings "work".  Certainly a good chance for TM to drag out some skeletons......