Trevor @ Friday November 20th 2009 12:42

Lord Acton’s most famous saying has a pretty good track record, so I was surprised that my last, flippant post showed the PP doubling the PSOE in corruption ghits. A recount now has The Beard leading the The Pirate’s Friend 2502:902, but Carlos López has a metric which I think will prove slightly less misleading. The Fiscal General, Mr Candid Pumpkin, has released a breakdown by party of the 730 corruption cases against public officials in 2009, and Carlos has converted it into a Corruptometre by mapping it to the number of councillors obtained by each party in the 2007 regional elections:

So, not too many phone calls required to do business on the Canaries, and of the national parties the “left” appears to be in deeper trouble than the “right”, despite the impression created by the tireless propagandising of Stalin’s Little Helper over at South of Watford (Graham admits to voting IU, so I hope he won’t be offended by this).

Of course, a classification based on adding up the cash involved might look rather different (CiU, anyone?). Come on, Carlos.

Tags: ANV, BNG, CC, CiU, corruption, embezzlement, ERC, IU, PA, PNV, politics, pork barrel, power corrupts, PP, PSOE, Spain, UM
Categories: Arithmetic, Empires, rulers and warfare, Les bourgeois, Monsters

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1. Juan Kerr
   November 20th 2009 13:54

   Stalin’s helper? Nah, it’s Aguirre’s Guiri.

2. Trevor
   November 20th 2009 15:29

   On the principle that all publicity indicates complicity, and given his party’s record, it’s only fair to wonder if he’s on the take.

   My party, on the other hand, is still spotlessly clean–Albert Boadella apart.

3. Statistics of corruption in Spain | thebadrash.com – Barcelona blog
   November 20th 2009 20:37

   [...] Franco's Little Helper* over at Kalebeul has an amusingly perverse analysis of how the two major political parties in Spain account for most of the local corruption investigations here. The great thing about proposing a new statistical analysis is that feeling of deciding the size of the goal. And where it will be placed. [...]

4. links for 2009-11-21 | Cosmos
   November 21st 2009 09:03

   [...] Relative corruption of PP, PSOE, etc revisited Every 9th Canarian nationalist councillor has a problem, and the left looks to be in worse trouble than the right nationally. (tags: secrettenerife politics spain) [...]

5. Trevor
   November 21st 2009 11:37

   Tom@3 rubbishes this without explaining why–one suspects that it’s simply because it doesn’t coincide with his prejudices–but it does have the benefit of providing a reality-based explanation as to why the kerfuffle kicked up by El País, Público, El Mundo etc re PP corruption appears to be having a limited impact on voting intentions: people are aware that in the world around them (as opposed to the world created by media barons jockeying for financial gain) party affiliation is not a major differentiator for thieving politicians.

6. Trevor
   November 21st 2009 12:43

   Mr Butler has come up with his own version and says it’s about the beach, man, and all those hapless foreigners who invested there without knowing the ropes or having any way of tugging them.

7. Tom
   November 21st 2009 18:04

   “On the principle that all publicity indicates complicity, and given his party’s record, it’s only fair to wonder if he’s on the take.”

   Are you serious? Is this where postmodernism has led you?

8. Juan Kerr
   November 21st 2009 18:34

   What a lovely conceit, making this into an issue of political affiliation. Methinks it goes a tad deeper than that.

9. Tom
   November 21st 2009 20:24

   “Never trust an anonymous twat” – me.

10. Trevor
    November 22nd 2009 22:40

    @7.Tom: That was an excessively vague play on “all publicity is good publicity.” I rather fancy Graham as a PP double-agent. He’d have plenty of company, since the entire PP seems to be full of multiple agents at the moment. Unfortunate that no one picked up on the lovely story about the Catalan PP’s airheaded pinup, Montserrat Nebraska or whatever she’s called, having a long dinner discussion with Josep Anglada, who I think we’d both agree is pretty close to being a neo-Nazi.
    @9.Tom: unless you have a pretty good hunch that he’s retailing A-grade ecstasy.