There are many things that I admire about the United Kingdom.

This is the country that produced Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, George Orwell, JK Rowling, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, JRR Tolkien.

But Britain is currently one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.

In Britain, politicians can legally raise millions of pounds from one single individual. Private corporations, including foreign corporations, are allowed to give large amounts of money to political parties. Several members of the UK parliament currently work as consultants and lawyers for large corporations such as Thames Water or HSBC.

Compare this to France.

In France, no individual is allowed to give more than 7000 pounds to a political party. All corporations and labor unions are banned from giving money to political parties. In France, all second jobs are now banned from members of parliament. And if you break these rules, you will be criminally prosecuted.

Why did France pass these laws ? Corruption scandals

France had one President (Nicolas Sarkozy) sell access to his donors

We also had one powerful MP (Francois Fillon) working as a lavishly paid consultant for huge corporations

When the French media revealed these scandals, the French Parliament was so embarrassed that it was forced to take action

The British are not different. They had the similar corruption scandals.

• David Cameron was caught selling access to Downing Street in exchange of money

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/26/david-cameron-private-dinners-tory-donors

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9168388/Cash-for-access-David-Camerons-private-dinners-for-donors-revealed.html

Boris Johnson was also caught selling acess to Downing Street

https://www.ft.com/content/8c6041ff-a223-43e9-9e45-53c3f7cf47f7

Yet the British parliament did... absolutely nothing 😖 !!

What the fuck does your parents profession have to with with anything?

Everything? This data allows you to see if children of sales assistants, restaurant workers, janitors, are underrepresented. It allows you to measure social mobility and meritocracy.

All French universities gather anonymous data about the professions of your parents. That way, it can be studied by social scientists:

https://www.ipp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/democratisation-grandes-ecoles-depuis-milieu-annees-2000-ipp-janvier-2021.pdf

If kids of low-income people don't have the same chances to study at top university, it means the education system must improve meritocracy.

Anglosphere countries seem to care primarly about race.

This obsession about race is something I will never understand about anglosphere culture.

Britain, Canada and the United States have really gone off the rail.

In French culture, it is considered completely obscene to ask people about their race. In fact, that's illegal. Employers and universities can be criminally prosecuted if they start gathering data about skin color. The only question universities ask you is the profession of your parents.

This obsession about race is something I will never understand about Canadians and Americans. Never. Never. In France, it is considered obscene to ask people about their race in surveys.

Unfortunately, there are millions of dumb people who are still kissing his ass.

Every year, Canadian Medical Schools train far less doctors than France, Germany, Britain, Australia or Spain.

Canadian provinces make it extraordinarily difficult for foreign-trained doctors to practice. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable and good you are. They will do everything they can to prevent you from working

It's an absolute disgrace. It's like the goal is to ensure there are as few doctors as possible.

Unfortunately, the public isn't really aware of this. And because the public isn't aware, the political class doesn't act.

Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, Meta, Amazon, JP Morgan or Saudi Aramco are the most powerful corporations in the world. They are empires more powerful than many nations. Their CEOs always travel with armed men. They have the personal phone number of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

It's healthy to scrutinize them. Steam is a problem, but Valve is nowhere near as powerful.

Getting really tired of these super-rich motherfuckers claiming they are victims of society

Meet Jeff Ballingall. He runs ''Canada Proud'', a popular facebook page.

From the article:

Canada Proud often posts news updates, citing mainstream news sources that are barred from sharing their content on Facebook. The posts sometime add misleading details not found in the original reports, according to a review by The Times.

One of its posts this month said Markey Carney had suspended his campaign because of “connections with China” and cited a major Canadian news outlet, Global News, as its source. But the Global News article didn't mention connections to China

Canada Proud, which describes itself as a “grass-roots group of Canadians” concerned about the country’s direction, is run by Mobilize Media Group, a public affairs firm that has worked for Conservative Party candidates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/technology/canada-election-facebook-instagram-meta.html

When two wolves band together to offert you a piece of advice on the path you should follow in the woods, you should immediately become suspicious that something is not quite right

They own the following :

• Atlas Hotels, a hotel real estate and operating company with 46 hotels across the UK
• David Lloyd Leisure, a gym and health club company with 85 locations across the UK and Europe
• London Hilton on Park Lane
• The Trafalgar St. James London
• The Lensbury
• The Panama Pacifico, a US$700 million mini-city on the banks of the Panama Canal[3]
• General Healthcare Group, the UK's leading private health provider with 67 hospitals
• 90 private care homes
• Crowne Plaza hotel in Cambridge
• The Empire, Leicester Square

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_%26_Regional_Properties

First-Past-The-Post is the single most stupid voting system that you can think about. It is a system that is specifically designed to create two powerful political parties that can rule, regardless of actual support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

I'm not European but I lived in Europe. The United Kingdom is, without any doubt, one of the most flawed democracy in Europe. Water is fully privatized. Private water companies are overcharging people. University education is incredibly expensive. Going to University in France will only cost you $1000 in France. In Britain ? Multiply the price by 8 or 10. UK Labor rights are significantly weaker than France, Germany or Spain. Campaign finance rules in Britain are a joke compared to continental Europe. You can give $100,000 or $500,000 to any political party. In fact, Prime Minister Boris Johnson used to sell access to 10 downing street to his donors :

https://www.ft.com/content/8c6041ff-a223-43e9-9e45-53c3f7cf47f7

The masses and the UK Elite don't even use the same accent. Believe me, I have never seen anything remotely close elsewhere.

As for the United States, it is a completely corrupt nation. The entire political system is for sale. Their presidential voting system is stuck in the 18th century. Their Senate is designed to empower small minorities. It's an Oligarchy pretending to be a modern democracy.

Both the British Elites and the American Elites are too arrogant to reform. That's the curse of Empire.

I hope Canada can reform it's political system. Get rid of FPTP. Create two round elections or adopt PR. Ban political spending on foreign-owned media (Facebook). Ban foreign residents from donating to political parties. Why are american businessmen living in Canada legally allowed to donate?

The EU dodged a bullet.

The Eastern Townships autoroute, running southeast from Montreal, opened to traffic in 1964. The New York Times called it “Canada’s newest superhighway,” and gushed about it as “good news for skiers.”

The article noted that the speed limit was 70 miles per hour in summer (this was a decade before Canada adopted the metric system) but only 55 mph in winter. It also wrote that, as part of a “master plan,” a final stretch of the autoroute still under construction would soon meet up with the U.S. Interstate system – bringing more Canadian tourists to New England, and more Americans to the Expo 67 World’s Fair.

One thing The New York Times did not find remarkable? That the highway was a toll road. The drive from Montreal to Sherbrooke cost $1.50, plus 25 cents to cross the Champlain Bridge. That’s $16.75 in today’s money.

A road paid for by drivers, not taxpayers, isn’t an unusual thing in Europe. Toll highways aren’t even uncommon in the United States, from the 423-kilometre Florida Turnpike to the 146-kilometre Sam Houston Tollway in Texas to the nearly 800-kilometre New York Thruway. New York is about to start charging cars to drive into the most crowded parts of Manhattan.

But in Canada? There aren’t many things that Canadian parties of the right, left and centre can agree on, but “free” roads – by which I mean taxpayer-subsidized driving – is one of them.

The Eastern Townships autoroute lost its tolls in 1985, courtesy of a Parti Québecois government. The new Champlain Bridge, completed in 2019 at a cost of $4.4-billion, is toll free, courtesy of the federal Liberals. In Ontario, highways 412 and 418 in Durham Region east of Toronto were opened a few years ago as toll roads, but the Progressive Conservative government ditched the tolls last year – a move long called for by the local New Democratic MPP.

In British Columbia, tolls on two relatively new Vancouver-area bridges were a key issue in the 2017 election. The Liberal provincial government promised to reduce the tolls; the NDP one-upped that with a pledge to remove tolls entirely, transferring all costs from drivers to taxpayers. The NDP has been the government ever since.

And in Toronto, former mayor John Tory once upon a time proposed tolling the Gardiner and Don Valley expressways, rather than maintaining them with property taxes. The idea was shot down by a Liberal premier.

In theory, the left opposes policies that promote pollution and urban sprawl. In theory, the right rejects burdening taxpayers with unnecessary government spending and favours user fees. In many countries, left and right have put these principles into practice when it comes to the cost of roads and driving. In Canada, not so much.

That’s why Canada is also an outlier on gas taxes.

Ours are among the lowest in the developed world. Yes, really.

A recent paper from three academics at the Université de Sherbrooke points out that not only are Canadian gas taxes low compared with peer countries, their relative weight has fallen.

Long before carbon pricing, provinces already had gas taxes – Quebec’s dates back to 1924 – while the federal excise tax on gasoline has been around since 1975. But the 10 cents-a-litre federal tax hasn’t gone up in 28 years. Most provincial gas taxes have similarly failed to keep pace with inflation. In 1981, Quebec’s gas tax was worth 1 per cent of the provincial economy; today, it’s worth less than half that. Relative to the size of the economy, the federal excise tax has been halved since the mid-1990s.

But don’t take some egghead professors’ word for it. The Canadian Fuels Association, representing “the companies who process crude oil into essential products like transportation fuels and get those products to market,” also says Canadian pump prices are far below other developed countries. Why? Lower taxes, mostly.

Canada’s levies – gas taxes, sales tax and carbon pricing – are higher than those in the U.S. But CFA data from last January shows that a litre of gasoline in Britain includes an extra 98 cents of tax. Drivers in Germany and Italy paid an extra $1.12 per litre in taxes. The French paid $1.30 more.

All of which helps explain why Canada is the world champion of gas-guzzling cars. Own the podium, Canada.

According to the International Energy Agency, Canadians are driving the planet’s least fuel-efficient personal vehicles. In 2017, the average Canadian ride got 8.9 litres per 100 kilometres. That compares with 8.6 litres/100 km in the U.S., 7.9 litres/100 km in Australia, and less than six litres/100 km in Germany, Britain, Italy and France.

Canadians were also driving the planet’s biggest personal vehicles in 2017 – and 61 per cent of new cars sold that year were not cars, but rather trucks, namely SUVs and pickups.

“Consumer preference for large vehicles,” the IEA says, “has offset the impacts of technical improvements on average fuel consumption.” Engineers keep figuring out how to move more mass with less gasoline; consumers, particularly in Canada, keep offsetting those engine improvements by choosing ever-larger vehicles.

The trend shows no signs of ending. Last year, according to Statistics Canada, 82 per cent of new Canadian light vehicles were trucks.

See you out on the highway.

Journalism is financially struggling. Thank god there are still journalists doing a good job.

Thank you. To be fair, Reuters changed the title.

I'm super grateful to President Francois Hollande for introducing that law banning politicians found guilty of corruption from ever running again 🙏.

Francois Hollande gets a lot of shit, but he did good things.