Perthbum

These are the 10 most and least corrupt countries in the world in 2017 corruption perceptions index: The least corrupt countries New Zealand Denmark Finland/Norway/Switzerland Singapore/Sweden United Kingdom/Canada/Luxembourg/ Netherlands Germany Australia/Hong Kong/ Iceland US, Austria, Belgium Ireland Japan The most corrupt countries Somalia South Sudan Syria Afghanistan Yemen/Sudan North Korea/Equatorial Guinea/Guinea Bissau/ Libya Iraq/Venezuela Angola/Turkmenistan Eritrea/Chad DRC/Congo/Cambodia/Tajikistan https://ceoworld.biz/2018/02/27/these-are-the-20-most-corrupt-countries-in-europe-in-2017/

Did you speak to many in the lavatory as you mopped.....

I have watched them in live parliament and they make the UK politicians look like angels, what a bunch of corrupt thick politicians you have over there, the UK is bad but Oz is miles worse when it comes to idiot politicians who do not have a clue.

Kids like designer in the past and now, nothing changes.

Forget Brexit, the EU may be on the brink of collapse The Brexit debate is nothing if not insular. While the business, media and political elite in London obsess over the kind of future relationship the UK should have with Brussels, few seem to have noticed that the EU itself may soon collapse. If and when it does, the fall will be all the more shocking precisely because so many eyes have not been kept on the ball. The stark truth is that since the financial crisis of 2008 eurozone leaders have tried and failed to put the single currency on a secure footing. President Macron’s attempt to promote a fiscal union is a recognition of this failure and an attempt to do something about it, but his plan has already been killed off by a combination of the German economic policy-making elite and the Italian voter. If it goes ahead at all now, it will be in largely insignificant form. The attempt to build a banking union is meeting a similar fate. Its bail-in provisions for failing banks are not being consistently implemented and its fund for recapitalising failing banks is far too small. In Italy in particular, the political will does not exist to comply with is strictures. No progress has been made on a European Deposit Insurance Scheme either. And work to build a Capital Markets Union is painfully slow and is, in any case, the work of decades. The common thread across all these stalled attempts at eurozone reform is a reluctance on the part of national authorities to pursue genuinely European solutions. What this means in practice is that if and when a new crisis comes, there will be no common European response. Individual eurozone countries will be largely left to fend for themselves while EU leaders, as in the last crisis, seek to make decisions largely on the hoof. The question now is for how long eurozone leaders can get away with it? And the answer is not, perhaps, for much longer. A scan of the horizon suggests it is all too possible to identify the triggers for what could quickly become a eurozone and wider EU collapse. On the economic side one obvious path to crisis is via the onset of a new recession. Eurozone growth is already slowing, and the international environment is clouding badly. Both a transatlantic trade war provoked by Trump, or a Chinese financial crisis on the back of spiralling public and private debt could cause massive and sudden damage to eurozone economies. A severe recession would in turn undermine the public finances in many already heavily indebted eurozone member states, raise their borrowing costs prohibitively, and wipe billions off the balance sheets of their banks, many of which have been heavy investors in bonds issued by their own governments. Amid falling asset values and a generalised increase in non-performing loans, many banks would be in trouble. Get more from CapX Follow us on Twitter Join us on Facebook Sign up to our email bulletins Subscribe to Free Exchange, the CapX podcast They would once again need help from already strapped governments who would struggle to provide it. There is therefore a clear path from a recession to a new banking and sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, raising the prospect of euro exits, contagion and an existential crisis for the single currency as a whole. If a recession does not trigger a banking and sovereign debt crisis there is a non-negligible possibility that a new banking crisis could be the trigger for a recession. Globally, warnings from senior policy-makers over asset bubbles, unregulated shadow banking in Asia, and excessive risk-taking in global financial markets are rife. If a further crisis emerges out of this morass, the opaque and complex lending arrangements that characterise the system will mean a generalised loss of confidence and a crunch in the availability of credit. Again, weak banks in the eurozone would be knocked over by both declining asset values and a lack of liquidity. Italy is a particular worry. The Italian government could, in principle, attempt to deal with such a scenario with bail-ins but is unlikely to do so, since many Italian retail investors are heavily invested in bonds issued by Italian banks and would be massive losers. It would therefore have to attempt taxpayer-funded bail-outs. Amid its already high debts it would quickly find it almost impossible to borrow. It could appeal to other eurozone member states for loans in return for years of austerity and structural reform but after two decades of little growth and with a population already voting in large numbers for eurosceptic parties, that path appears politically undeliverable. The alternative would be for Italy to leave the single currency and print its own money. There is therefore a plausible path to a major euro exit, contagion to other parts of the eurozone, and an existential crisis for the euro buried in a new financial crisis, whether that crisis starts in Europe or somewhere else in the world. Politically, other paths to break-up exist too. A straightforward electoral breakthrough by eurosceptic forces that want to leave the European Union still cannot be ruled out in countries like Italy and France.

Complete tosh they all include people no matter how many hours they work, please post a link when they only give figures on full time employmwnt.

Unemployment rate in member states of the European Union in June 2018 (seasonally adjusted)

France has a far slower economy and far higher unemployment rate than the UK plus they have far bigger problems with immigrants, no wonder the French people would vote out.

France would have voted to leave EU too if in UK's situation, French leader Macron says When asked if France could take the same decision as the British people, Macron said: "Yeah, probably. Probably in a similar context, but our context was very different" The French leader said that he hopes the ongoing Brexit negotiations will deliver a deep and special relationship with the U.K., but that any deal with the EU "will be by definition less deep than today" Silvia Amaro | @Silvia_Amaro Published 6:58 AM ET Mon, 22 Jan 2018 Updated 9:39 AM ET Mon, 22 Jan 2018CNBC.com Sylvain Lefevre | Getty Images French President Emmanuel Macron on January 16, 2018 in Calais, France. France would likely have followed the U.K. and also voted to leave the European Union if the opportunity had presented itself, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview Sunday. Macron said that, if the French people had been put in a similar situation and were asked to vote "yes or no" on EU membership, then they would probably have chosen to leave the bloc. "Middle classes and working classes and especially the oldest in your country decided that the recent decades were not in their favor and that the adjustments made by both the EU and globalization… wasn't in their favor," Macron told the BBC about the Brexit vote. When asked if France could take the same decision as the British people, Macron said: "Yeah, probably. Probably in a similar context, but our context was very different." He said that the U.K. government had made a mistake in asking the British electorate "yes or no on a very complicated subject."

Brexit will RUIN Germany as UK taxpayers stop funding EU coffers - say Germans BREXIT is threatening EU funded projects in Germany as budgets could shrink after the UK stops budget contributions when it leaves the bloc in March 2019, it has been revealed. EU projects in Northern Hesse are going to see a huge reduction of EU funds and the German Association of Cities, the German County Association and the German Association of Towns and Municipalities are calling for the funding period to be maintained even after 2020. They argue: "Because of the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, future budget cuts in the EU must be expected, which could mean that the available funds are significantly reduced, especially in economically more developed Member States.” They signed a policy statement on cohesion policy which supports hundreds of thousands of projects in Europe to receive funding from the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund. Although it is rarely discussed in Brussels or Berlin, Germany is becoming increasingly concerned about losing UK funding and trade.

you are the first to put up polls results when the chance is there.

How is it, the Greeks when questionnaires are done would leave, the Italians in a poll done recently said they would vote out by 60%,the french would vote out, the Germans are very unhappy and want their "mark" back. I am afraid the EU is a sinking ship.

The truth is that most prominent EU countries would vote out if a choice was given to the people, the small countries who get more than they put in would obviously vote to stay but the bigger players would be out if it was up to the people. Prominent Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski said the results of the Italian and German elections prove there is a huge anti-EU movement and the success of Brexit could lead to more countries voting to leave the EU. Mr Sikorski, the former minister of national defence in Poland, was asked whether other EU countries will follow the same path as Britain if Brexit is a success. He told students at the University of Greenwich: “Sure. I mean, we’ve just got a result in Italy where right-wing anti-EU parties have the majority of the vote. “In Germany, an anti-EU party is gaining ground. You know, we assume that the centre will hold in Germany.”

But with probable food poisoning in the morning.