Corruption and clear consciences

By a strange coincidence, the most corrupt countries in Europe are the same as those in deepest financial trouble.

It gets more sleazy the more southeast you go. On a global scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst possible), the perceived level of public sector corruption in Greece is 3.4. In Italy it’s a bit better at 3.9. Portugal scores 6.1, a point ahead of Spain.

Oddly enough, the corruption level in cash-strapped Ireland is a relatively respectable 7.5, ahead of France and not far behind the UK. Germany is on 8. Norway, Sweden and Denmark are the least corrupt with a score of 9 or more.

Somalia and North Korea, by the way, are rated the most corrupt countries in the world. Afghanistan is not far behind them. But let’s get back to the supposedly civilised world….

Lest you have doubted it even for a moment, Portugal along with Spain, Italy and Greece have - to put it politely - “serious deficits in public sector accountability and deep-rooted problems of inefficiency, malpractice and corruption.”

These words are contained in a new report published in Brussels by the anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International. The organisation is active in more than 100 countries, but this latest report focuses on what it calls “a pan-European problem.”

Transparency International’s managing director, Cobus de Swardt, said the report “raises troubling questions at a time when transparent leadership is needed as Europe tries to resolve its economic crisis.”

The report emphasises that corruption has been allowed to run rampant and undermine economic stability because of close ties between governments and businesses.

After assessing more than 300 national institutions in 25 European countries, Transparency International concluded that many governments were not sufficiently accountable for public contracts believed to be worth a total of €1.8 trillion a year.

Talking with one of the organisation’s volunteers in Lisbon, I learned that crooked ministers and mayors don’t necessarily award contracts to firms in the hope of being slipped a plain brown envelope stuffed with cash. Sometimes it is because of subtle inducements, such as the promise of a lucrative job or other personal perks after retirement from public service.

In other words, corruption, like everything else in life, is not as simple as it used to be. Solving it is not going to be easy. Transparency International’s vision of “ a world in which government, politics, business, civil society and the daily lives of people are free of corruption” may be a pipe dream.

Only two of the countries assessed for their latest report — Norway and the UK. — adequately protect whistleblowers who have the courage and determination to speak out against corruption.

Unfortunately, Transparency International cannot itself investigate reported cases of wrongdoing. That’s up to national authorities. And, of course, many of them, including police forces and judiciaries, are themselves, eh, riddled with corruption.

All of this helps clear the consciences of us lesser mortals who increasingly these days might be tempted to provide or accept cash for goods or services without official receipts, thus avoiding the inconvenience of VAT.  Anyway, that’s not really corruption. It’s just the normal way of doing things in order to survive, isn’t it? 


First published in Portuguese, German and English in 
Jornal Algarve 123, Edition 733 14 June 2012
www.algarve123.com

Money worries, depression and worse

 It is one of the pinnacle events of the English summer social season, but Charles Harbord, the Harrow-educated aristocrat and former Algarve resident, will not be attending Royal Ascot this month.

He appeared to be in good spirits when photographed at Ascot last year in top hat and tails, with a champagne flute in hand, next to his party-loving daughters, Astrid and Davina.

Appearances can be deceptive, of course. To some outsiders, Charles Harbord was an upper crust snob. Those who knew him better say he was an English gentleman of the sort you don’t often meet any more.

He was not a ‘Champagne Charlie’ as described in the British tabloid press, said one of his old friends in the Algarve, “but he liked a glass or two of wine – just like the rest of us.”

It turns out he also had financial worries - just like the rest of us.

A fortnight ago, Charles Harbord shot himself in his family home near Gillingham in Dorset.  His wife and daughters were devastated.

Charles was a descendant of Harbord Harbord whom Prime Minister William Pitt appointed 1st Baron Suffield in 1786. Charles’ second wife Sarah-Juliet – SJ to her friends – is prominent in children’s charity circles in the UK.

Their two daughters are close friends of Prince Harry.  Even before her romantic attachment to Harry, Astrid was a companion of  Kate Middleton and attended Kate’s hen party before the wedding with Prince William.

Charles  first came to the Algarve as a young man at the end of the late 1960s or early 1970s. He and some of his pals once dressed up in drag for a night on the town in Albufeira. Wearing kaftan dresses, wigs and jewellery, they looked so authentic that they were prevented from entering Albufeira’s renowned Harry’s Bar because the management had a ban on “unescorted women”.

Moving back and forth between England and the Algarve, he lived well without working, seemingly on inherited wealth. When he returned permanently less than 20 years later with his wife and two young daughters, he built  a large, impressive house in the western Algarve.

An enigmatic figure, Charles had successfully sleighed down the mighty Cresta Run in Switzerland. But he was unable to ride a precursor of the jet ski in the calm waters at Meia Praia in Lagos Bay. After falling off several times, he told the owner: “This thing's got some kind of basic instability built into it.” It was Charles who had the instability.

Although in many ways a private man, he opened his Algarve home to art classes with tutors brought out specially from England. He didn’t seem to do it for profit. 

An Algarve businesswoman and artist who regularly attended recalls the Harbords as being utterly charming. “The dinners at their home were delightful and always featured lovely wines, but they were not flamboyant affairs,” she recalls.

Eventually, Charles sold the house and moved with his family into rented accommodation.  All the while the children had been attending a local English-language primary school.  When they were ready for secondary school, the family returned to England for good.

After some years in a magnificent country mansion in Wiltshire, the Harbords sold up and moved to the apartment in a Grade II listed manor house where he chose to die.

Charles Harbord would seem to epitomise the fact that while money cannot buy happiness, a lack of it often causes great unhappiness. In these difficult economic times, an increasing number of people in Portugal, regardless of ancestry, know that only too well.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that in the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide. Although suicide has traditionally been highest among men  in Charles Harbord’s age bracket (65 and over), young people are now the group at highest risk in many countries. Youth suicide is increasing at the greatest rate.

Depression is associated with the great majority of suicide cases. Unemployment is one of the main contributing factors. Joblessness fosters feelings of hopelessness. The number of unemployed in Portugal is expected to reach 16 per cent next year.

All that can be said in mitigation is that only a small proportion of people who consider suicide, perhaps one in 200, actually commit it.

Vatican unveils guidelines on miracles

The Vatican has made public its hitherto closely guarded guidelines on how apparitions, miracles and other supernatural phenomenon should be evaluated within the Church.

The authenticity of wondrous events at places such Fátima in Portugal and Lourdes in France has long been officially accepted. Appearances of the Virgin Mary at Fátima on the same date on six consecutive months, and the ‘miracle of the sun’ witnessed by tens of thousands of people in 1917, were genuine occurrences, according to the Vatican. Sceptics dismiss all this as deluded mumbo-jumbo.

Now the Vatican has openly expressed the ground rules for deciding. In essence, it is up to the local bishop advised by a specially set up panel of theologians, psychologists and doctors. They must determine whether such a spiritual revelation corresponds with Church doctrine and whether it comes from a mentally and morally sound source. 

This clarification comes amid the on-going Vatileaks scandal over documents allegedly stolen by the pope’s butler.

Ironically, the current top two at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Ratzinger, and his second-in-command Tarcisio Bertone, were the prelates who made public the long-withheld ‘third secret’ of Fatima in 2000. But their explanation of the secret was widely rejected within the Catholic Church as a cover-up of the truth.

The third secret was said to have been entrusted by the Virgin Mary to Lúcia, the eldest of three child visionaries at Fátima. When eventually disclosed after years of public clamouring, the Vatican unconvincingly linked the secret to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in St Peter’s Square in 1981.

Many Catholics believe Our Lady of Fatima warned that the Church was in grave danger of being destroyed from within. There is now dark talk that the leak of confidential documents at the Vatican points to an internal power struggle.

The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr Federico Lombardi, has denied media suggestions that the pope is considering resigning because of the scandal. The Curia has expressed its solidarity with the pontiff and continues to work “in full communion with the Successor of Peter,” he said.

“We are seeking the truth, and trying to objectively understand what may have happened. First, however, it is necessary to be sure to have understood it, in respect for persons and the truth."

Vatileaks - did the butler act alone?

Pope Benedict XVI’s  butler, Paolo Gabriele, is due to be formally questioned by Vatican prosecutors in the next few days. His lawyers say he has pledged to fully cooperate with the investigation. This raises the spectre that high ranking prelates may soon be implicated.

Associated Press reports that the scandal has tormented the Vatican for months and represents one of the greatest breaches of trust and security for the pope in recent memory.

Pope Benedict wants to get to the bottom of the scandal in order to heal the breach and re-establish a sense of trust among the faithful, according to the Vatican’s undersecretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu.

“I consider the publication of stolen letters to be an unprecedentedly grave immoral act,” Becciu told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. “It’s not just that the pope’s papers were stolen, but that people who turned to him as the vicar of Christ have had their consciences violated.”

Benedict’s personal butler was arrested and accused of theft after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment. Few think the butler acted alone.

The motivation for the leaks remains uncertain. Some commentators say they appear designed to discredit Benedict’s second-in-command, the secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Others say they are aimed at undermining the Vatican’s efforts to become more financially transparent. Still others say they aim to show the weakness of the  85-year-old Benedict in running the Church.

Vatican turmoil over leaked secrets

It will be interesting to see if the latest scandal within the Vatican throws further light on the festering controversies detailed in my book The Fátima Phenomenon - Divine Grace, Delusion or Pious Fraud?

A Vatican spokesman has confirmed that the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, is now under arrest and being held in a cell within the Vatican, charged with aggravated theft. He is alleged to have stolen and leaked hundreds of confidential documents.

The documents are said to include correspondence, notes and memos to the pope and his private secretary. Gabriele was is one of only a handful of people with access to the pontiff's private papers.

Reports from Rome suggest the documents contain evidence and expressions of concerns about internal power struggles, intrigue and corruption at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI's butler was the alleged mole feeding the documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff's No. 2.

Last week, the President of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted amid money laundering allegations. Associated Press has quoted Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the bank, as saying the turmoil was beyond belief even in a work of fiction. “No editor would let you put it in a novel," he said.

Deep concerns about goings-on in the Vatican have long been expressed by traditionalist groups within the Church, such as the Fátima Center apostolate based in North America, and the worldwide Sedevacantist movement.

These two groups and many other devout Catholics are convinced that the present pope and some of his predecessors have been responsible for a cover-up of the so-called Third Secret of Fátima. These concerns are fully explained in The Fátima Phenomenon – Divine Grace, Delusion or Pious Fraud? 
First published in Portuguese in 2010, it is now available in English as an ebook from Amazon.

   

Plenty of time to ponder a better life

 I arrived at a state-run health centre last Tuesday in good time for my appointment made exactly a month earlier. The receptionist told me I was third in line to see the doctor, a young woman. More people were waiting in the same area to see another doctor, a middle-aged man.

That morning, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had issued its latest Better Life Index. It reported that 61% of Portuguese women aged between 15 and 64 are in paid work, compared with 70% of men.

Here it seemed like more than 90% of the observable staff were women, despite the OECD’s assertion that “glaring gender differences” mean Portuguese women spend more than five hours a day on domestic chores, while men spend only about 90 minutes cooking, cleaning or caring for children.

In the developed world, Portugal has one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor. It is the most unequal country in Europe, according to the OECD. The top 20% of the population earn six times as much as the bottom 20%. I felt sure no one in the top 20% would be seen dead in this national health centre.

The male doctor was clearing his line of patients fairly quickly. The woman doctor was taking much longer but, eventually, she got around to calling in her next client, a young mother with a baby. It occurred to me that in keeping with the OECD average, this Portuguese baby had a life expectancy of almost 80 years – 77 if it was a boy, 83 if it was a girl.

Meanwhile, the elderly patient in front of me was becoming increasingly depressed at having to spend so much of his dwindling lifespan waiting in a corridor. It must have seemed like eternity.

Suddenly a young schoolgirl appeared and marched confidently up to a desk staffed by two talkative women who seemed to have the joint responsibility of answering a phone that seldom rang. The girl was probably a grandchild of one of the operators.

As the three of them chatted, the phone rang but the women simply ignored it and carried on nattering. The demeanour of the operators suggested they were not among the 30% of Portuguese adults aged between 25 and 64 who have successfully completed a high-school education. This, incidentally, is the lowest rate among OECD countries. The average is 74%.

Later, when the little girl said goodbye and skipped off home, I guessed she would score well in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. In reading literacy, maths and science tests, Portuguese girls outperform boys by 10 points, slightly more than the average OECD gender gap of 9 points.

Finally and at long last I was summoned to the consulting room. The lady in white smiled, shook hands firmly and asked brightly: “How are you?”

I passed her an envelope containing blood test results, hoping she would answer the question for me.

No wonder she was smiling. Male domination is on the wane. Across the 34 OECD countries, women have more job satisfaction and are happier than men.

As the doctor tapped clinical statistics into her computer, I still had time to reflect on the Better Life Index. Would I emerge from the health centre among the 72% in Portugal who say that, on an average day, they have more positive than negative experiences? 

Whither the Weather?

     The Algarve is supposed to have one the best climates in the world. Well, it’s simply not good enough.

     Can you remember as far back as the first week of November last year? Winter got off to a rip-roaring start. A storm tore the roof off the terminal at Faro Airport and trashed vegetable greenhouses. Then, throughout the supposedly wettest months, we basked in sunshine, leaving orange groves gasping for liquid refreshment. A few spring showers came too late for the burgeoning broad beans.

     A friend of mine accepted an outdoor contract in late April. The nature of the work demanded dry, calm conditions. The conditions had been perfect all winter. The day his team started work, it started raining. It rained intermittently, sometimes heavily, for two weeks. When the rain stopped, it was replaced by gale-force winds. When the winds stopped, temperatures suddenly shot up to 40ºC – and it was only mid May! What is it going to be like in July and August?

     The climate is changing the world over. It would be surprising if it wasn’t. It’s been changing this way and that for about four billion years. It’s sure to continue to change whatever we do, or don’t do. We will either just have to get used it, or just  keep on moaning.

     While you are lying awake at night thinking of one more thing to worry about, consider this. Please concentrate. The temperature in Portugal has risen by an average of 1.2 degrees since 1930. Before that, it took a whole century to rise by 0.8 degrees.

     It may be all our own fault. Well, not ours exactly. It’s the fault of those daft people who send many billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. 

     Whether or not it’s due partly, or mainly, to our carbon emissions, hotter and more prolonged summers could have alarming consequences. These could include making the Algarve as attractive to residents and foreign visitors as the Sahara desert.

     It’s bad enough that global warming is causing the far-away polar ice caps to melt. Now we learn that the Gulf Stream that warms our shore is likely to weaken by as much as 25% over the next 100 years.

     Some scientists are predicting that the Gulf Stream may disappear altogether. If so, it may get colder, not hotter, in the Algarve. Monchique could become a ski resort.
     Incidentally, no one is suggesting that temperatures might stay boringly more or less the same as at present.

     This is all very worrying for wine lovers. Viticulturists say that increased temperatures of around 2.0ºC during the growing season over the past 50 yeas have significantly helped improve the quality of vintages in all major wine-producing countries. Analysts expect the average growing season temperature to increase by another 2.0ºC in most wine countries over the next five decades – and by a whopping 2.85ºC here in southern Portugal.

     Now for the really bad news. Grape varieties have been carefully selected to suit the climate in which they are grown. If the Algarve becomes a desert and the grapes frizzle, we might have to import our wine from Britain!