Corruption

Nobody likes it, that I hope is pretty much beyond contention.

The Lefties don't like the fact that Big Oil, Rupert Murdoch or whoever can blackmail or bribe governments to follow a certain line.

Similarly, right-wingers don't like the fact that Big Government, in relative or absolute terms, tends to be corrupt: the bigger the trough, the more important it is to get your snout in it.

As a small-government, free-market, rabid libertarian, I find both forms of corruption equally abhorrent.

This is a huge topic, I could probably devote the rest of my life to this cause without achieving much.

Maybe the easiest way to look at this is to divide between:
a) People who work hard, add something of value to society, obey the law, pay their taxes and want to be left in peace; and
b) Those people who don't want to work hard, who want subsidies, tax-breaks or handouts, who want constantly to change the law, who don't want to pay their fair share, who want to constantly meddle in other people's lives, and whose political influence goes way beyond what they actually contribute to society as a whole*.

F*** it, I am not sure where to start. All ideas welcome!

* For example, Quangista, people with fat EU pensions, Trade Union leaders, hedge fund managers, French farmers, Devon Pensioners, City lawyers, auditors, HIP-providers, the nuclear industry, Brussels lobbyists, the race relations industry, any body with 'regional' or 'partnership' in its name, agricultural landowners, the military-industrial bloc, manufacturers of bendy buses or windscreen wipers for tractors, state-funded charities, African kleptocrats, asbestos-removal companies, administrators of means-tested benefits, anybody in receipt of EU or Third World aid, state-subsidised banks, the United Nations, the Confederation of Registered Gas Installers, Al Gore, pension fund trustees, the BBC, Channel 4, Galileo, NASA, speed camera installers, insurance companies, the British Potato Council, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Scottish MPs in the UK cabinet, 70 per cent of people in Northern Ireland, 5-a-day advisers, the people who built Wembley Stadium or The Millennium Dome aka The O2, managers in the NHS, Local Education Authorities, churches, the English National Opera, Northern Rock, the Financial Services Authority, oh f*** it , I give up.