Unions, Government Parties, Charities, Private Sector company management (and Public Sector funding / handling) - all corrupt. But I would be keen to say that.. one is no worse than the other. Sure, one party will screw up XYZ and do a better job at ABC. But you can bet that the opposition, once in power, might do a great job at ABC... but totally screw up XYZ. Whichever one you support I suppose just depends on how much you personally are aware of how much either XYC or ABC affects you. - and it might not even affect you, but maybe you have strong views fuelled by the way the media sh*t stirs every topic. We're all caught up somewhere in the trap. I think all politicians and corruption is why we're all dragged into these expensive, useless fads... diesel, now EVs.. and no doubt something else after.
On the China note... I think if we could ignore all safety, human rights and pull money out of anything the government seen fit, we'd be polishing off HS5 now... In fairness, the only reason we can't compete with China and the likes is because we have ideals. Human rights, safety, comfort, respect, right to object, freedom that its people don't have. It's why all they can do is copy innovation from other countries. They can only do it , and do it so fast, because they don't have any regard for checks or balances like we have above. They do it because their government has no opposition, its people no say, and all the other governments and organisation around the world too scared to upset them - and equally, too dependent on its mass produced crap - which we are basically paying for as fuel for their huge infrastructure and military funding... :-/ It's quite sick really. Some hope comes as perhaps the US will level the playing field with things like computer chip production... and large companies like Apple making major investment in diversifying its mass production between India and China... It's not going to put jobs back into the US or Europe / UK... but it'll give us more leverage over bringing China to its knees which it very much is in need of.
I just hate the fact that China is now excelling in making EVs and flooding our market with them. And us (as a society at large) are foolish enough to buy them. MG was the first one I heard of... I suppose it's a side effect of the contemporary notion that anybody who is proud to be British, are now automatically associated with extreme, 'far right' 'anti-vax' 'extremists. I would wager that that's why we probably have no moral shame now in where our money goes. Sure, me or you as individuals can boycott these things and make a drop in the ocean. But the mindset of maybe supporting our Western - even EU car brands - or at least ones from countries with similar values, Korea or Japan - is what we should pay a little bit more for. If enough of us did that, maybe we'd be able to send signals in the marketplace that rejects Chinese crap. No disrespect to the people, but because everything in that country has the CCP's finger in it... it's worth boycotting. Instead, we are ripping each other apart and getting polarised, divided, arguments between 'Us (UK) and Them (EU)' when really, on a world scale we're more like each other than not - especially on morals and values and industry / needs. Now... to end on a conspiracy theory note... it is thought that a lot of this 2016 onwards divisiveness is being caused by Russian / Chinese intervention and manipulation / bots online.... tearing our society apart by turning us all against one another. Of course, that can be dismissed as a silly notion but it's all the more reason that we as neighbours / fellow UK citizen / fellow European country dwellers / fellow Westerners who believe in things like human rights / respect / fair trade work together instead of shooting each other down.
There will always be corruption but even corrupt governments and government organisations (and companies) can still do a world of good by its 99% contents of the 'worker bees' or civil servants or people on the ground, delivering things, helping people live their lives better and happier and more comfortably. Even if there are clowns on the news taking big bonuses, occasionally ruining the things altogether...
That went well off topic. Even by my standards...