They showed an extraordinary variety of petty abuses, many involving regulations that allow legislators to deduct the expenses of a second home.
But it will probably be easier to curb large-scale corruption in the customs service, for example than to tackle the petty abuses that directly injure ordinary people.For most Tanzanians, life is still hard.
The report notes that in Wardak Province in eastern Afghanistan "most of the issues involve petty theft and abuse of authority".
A grim, isolated compound in Hong Kong's New Territories, it is a breeding ground for drug abuse, petty crime and sporadic violence.
Mr. Gibbons has assembled bits and pieces of Super-8 films to compose a chronicle of petty larceny, drug abuse and general irresponsibility, all of which he characterizes as research.
Relatively high youth unemployment, as well as a lack of entertainment or recreational amenities (especially in some post-World War II suburbs), has made the city particularly its dilapidated public housing schemes on its outskirts notorious for drug abuse, petty violence, and more serious crime.
He was remarkably outspoken about one of the most senior cardinals in the Catholic Church, Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II and now dean of the College of Cardinals, who on Easter Sunday in the Pope's presence had called the reports of clerical sexual abuse "petty gossip".
But the last time I met a room full of libertarians (it was at the Institute for Economic Affairs, the free-market thinktank) they turned out to be a bunch of spiteful whingers obsessed with abusing petty officialdom, especially customs officers, for some reason.
It's an episode of domestic abuse or petty larceny.
And with its familiar roster of addictions, petty crime and domestic abuse, you may feel at first that it's not worth revisiting.
