Such payments typically cover little more than the bus fare to hospital, and the person who brokers the deal, whether the principal or local policeman, may take a cut.

ECONOMIST: South Africa: Wolves in teachers’ hats | The

He tells me he'll take any kind of work, including the most dangerous job in Iraq: policeman.

CNN: War-scarred Baghdad places little faith in U.S. election

We are being told that Britain's top policeman, Sir Paul Stephenson, has resigned in order to take responsibility for the failures in the Metropolitan Police.

BBC: An old-fashioned resignation?

The policeman in charge of the investigation who had been confident enough to take a holiday in Spain had to rush home to supervise a string of hasty arrests.

ECONOMIST: The airline bombers

Whatever the undoubted earlier and continued provocations of Colonel Nasser's policies, to invite Egypt to abandon its only tenable line of defence against attack from the east, and Israel to take up positions more than 100 miles inside the Egyptian border, was the act of a partisan rather than a policeman.

ECONOMIST: Splenetic Isolation | The

It does not take long to find people with personal experiences - the bus driver who is forced to pay a bribe to a policeman to keep his vehicle on the road, the would-be secretary who says she will only get a job if she can give "a small present" to a company official.

BBC: NEWS | Business | Donors bank on eradicating corruption