All the world’s a video clip! Is this good or bad?

Would that policeman offering an illegal way to 'settle' a speeding fine have behaved differently if he had realised he was on camera? This is a screen capture from the video of the British couple being ticketed in Malaysia. — Tread the Globe

Tell me if you’ve heard this one: A police officer stops a car on a Malaysian highway. It looks like it’s a part of an operation to curb speeding. The officer walks up to the driver and says something that most Malaysians might find surprising: “Hah, what are you doing? Wei, nak bagi duit ke? (Were you going give me money?)”

In the last week of January 2024 we have not one but two videos about police officers and bribes in Malaysia. While the one I describe above shows a police officer cautioning a driver for trying to bribe him, there is another one that went viral earlier in the week about a globetrotting British couple who are stopped for speeding. In that one, the officer suggests, “Pay at the police station, three hundred. Pay here, hundred.”