According to the annual report of the European Court of Auditors, seen by The Daily Telegraph, £5.5 billion of the EU budget last year was mis-spent because of controls on spending that were deemed to be only “partially effective” by experts. The audit, which will be published on Wednesday, found that £109 billion out of a total of £117 billion spent by the EU in 2013 was "affected by material error”. It means that the Brussels accounts have not been given the all clear for 19 years running. Treasury sources said that the disclosure shows why the EU needs “urgent reform”.

Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, said: “It's hard to swallow the British taxpayer being stung, when the Brussels boondoggle squanders £5 billion in a year and fails to produce clean accounts in almost two decades.” Peter Bone, the Tory MP for Wellingborough, said: “For the EU to demand £1.7 billion from us on December 1 is laughable especially when vast sums – far greater than that – are mis-spent every year by Brussels.”

“They need to put their house in order before making these ridiculous demands of the British people. It is breathtaking hypocrisy at a time when they cannot even run their own affairs.” Syed Kamall, the leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, described the demand for extra money from British taxpayers as a “joke” while the EU continues to fail its audit.

France: According to the latest number crunching, France will have the biggest budget deficit in the Eurozone in 2016. The black hole in the country's public finances is now expected to grow to -4.7 percent of GDP, a long way above the mandated -3 percent set by Brussels for euro-area members.

Germany: So long Europe's powerhouse through the crisis, Germany also finds itself mired in low growth. But unlike France and its pitiful public finances, Berlin could find itself rapped on the knuckles for having the opposite problem. The country's balance of payments position with the rest of the world is due to reach a record surplus of 7.1 percent of GDP next year. This is far above Europe's mandated 6 percent maximum, and means Berlin risks being hit with a sanction under new rules which punish excessive imbalances for creditor as well as debtor countries.

This is not the first time the Continent's two most important economies have fallen foul of the euro's fiscal rules. Back in 2003, both France and Germany were able to flout the conditions of the Stability and Growth Pact, after they ran budget deficits in excess of 3 percent of their GDP. Both managed to avoid sanctions after their fellow members decided to let them off the hook. In the years following the crisis, this episode has come to be seen as evidence of the failure of a system in which members seemed to have little incentive to stick to the rules of the game.

Let's just hope that global financial markets do not get shredded in the crossfire. Without a doubt, the Japanese are desperate. Their economic decline has lasted for decades, and their debt levels are off the charts. In such a situation, printing more money seems like such an easy solution. But as history has shown us, wild money printing always ends badly. Just remember what happened in the Weimar Republic and in Zimbabwe. At this point, the Bank of Japan is already behaving so recklessly that it is making the Federal Reserve look somewhat responsible in comparison. So why would they want to devalue their currency?

Well, there are too main reasons why nations do this. One reason is that it makes it easier to pay off debt. The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan is approximately 250 percent at the moment, and the total debt to GDP ratio is approximately 600 percent. When you have lots more money floating around, servicing crippling levels of debt becomes more feasible.

Secondly, nations like to devalue their currencies because it makes their products less expensive on the world stage. In other words, it helps them sell more stuff to other people. But in the process, this hurts other exporters. This is why I said that there are winners and there are losers in every currency war. If you boost your exports by devaluing your currency, you take away business from someone else. And ultimately other nations start devaluing their currencies in an attempt to stay competitive. That is why they call it a currency war.

Sarah Carter, of the Family Education Trust, sounded the alarm about the guidance, warning that sometimes what is taught in school sex and relationship lessons is against the law. She told the Commons education select committee, how the Brook's tool 'states that for young people who are consensually sexually active from the age of 13, this is normal behaviour and development, whereas actually the law states that young persons should wait until they are 16 at least, never mind if they are ready or not'. Miss Carter added: 'That's awfully unlawful behaviour, and so often what's taught in SRE isn't always lawful.'

According to a new study by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 90% of households in the US are poorer now than they were in 1987. In other words, the economic boom which lasted from the late 1980's to 2007 not only passed people by, but left them worse off than before. Analysing the findings, the Washington Post pointed out that “It's been a lost 25 years for the bottom 90 percent.” At the same time, it notes that the study revealed that inequality has rocketed leaving 41 percent of all wealth in the US in the hands of the top 1%.

According to the Post, the study shows that the polarization is getting even sharper. “Since 1980,” it says “the top 0.01 percent's piece of the wealth pie has increased by 8.6 percentage points, while the next 0.09 percent's has done so by 5.4. The bottom 99 percent, meanwhile, have seen their wealth share fall an astonishing 18 percentage points.”

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect “when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.” It records “the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.” It ignores “do-not-track” requests as a considered matter of policy.

It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide “gesture control” for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.

More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a “voice recognition” feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.” Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV. You may not be watching, but the telescreen is listening.

I do not doubt that this data is important to providing customized content and convenience, but it is also incredibly personal, constitutionally protected information that should not be for sale to advertisers and should require a warrant for law enforcement to access. Of course, there is always the “dumb” option. Users may have the ability to disable data collection, but it comes at a cost. The device will not function properly or allow the use of its high-tech features. This leaves consumers with an unacceptable choice between keeping up with technology and retaining their personal privacy.

The leader, the US itself, was so far in front that its total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was more than four times larger than China’s and nine times the size of Russia’s. The world’s most populous country, India, had almost the same gross income as comparatively tiny Italy and the UK. Any notion that the order would change so dramatically in a mere two decades seemed laughable. The Western perception was that China and India were backward and would take a century to become rivals. Russia was seen as a basket case, on its knees and ruled by chaos. There was a lot of merit in that notion in the 90's.

Now the joke is on the West. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that by 2015, four of the world’s top economies will be members of the club known by its acronym, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China). China will replace the US as top dog. This might already have happened; economic figures tend to lag behind economic facts. Italy, the sick man of Europe, is out of the top 10 and the UK is barely hanging on, although London is still promoted as a financial powerhouse. The only people who believe that anymore are little Englanders. The UK has become the Julie Andrews of geopolitics, a fading star that was once luminous. France is impotent, lurching from crisis to mishap and back again.

How the US reacts to the new reality will be vital. In an almost cartoon-like way, Washington discourse is now focused on the NSA, spooks, shadow governments, a lost and pathetic fourth estate, squandered militaristic might, and rampant, terrifying nationalism. This juvenility requires a bad guy. In a decade, it has moved from Bin Laden, Saddam, and ‘Freedom Fries’ to Russophobia.

If the American elite maintain the same behavior, the transition to a multi-polar world mightn’t be peaceful. That’s the fear, and that fear is real.