text:
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491420362458753452016-04-29T13:36:33.381+08:00News ClipsHere's the News. All the news worth reading. (To me anyway) Note that this is a news clippings blog. Articles (mainly from Straits Times) are NOT written by me. Due to spam comments, comments are now moderated. Please read "This Blog" and "Before you comment".El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-36727677611187065612016-04-29T13:36:00.001+08:002016-04-29T13:36:33.397+08:00Thais woke up to a scandal per dayWhen those in power view corruption as an expected perk

ALAN DAWSON

APRIL 28, 2016

The public learned a bit more about how the Thai system works, and it was not a pretty sight. The lesson from last week was arguably that anyone — literally anyone who can do it, does it. Not only does it but actually takes it as an expected perk.

The subtext: The man who blames the politicians for it also does it.

After a cooling-down day following the Songkran New Year and Highway Massacre extravaganza, the country was met last Tuesday morning with a headline that said: "Preecha 'abused power.' "

A kind whistleblower had spent the Seven Dangerous Days (a reference to the week of New Year celebrations where the death toll on Thai roads is at its peak) ferreting out a classified document not fit for the eyes of common people. In it, the powerful permanent secretary of the ministry of defence had both initiated and then signed off a sweet deal for a young university graduate to enter the army with an officer's rank, but no military training or, in fact, authority.

General Preecha Chan-o-cha said it was true. He had taken pity on a talented young man stuck in a drone job he hated. So he made the promising man an acting sub-lieutenant handling civil affairs in the 3rd Army, with a salary of 15,000 baht.

Gen Preecha is the brother of the prime minister, Gen Prayut. The talented young man with the new army job is army Sub Lt Patipat Chan-o-cha, who is Gen Preecha's son and has a proud Uncle Too (the Prime Minister's nickname).

All over the world, of course, there are military families, but it is rare outside of banana-rich oligarchies to see the combination of secrecy, assumed privilege and attempted secrecy of poor Sub Lt Patipat's case. Dad, uncle and Defence Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon circled the wagons faster than an influential family caught in a fatal auto accident. Uncle Too explained, "Shut up," because it was all done legitimately.

He is right. And so is Gen Preecha, who said "everyone does it".

IS ANYONE EVER HELD ACCOUNTABLE?

On Wednesday, the public learned: Election Commissioners used overseas trips for group fun, family visits.

An investigative piece by Thailand's leading English-language daily revealed the overseas hibbity jibbity of the men who will run the three billion baht referendum.

As a matter of course and privilege, they not only while away a week or more on alleged "work trips" to observe how foreigners vote, they take big groups of aides, secretaries and the like with them.

Example: Chairman Supachai Somcharoen has a son in the United States. Mr Supachai recently found it essential to the referendum process to observe a US primary for eight days. Mr Supachai did not arrange the trip to see his son, but by good fortune he just happened to come upon him during the trip.

For this, Thai tax payers are not only paying double the standard expenses of 35,000 baht per person per trip. They are paying it at a time the government, the aforementioned Gen Prayut, has banned overseas junkets. Mr Supachai and EC cohorts say they are entitled because they have to be well educated on elections. (They also reportedly claimed they thought the ban applied only to government officials, not themselves, who are members of an independent organisation.)

Then on Thursday: "Suksapan store under investigation."

The nationwide chain of Education Ministry stores has long been shadowed by a public perception that Suksapan exists for its Ministry of Education civil servants and phuyai (Thai for important people), and not students and parents. Nevertheless, its stated job is to provide required books and quality school uniforms at extremely low prices. They have one job. You can guess the rest.

Last week, a whistleblower revealed that 530,000 textbooks had just walked away from the warehouses. Also, someone over-ordered uniforms by 500,000 units so they could rot in storage.

On Friday, this one hurt: "Farm Chokchai land 'mostly illegal.' "

It seems that Thailand's first cattle spread and dude ranch intrudes into Khao Yai National Park, sits on land secured by title deeds it has no right to and just for kicks has blocked the entrance to a next-door village because it's big and entitled and because it can.

Farm Chokchai is a fabulous introduction to the innocent age of real cowboys, cattle roping and massive steaks on hot platters. Mr Chokchai Bulakul established the Chokchai ranch in 1957. (It's now run by his son Choak and attracts up to 200,000 visitors a year.) What a letdown if the Department of Special Investigations is right and it's been sitting on a corrupt swamp all this time, not lush cattle-feeding grass. How sad if it has just been 60 years of enriching three generations of Land Department snudges.

And if a new, major case every day of nepotism, influence, outright graft and officials sniggering at their corrupt schemes milking the public is shocking, how much worse it is that there is no apparent chance of anyone ever being held accountable. (BANGKOK POST)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alan Dawson, a subeditor with Bangkok Post, has lived in Thailand most of his life. He started his journalism career in the 1960s and was the bureau chief in Ho Chi Minh City for the United Press International during the Vietnam War.El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-26844035207145520782016-04-29T11:13:00.001+08:002016-04-29T11:13:07.127+08:00In Asia, govts struggle to deal with a worsening water crisisBRAHMA CHELLANEY

APRIL 29, 2016

Asia's water woes are worsening. Already the world's driest continent in per capita terms, Asia now faces a severe drought that has parched a vast region extending from southern Vietnam to central India. This has exacerbated political tensions, because it has highlighted the impact of China's dam-building policy on the environment and on water flows to the dozen countries located downstream.

[Don't know if the dam building is for hydro-electric power to reduce China's carbon emission from coal-fired power plants. If so, trying to save the earth, is killing the earth.]

Today's drought in parts of South-east and South Asia is the worst in decades. Among the hardest hit areas are Vietnam's Mekong Delta (a rice bowl of Asia) and central highlands; 27 of Thailand's 76 provinces; parts of Cambodia; Myanmar's largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay; and areas of India that are home to more than a quarter of the country's massive population.

Droughts may not knock down buildings, but they carry high social and economic costs. Millions of Asians now confront severe water shortages, and some have been forced to relocate. Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia have had to scale back traditional water festivals marking their New Year. The High Court of Bombay moved the world's biggest and wealthiest cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League, out of the state of Maharashtra. In one Maharashtra county, the local authorities, fearing violence, temporarily banned gatherings of more than five people around water storage and supply facilities.

MOUNTING LOSSES IN RICE-PRODUCING COUNTRIES

Meanwhile, the mounting drought-related losses in some of the world's top rice-producing countries — Thailand, Vietnam and India — threaten to roil the world's already tight rice market. Barely 7 per cent of global rice output is traded internationally, because much of it is consumed where it is produced: In Asia.

[The Thai Govt under former-PM Yingluck had bought and stockpiled rice when there was a surplus and prices were low. Then they had to sell off the stockpile because they couldn't afford to hold it. If they could hold on for 3 years, they wouldn't have to sell it at a loss. Maybe.]

Rice losses have been particularly significant in Thailand and Vietnam, which account for half of all rice exports and almost three-quarters of this decade's projected export growth. Around 230,000ha of paddy rice cultivation has been destroyed just in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where depleted river flows have led to saltwater intrusion from the South China Sea, rendering nearly 10 per cent of the rice farms potentially infertile.

This drought may be unprecedented, but it is not an anomaly. On the contrary, environmental challenges in Asia, such as ecosystem degradation, groundwater depletion, the contamination of water resources, the El Nino tropical weather pattern and the effects of global warming are causing droughts to become increasingly frequent and increasingly severe.

Even without droughts, Asia would be facing formidable water constraints. The annual amount of available fresh water per capita in the region (2,816 cubic metres) is already less than half the global average (6,079 cubic metres). As the region pursues rapid economic development, characterised by massive increases in resource consumption and serious environmental damage, its water constraints are tightening further. The challenge is compounded by Asians' changing dietary preferences, particularly higher consumption of meat, the production of which is notoriously water-intensive.

ADDING SUPPLY INSTEAD OF MANAGING WATER

While Asia's resource-hungry economies can secure fossil fuels and mineral ores from distant lands, they cannot import water, which is prohibitively expensive to transport. So they have been overexploiting local resources instead, a practice that has spurred an environmental crisis, advancing regional climate change and intensifying natural disasters such as droughts.

As a result, Asia, which accounts for 72 per cent of the world's total irrigated acreage, now faces a dilemma: It must grow enough food to meet rising demand, while reducing the amount of water that goes toward irrigation. Unless Asia resolves it, economic development will be at risk, with major consequences for the global economy.

Yet the continent's water crisis is only worsening. According to a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, there is a "high risk" that Asia's water stress could worsen to water scarcity by 2050. Water-sharing disputes between countries or provinces are becoming increasingly frequent because of the proliferation of dam projects that can adversely affect downstream flows. Such an approach represents a continuing preference for supply-side approaches over smart water management.

CHINA THE MAIN CULPRIT

The main culprit in this regard is China, which has heavily dammed the Mekong, South-east Asia's lifeline. In the current lean season, which will last until the monsoon rains arrive in June, the lower Mekong is, according to a recent United Nations report, running at "its lowest level since records began nearly 100 years ago."

China is now trying to play saviour, by releasing an unspecified quantity of water from one of its six upstream mega-dams to "accommodate the concerns" of drought-stricken countries. China's rulers have touted the move as underscoring the effectiveness of upstream "water facilities" in addressing droughts and containing floods.

Of course, in reality, all of this simply highlights the newfound reliance of downriver countries on Chinese goodwill, a dependence that is set to deepen as China builds 14 more dams on the Mekong.

The environmental impact of these projects is sure to exacerbate the ecological challenges, including drought, Asia already faces.

This competitive approach is putting Asia on a dangerous path, which can lead only to more environmental degradation, slower economic development, and even water wars. It is time to change course and embark on the path of rules-based cooperation, based on water-sharing accords, the free flow of hydrological data and dispute-settlement mechanisms.

Asian countries must work together to ensure greater efficiency in water consumption, increase the use of recycled and desalinated water, and promote innovative solutions that advance conservation and adaptation efforts. To this end, governments must phase out state subsidies that have encouraged profligate water use, such as in agriculture, and focus on building new market mechanisms and effective public-private partnerships.

[See: Atmospheric Water Generators. And the Fontus personal water generator. The Fontus developers estimate that in a hot humid area like Singapore or Thailand, it would take about 2 hours to fill the 800 ml bottle. These water generators, whether something like this (which produces "2 to 5 gallons" (8 to 20 litres) of water a day, or the Fontus, are intended to provide drinking water. It would not be able to provide enough water for agriculture and rice farming in particular. Also AWGs are not cheap. The Fontus is going for US$250 at crowdfunding stage. The "Aquaboy" is US$2000. And needs to run on electricity. Solar is an option (Fontus runs on solar power). And the filters will need to be replaced regularly. That cost needs to be taken into account and availability will be critical support.]

None of this will be possible without China's cooperation. Indeed, if China does not abandon its current approach — from its "water grab" in the Mekong and other international rivers to its "territorial grab" in the South China Sea — the prospects of a rules-based order in Asia could perish forever.

PROJECT SYNDICATE

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut, Water: Asia's New Battleground, and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-25050538879613685502016-04-28T16:13:00.000+08:002016-04-28T16:13:09.305+08:00A strangely mixed bag of possibilitiesMeira Chand

Apr 23, 2016

Born of Indian-Swiss parents, the writer grew up in Britain, and married an Indian who had business in Japan. She settled in - where else but S'pore

In these modern migratory times, the concept of home has become negotiable. Home is where the heart is, they say. And identity? Well, identity has always been a strangely mixed bag of possibilities. For me, the whole business only gets evermore surprising. From the beginning, I was constructed not to belong, yet I have only just diagnosed my malaise, but this is what life is like. It takes the better part of it to sort out the simplest of things.

According to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, if you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. Home, I have learnt, is not a place and belonging is a journey. And identity is what makes us feel connected to ourselves and to each other, to the earth and to the spirit. It would not surprise Lao Tzu to know I am quite breathless from the many changes of direction in my journey, and as far as knowing where I was heading, the red dot of Singapore, almost untraceable on a world map, never once entered my mind.

Once I felt I belonged in Britain, although I am not sure to what degree that country felt possessive of me. This was in the days before Britain became a multicultural place, before second- and third-generation immigrants from Third World countries began to speak English with Scottish or Birmingham accents, when it was still a bastion of Empire, a monocultural place.

That was the Britain I was born into, in the midst of the blitz of World War II, a Britain where a brown face on the street or in a school was all but an aberration. It was often suggested to me by school friends that I had a country other than England from where I had originally come, and to which I would eventually return. I listened in genuine incomprehension.

In the year E.M. Forster was writing A Passage To India, my father was experiencing an opposite voyage. Against family advice, he left India for England in 1919 to study medicine. The family resistance was not to the medicine, but to fear that he might succumb to the evils of the West and marry a white woman, which, of course, is what he did.

Unlike my nutmeg-skinned father, my Swiss mother blended easily into the white Eurocentric landscape of my childhood. Yet, both parents were immigrants to a country not their own, each struggled to assimilate in their different ways and so felt no obligation to pass on their native languages, religion or cultural traditions to their children. Some knowledge of my father's heritage would have been useful, for I married an Indian and went with him to the country of my ancestors in mind-numbing ignorance.

Before I eventually arrived in India, I spent several decades in Japan where my Indian husband took it into his head to establish a business. Japan is not a country to instil any sense of belonging. Assimilation for the outsider is not a choice, and this is made clear to all non-Japanese residents in a maze of bureaucratic procedures.

Just as I was born into a Britain before a cosmopolitan age, Japan when I arrived there in 1962 was a country still battling a residue of post-war problems. No modern highways, no bullet trains, no spoken English, little wealth or trade and no tourists. I lived in a two-down two-up wooden house in the middle of rice fields, without heating or cooling. We froze in winter and melted in summer.

I went to market with my basket in one hand and my dictionary in the other. Yet, in spite of decades in Japan, my inherent sense of outsidership was only compounded at every turn in that country. Indeed, so irrelevant did I feel to the intensely homogeneous Japanese life around me that I wrote seven novels there to prove I had some relevance, if only to myself.

MEIRA CHAND
Dr Meira Chand's multicultural heritage is reflected in her eight novels. Born and educated in London, she has lived extensively in Japan and India. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. In 1997, she moved to Singapore and became a citizen in 2011. She is involved in programmes to nurture and promote young writers, and is a board member of the National Arts Council. She wrote the story for the recent hit production, The LKY Musical.

THREE NOTABLE WORKS

A Different Sky (Harvill Secker/Random House, 2010)
 A novel that follows the arc of modern Singapore history. A Waterstones book of the month choice, long listed for the Impac Dublin literary award 2012, and on Oprah Winfrey's recommended reading list. UK Tatler said the book "put Singapore on the literary map".

The Painted Cage (Century, 1986)
 A murder mystery set in 1890s Yokohama, long listed for the Booker Prize and recently reissued by Faber Finds.

A Choice Of Evils (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
 An epic novel of the Sino-Japanese war and the rape of Nanking. The Times said it is "…a marvellously researched and impressively well-written novel".

•For more on the books and others, see www.meirachand.com.

•All books are on loan at the National Library. They are also available at Kinokuniya and Times bookstores, and on Amazon.com

Sandwiched somewhere within the Japanese sojourn there was an interlude of six years in India, in the city of Mumbai. Apart from brief visits counted in days, I had never lived in India. I had no understanding of the languages or dialects around me. Yet, in spite of these deterrents, within a short while I came to feel this was a country I could call home.

I was confronted for the first time in my life with a whole submerged half of myself, and although my intellectual identity was a European one, I felt a spiritual oneness with the land. The colour and emotional warmth of the people, the horror and pathos of so much of Indian life, the magic beauty of dusk and dawn, the smell of jasmine, the sound of prayer bells, and the sensuality that pervades even the darkest corner of Indian life, all did their work upon me. I felt I could live there forever.

Yet, once again, the problem of being an outsider reared its ugly head. Here, in the land of my father, I was not seen as Indian but English. I might have been able to overcome this, but soon circumstances conspired to return me to Japan.

A DOT BENEATH A TONGUE OF LAND

Finally, apathetically, I arrived in Singapore, the land of the Golden Chersonese. I knew the place only from the books of the intrepid 19th-century traveller Isabella Bird. It appeared no more than a dot beneath a tongue of land, a place without ancient culture, tradition or hinterland.

[For those born in Singapore, we also arrive apathetically, ignorantly, unintentionally, and maybe even against our will.]

A place where supposedly chewing gum could not be chewed, or uncensored words spat joyously into the stratosphere. Twenty years have gone by in this most unlikely place that I am now bold enough to call home, and to where after a long and itinerant life, I can, for the first time, say I feel some relevancy.

That I should feel this, having roamed the large world, is entirely due to the unique qualities of this small island. Not long after I arrived here, I found myself writing a novel about pre-independence Singapore. On the journey of research that accompanied the writing, I lived with migrants packed onto the decks of ships who arrived at this small island to lives of hardship and necessary pragmatism. I lived with those who had made good, and with others in communist jungle camps. I lived in halls of trade and politics. I lived through war and famine and fear, through death and bloody riots. I fought for the right to an independent land and then wondered how such a feat was to be engineered. I lived through regeneration and the conjured magic of reinvention. I lived the short modern history of Singapore.

And as I wrote, I realised that in the Singapore story were the generic seeds of my own journey, of the search for identity and belonging, for growth and affirmation, and the need for continuous reinvention.

Singapore, like myself, has a long history of conscious acts of cultural appropriation and incorporation, of reframing other people's narratives to form a richness of its own.

I now realise that, for me, home can be found only within myself and my work. Yet, Singapore has given me a relevancy as precious as any home.

The writer Han Suyin once said to me that people such as she and I are a joyous combustion of disparate parts. Singapore is just such a joyous combustion and, in its disparate parts, my heart rests at ease. I suspect this is as good as it can get for me.

[Perhaps, for disparate people, Singapore is closest to home precisely because we are "a place without ancient culture, tradition, or hinterland." We are the emptiness that is the promise of infinite possibilities. We are a new born child, tabula rasa, with a future yet unformed. We are on the beginnings of our journey to identity, and belonging. And that is exciting.]

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-76741320888717133532016-04-25T17:15:00.000+08:002016-04-25T17:15:09.439+08:00ERP 2.0: What it means to youChristopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent

FEB 27, 2016

It paves the way for changes in road-use habits and tweaks in policies

As early as the 1960s, Singapore has recognised the need to regulate road usage. It introduced high vehicular taxes, which cars bore the brunt of (since, it was argued, cars made the most discretionary and non-commercial trips).

But it wasn't car ownership per se that caused congestion. It was usage. Hence, in 1975, the Government launched the Area Licensing Scheme, a paper-permit precursor to Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), which was implemented from 1998.

On Thursday, the Land Transport Authority announced it had awarded a contract to build a next-generation gantry-less ERP system. What will ERP 2.0 mean to road users, businesses and Singaporeans at large?

For starters, it is useful to recognise how different the new system is.

Because it is based on satellite navigation technology, the new ERP system has islandwide coverage. But it does not mean motorists will be charged the moment they leave the house.

It will apply only to congested roads. And as a congestion charging tool, it will be finer than the current system because it can zero in on precise spots where jams are likely to occur. The current static system forms a rough cordon around a congestion-prone area - which can be very wide and crude.

Shop and eatery owners who have complained in the past about ERP affecting their business could find cheer in ERP 2.0, which, if calibrated well, will not sterilise a whole district.

As a congestion charging tool, it will be finer than the current system because it can zero in on precise spots where jams are likely to occur. The current static system forms a rough cordon around a congestion-prone area - which can be very wide and crude.

And with all other factors being equal, motorists could end up paying less than today. Instances where motorists find themselves under another gantry after a wrong turn, or having to pass two gantries within a short stretch, may be a thing of the past.

Much depends on whether the LTA flips the distance-charging switch. Distance-charging is the new system's killer app, as it allows the LTA to charge each road user for the exact amount of road space he consumes. This changes the current ballgame.

Those who are likely to bear the biggest brunt of distance-charging will be those who typically clock high mileage - such as cabbies, deliverymen and bus operators.

But as always, behaviours will change and things will evolve around new policies. It is likely that taxi-drivers will cruise less for fares, and commuters will rely more on electronic hailing via apps.

Logistics companies will alter their operating hours and routes (or even truck-pool) - which is a good thing because commercial vehicles currently take up an inordinately high amount of road capacity.

Bus operators will see their expenses go up, but ERP charges are still likely to be minute compared with manpower, depreciation and fuel expenditure.

How impactful the system will be also depends on how open policymakers are to tweaking components such as COE and road tax. When ERP was introduced, road tax rebates were granted. So the same could be done for ERP 2.0. Motorists can then decide on ways to use the savings other than blowing them on ERP charges.

ERP 2.0 also presents a golden opportunity for Singapore to overhaul its COE system, which has been blamed for perpetuating the sunk-cost syndrome and over-consumption of road capacity.

If the lifespan of the COE is tied to a predetermined mileage - say, 120,000km - instead of 10 years, people will naturally use their cars more judiciously. The ability to track the distance clocked by each vehicle makes this feasible.

[A model of a Pay-as-you-drive COE scheme.]

Readers have raised concerns about privacy issues. As mentioned before, data collected is anonymised. The degree of anonymity can be calibrated, so that the system knows how many kilometres you clocked but not where you went and when (or with whom).

In any case, anyone who carries a mobile phone today is already "tracked".

ERP 2.0 has other benefits, like real-time dissemination of traffic info, which will help drivers plan their journeys better, or to decide whether they should even drive.

Other functions include coupon-less street-side parking and automatic charging of off-peak car usage outside the prescribed hours. This means more convenience for drivers, who no longer have to worry about over- or under-tearing parking coupons. Same for off-peak car owners.

The Government in turn can save tens of millions a year on enforcement and prosecution. With that, perhaps it will invest in the next ERP - which is not Electronic Road Pricing, but Electronic Road Protocol. To be rolled out in 2040, it will oversee a sizeable population of autonomous vehicles here by then.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-89628406164746876362016-04-25T16:39:00.000+08:002016-04-25T16:39:55.553+08:00Five things to watch out for in Bukit Batok by-electionChua Mui Hoong
Opinion Editor

APR 24, 2016

The constituency is as heartland as Singapore can get and it can be a bellwether of heartland sentiments

I will be watching the result of the Bukit Batok by-election with interest, and not just because I used to live in the town.

I lived in the Hong Kah North part of Bukit Batok HDB estate for a year, five years ago. I liked its verdant greenery, the pavements wide enough to cycle on, and the way the estate, sufficiently remote from town, seems to have developed its own network of amenities and shops.

Most of all, I recall the strong sense I had while there that life in the Bukit Batok heartland is a struggle. There were more lorries, taxis and delivery vans in the carpark than Japanese executive sedans, let alone European luxury cars.

A set of curtains I discarded to make way for made-to-measure ones were taken within hours when I left them in the void deck.

Bukit Batok town is as heartland as Singapore can get.

Voters in Bukit Batok single-member constituency, which is one chunk of the larger Bukit Batok HDB town, go to the polls on May 7. The ward has a population of 45,900 and 25,727 voters. Almost all live in public housing; only 4.2 per cent live in private housing. About 32 per cent live in one- to three-room HDB flats; 39.4 per cent in four-room flats and 24.4 per cent in five-room or executive flats.

Bukit Batok can be a bellwether of heartland sentiments in May 2016. I will thus be watching the election for five reasons.

First, it will show the extent to which voters "punish" the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) for having an allegedly adulterous MP.

This by-election is being called after its incumbent MP David Ong stepped down in March over a "personal indiscretion" following allegations of an extramarital affair with a party activist. Mr Ong, an MP since May 2011, had been re-elected last September with 73 per cent of the vote in a three-way fight.

Will the PAP suffer a dent in vote share?

In December 2012, PAP MP Michael Palmer was similarly caught out and resigned as Speaker of Parliament and as MP. The PAP went on to lose the January 2013 by-election in the Punggol East constituency as its vote share plunged more than 10 percentage points - although at that time that was attributed less to the Palmer affair than to voters' acceptance of the two contestants.

Voters in Bukit Batok will have the chance to show their displeasure - or indifference - over Mr Ong's alleged affair and the resulting by-election.

Second issue to watch out for: whether this will be a straight fight.

In the Punggol East by-election just three years ago, there was a four-way fight: the PAP's Dr Koh Poh Koon faced off with Workers' Party candidate Lee Li Lian, who won.

The other two candidates were the Reform Party's Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam and the Singapore Democratic Alliance's Mr Desmond Lim. Voters rejected the latter two resoundingly, causing both to lose their $14,500 election deposits after failing to secure the threshold 12.5 per cent of votes.

Perhaps heeding that very clear message of disapproval of spoiler contenders, other major opposition parties have indicated this time that they will not contest Bukit Batok.

[I think that is reading too much into the Punggol East By-election results. This "disapproval" could be related to the 4th issue - strong links of the candidate to the community. Yes, sure, in the PE BE, Desmond Lim was the long-time candidate in Punggol. But if Ms Chua is going to ignore his presence, and focus only on Ms Lee Li Lian against PAP's colo-rectal surgeon to support her narrative of "strong community links", then I can ignore this selective conclusion.]

If they keep their word, and no other independent candidate enters the fray on April 27, Nomination Day, then the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) will be able to face off the PAP in a straight fight. This would represent a minor triumph for opposition unity and maturity.

Third interesting issue: Just how a minority candidate fares against a Chinese one in a straight fight.

The PAP is fielding Indian lawyer Murali Pillai, while the SDP is fielding Dr Chee Soon Juan, a former university lecturer, who is Chinese.

If Mr Murali wins decisively, observers may cite his victory as evidence that heartland voters do not vote along racial lines.

This would challenge the Government's avowed stand that the group representation constituency is needed in Singapore to help entrench minority representation in Parliament.

Under the GRC system, MPs form a team, which must include a mandatory minority candidate.

This is the first time the PAP is fielding a non-Chinese candidate in a by-election since 1979, when Mr Devan Nair contested in Anson, and won. (He resigned in 1981 to become President and Anson had another by-election. The PAP's Chinese candidate lost to the Workers' Party's Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam).

In the three by-elections since 1981 - in 1992, 2012 and 2013 - the PAP fielded male Chinese candidates. Thus, fielding a non-Chinese candidate in the May 2016 by-election is a break from PAP convention for 37 years.

What can one read of this? Has the PAP changed its view on race-based voting patterns?

I think not, because other factors are at play. Which brings me to the fourth reason for watching this by-election: to see how a "grassroots" MP with strong links to a community fares.

In the 2013 Punggol East by-election, the PAP learnt a hard lesson when its candidate Dr Koh, a colorectal surgeon touted as being of ministerial calibre, lost to WP's fresh-faced Ms Lee, a polytechnic graduate. It realised that voters no longer accepted its choice of academic and professional high-fliers "parachuted" into a constituency, who have no prior exposure to or rapport with residents in the ward.

[The mood and circumstances then were different. Dr Koh was a desperation move intended to plug a hole left by the loss of 2 ministers when PAP lost Aljunied. And people sense desperation. People know when you put your needs ahead of theirs. And in all the messaging, PAP clearly communicated their desperation to bring in a Ministerial calibre MP. And the voters then were in no mood to be used. Their message to the PAP was, "fix the problems first, then we'll talk."]

(Dr Koh was elected last year as part of the winning Ang Mo Kio GRC team and is now Minister of State in the Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Trade and Industry.)

This time round, it is fielding Mr Murali, a commercial litigator, who was an active PAP activist in Bukit Batok for years and was its branch secretary from 2007 to 2011. By doing so, the PAP shows it has internalised the lesson from Punggol East - that voters prefer someone familiar in the community. It will be the SDP's Dr Chee who will be the newcomer to the ward. He contested in the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC last year.

[I don't disagree but I would put it differently. Voters want to know that their interests and concerns are first, not the needs of the PAP, or even the government. That means putting a candidate that will represent their needs and concerns.]

Fifth, this election will show if mainstream Singapore and the heartland warms to Dr Chee. He has a chequered history in opposition politics - from leadership tussles with former mentor Chiam See Tong to repeated run-ins with PAP leaders and a parliamentary committee. He has sought to soften his image in recent years online. In rally speeches and in person, too, he appears to have mellowed.

Are these enough to counter whatever negative views of Dr Chee might reside still in the bosoms of older voters who remember the past conflicts? One benchmark will be the 34.4 per cent vote share the SDP team got in Holland-Bukit Timah GRC. Anything much lower might be ascribed by observers to the chilling Chee Soon Juan effect on voters.

[This is also my main point of interest. How well will Chee do in this By-election. I have no doubts PAP will hold the ward. So if they lose that would be a big shock, firstly. And secondly, it would signal the political rehabilitation of Chee in the eyes of the voters. Or that the new voters are unfamiliar or unaffected by his past.

But if Chee loses but does as well or better than 34%, that tells me that he is indeed a leading contender of the Opposition. However if he does worse than that, then he is still in the wilderness. Because I am unconvinced of his "rehabilitation", I do not think him credible. So, from my personal assessment, I believe he would poll less than 30%. But I have been wrong before and I may be wrong again. That is fine. It will keep me humble.]

Already, even before the by-election gets under way, it's been interesting to see just how relaxed the PAP appears to be, by fielding a minority candidate in a straight fight against a Chinese candidate. Its rhetoric has been low-key.

It remains to be seen if it will eschew the heavy artillery approach of past elections in favour of letting its candidate fight the ground battle with his own foot soldiers.

No doubt this confidence is because Bukit Batok is just one single seat, and the PAP is secure enough, having won 83 of 89 seats and a vote share of 69.9 per cent last September.

[And they don't have any ministerial vacancies.]

So long as by-elections remain rare, the PAP can afford to be sanguine about one. Three MPs have quit in 49 months over alleged extramarital affairs. Two were from the PAP, one from the WP.

If the recent spate of resignations prove to be an anomaly, and death or disease does not cause more seats to be vacated, then Singapore may go back to the period of the 1990s and 2000s, when there was just one by-election over two decades, in 1992.

Then a by-election can be treated as a political non-event, a blip on the political landscape.

But even a blip can yield interesting insights into the way Singapore's ever dynamic political environment is evolving.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-25436222073916921122016-04-25T00:27:00.001+08:002016-04-25T00:27:34.536+08:00Electric shock – Tesla cars in Hong Kong more polluting than petrol models, report claims

Investment research firm says the government is 'harming rather than helping the environment' by subsidising the 'green' vehicles
13 April, 2016

Ernest Kao

Electric vehicles in Hong Kong could be adding "20 per cent more" carbon to the atmosphere than regular petrol ones over the same distance after factoring in the city's coal-dominated energy mix and battery manufacture, a new research report found.

Investment research firm Bernstein also claimed that by subsidising electric vehicle purchases, the government was effectively "harming rather than helping the environment" at the expense of the taxpayer.

The report discloses that the author maintains a "long position" in oil company BP, while electric vehicle supporters are quick to dismiss its claims.

"The policy is to encourage drivers to be green, but they are actually subsidising vehicles that create more emissions of CO2 and particulates from power plants," said Bernstein senior analyst Neil Beveridge.

"Electric vehicles can work in places where there is a very low carbon intensity in electricity generation, but more than 68 per cent of electricity [on Hong Kong Island] comes from coal."
The researchers compared emissions over 150,000km for a BMW 320i using petrol and the new electric Tesla Model 3 and found the latter to be capable of emitting 27 tonnes of carbon – 20 per cent more than the BMW.

The analysis took into account carbon intensity – emissions per unit of GDP cited by HK Electric, which supplies Hong Kong and Lamma islands – fuel efficiency of the car, carbon dioxide produced over 100km, generating the electricity needed at the power plant as well as producing the 85 kilowatt-hour battery.

Fuel-related emissions alone for the Tesla totalled 21.3 tonnes, while building the battery accounted for 5.2 tonnes. By contrast, the BMW's total fuel-related emissions – essentially the burning of fossil fuel – amounted to 20 tonnes of carbon, while the oil extraction and refining for the petrol generated 2.2 tonnes.

Beveridge urged the government to do more to reduce carbon in the fuel mix or to wait for battery technology to improve before attempting to push for mass adoption of electric vehicles.

Hong Kong has one of the world's highest penetration of electric cars among new private car purchases. The number has grown from just 100 at the end of 2010 to 4,400 as of February.

Tesla has 70 per cent of the market.

Responding to enquiries, a Tesla spokesman said that the data cited in the report showed that CO2 emissions in electric cars were indeed "lower and far lower" than in gasoline-powered cars and "an incorrect report from an oil company investor does not change that."

"Because of oil extraction, distribution, and refining, approximately 25 per cent more has to be added on top of that to calculate the real carbon footprint of gas-powered cars," the spokesman added.

"Tesla's mission is to build a more sustainable future, and it is clear that electric vehicles are an indispensable part of that."

Mark Webb-Johnson of Charged Hong Kong, a support group for electric vehicles, disagreed with the report. While electricity consumption had been going up over the past 20 years, emissions from generation had dropped dramatically, he said.

"Almost every government around the world has done their own research and studied the benefits, and they are all promoting electric vehicles as a viable mechanism of reducing pollution."

Webb-Johnson questioned the report's calculation for carbon intensity. While HK Electric emitted 0.79kg of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, CLP, Power which supplies two million residential customers across Kowloon, New Territories and Lantau Island, achieved a lower figure of 0.63kg per kilowatt-hour due to the presence of nuclear in its fuel mix.

"The report seems to take the best case for petrol cars and the worse case for electric vehicles," he added.

Civic Exchange chief research officer Simon Ng Ka-wing welcomed the report as it raised valid points but said the high public health costs of roadside air pollution as a result of petrol cars needed to be addressed.

"The human exposure to roadside pollution is higher than power plants," he said. "The government's policy is justified."

The Environmental Protection Department said replacing conventional vehicles with electric ones could help to reduce roadside air pollution, and even under the current fuel mix the replacement could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

About HK$2.7 billion in tax has been waived for electric vehicles since 1994. The EPD said it would carefully consider the waiver arrangement before the scheme ended next March.

[Note, this is not support for SG's LTA decision to charge the owner of the Tesla a premium. The main consideration in HK, is that electricity is mainly generated with coal power plants which has a higher emission. Singapore's electricity is mainly generated with Natural Gas which has much lower emissions. ]
El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-41256029933886357942016-04-24T03:23:00.000+08:002016-04-24T03:23:08.513+08:00Water security, energy use a difficult trade-offSiau Ming En

 April 23, 2016

SINGAPORE — While ramping up the nation's water security by increasing its capacity to treat used water and seawater over the next few decades, the Republic could also expose itself to another form of vulnerability — an over-reliance on energy for water.

Within the next 14 years, the combined capacity from NEWater and desalinated water will be able to meet up to 80 per cent of the population's water demands, up from the current 55 per cent. By 2060, these two sources of water can provide up to 85 per cent of the nation's water needs. However, this will also mean Singapore is becoming increasingly reliant on energy consumption to meet its water security goals.
Speaking to TODAY, distinguished visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) Asit Biswas pointed out that while half of Singapore's water supply is generated from its own sources — local catchments, NEWater and desalinated water — 100 per cent of the energy used to treat the water comes from outside.

"Singapore has no energy … As Singapore becomes more and more self-sufficient (in water), it is becoming, energy-wise, more and more not self-sufficient. More and more energy (has to be) input in order to sustain the water sector," added the world-renowned water expert.

Back in September 2013, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, then-Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, spoke about how there has been a substitution of one critical vulnerability — water — with another critical vulnerability — energy — globally "simply because the process of reverse osmosis is energy intensive".

Reverse osmosis is the process used to treat seawater at desalination plants — making desalinated water the most energy-intensive of Singapore's four sources of water. Apart from water from local catchments and NEWater, the fourth source is imported water.

According to some international reports, the desalination process burns up more fossil fuel than sourcing for the same amount of fresh water from fresh water bodies. This makes desalination both a reaction — and one of the many contributors — to global warming, noted an article from Scientific American magazine.

Desalinated water can currently meet 25 per cent of Singapore's water needs. From 2030, it will be able to meet 30 per cent of future water demands.

The next-most energy-intensive "tap" comes from NEWater, which requires about a quarter of the amount of energy needed by a desalination plant.

Currently, NEWater can meet up to 30 per cent of Singapore's water demands, and the figure is set to increase to 50 per cent and 55 per cent by 2030 and 2060, respectively.

Dr Rajasekhar Balasubramanian, from the National University of Singapore's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, noted that energy security, fresh water security and climate stabilisation are "competing goals". For instance, Singapore tries to overcome extreme weather effects on its water resources through desalination.

"Desalination of seawater is an energy-intensive process. However, we are (also) trying to reduce our carbon footprint," he added.

Professor Ng Wun Jern, executive director of Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University, felt that the difficulty lies in the fact that "the link between water and energy and Singapore is constrained in both aspects".

"We have few sources of fresh water and no fossil-fuel reserves, having to import fuel and rely on renewable energy to meet our energy needs," he added.

The reliance on energy can get more costly even though current energy prices are very low, said Dr Joost Buurman, senior research fellow at LKYSPP's Institute of Water Policy.

And with Singapore using more NEWater and desalinated water in future, he added: "If energy prices are going up significantly, it might also have an impact if your water supply system is more dependent on energy."

However, national water agency PUB noted that the energy used to treat water here takes up a small percentage of Singapore's overall energy consumption.

[If the last chart at this webpage means what I think it means, energy for water treatment takes up less than 3.9%]
PUB is currently producing energy through biogas at its water reclamation plants and will be expanding its energy production from solar. It is also investing in water research and development to bring down the energy consumption levels of the desalination plants here, among other things.

For example, there is the electrodeionisation technology in desalination, where ions carrying either a positive or negative charge are separated from the water when they are attracted to electrodes of the opposite charge.

This process uses about 1.65kWh to 1.8kWh of electricity for every cubic metre of desalinated water, about half the amount of electrical energy needed with the conventional reverse osmosis method.

Another method includes biomimetic or biomimicry techniques, which are currently being studied. One example is the development of a biomimetic membrane that uses water channel proteins (aquaporin) found in cell membranes to filter organic molecules and salts.

Biomimetic and biomimicry-based research aims to use about 1kWh per cubic metre of electricity.

[I think the last word is an error as electricity is not measured in cubic metres. Probably should be "water" or "desalinated water".

Anyway, facts from the last few para - Reverse Osmosis takes about 3 to 4 kWh to desalinate 1 cubic metre of sea water. Research is hoping to halve or even quarter that energy need. No clue as to when or how close we are to a breakthrough in these research that we can leverage on.

We use about 380 million gallons of water per day (mgd). Or about 1.7m cubic metres. Desalination is projected to provide 30% of our water needs. or about 0.6m cubic metres of water. At about 4 kWh to treat 1 cubic metre of water, that would be 2.4m kWh, or about 100,000 kWh per day. Or about 100 mWh.

NEWater can provide 50% of our needs by 2030, which is about 850,000 cubic metres. But it's energy cost is 1/4 of desalination, or about 1 kWh to treat 1 cubic metre. So 850,000 kWh, or 36 mWh.

Our energy demand is currently about 6500 mWh. 136 mWh is quite a small percentage of that - about 2%.

So while there is a trade-off as this article suggests. The situation is not that dire. According to the chart provided by the National Climate Change Secretariat, Industry and Transport are the largest users of energy, contributing to the greatest emission of greenhouse gases.]

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-50203844772897484252016-04-22T10:07:00.000+08:002016-04-22T10:07:11.854+08:00COE prices to be left to market forces, says LTAAs private-hire car firms lead bids, experts say no evidence that intervention is needed yet

TOH EE MING

 APRIL 22, 2016

SINGAPORE — Amid concerns of aggressive bidding by private-hire car companies such as Uber and Grab for Certificates of Entitlement (COEs), the authorities are letting market forces determine the situation for now, while transport experts said that, so far, there is little evidence to suggest that intervention is needed in the COE market.

The growth of the private-hire car sector "will provide more point-to-point transport options for commuters", noted the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in response to media queries, and added that this could then reduce the demand for private cars over time.

"The LTA does not target COE premiums, which should reflect market demand and supply. Nonetheless, we will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that the auction continues to function in an orderly manner," a spokesperson said.

The Straits Times reported last week that Uber-owned Lion City Rental secured 270 bids out of the 810 it submitted in the first COE bidding exercise earlier this month, prompting fears of market manipulation. In the latest exercise that closed on Wednesday, it reportedly submitted 630 bids and got 510.

Asked about such concerns, the LTA also noted that bidders for car COEs have to pay a S$10,000 deposit for each bid, ensuring that there is a genuine buyer behind each bid.

Figures on the LTA website show that in the first four months of the year, premiums have been stable across categories, and have remained lower than levels seen last year. Bidding for small car premiums (Category A) closed at S$47,300 on Wednesday, compared to S$67,601 a year ago, while Open Category premiums closed at S$49,501, down from S$79,500.

While the number of bids placed has risen as premiums fell and the quotas increased, the ratios are comparable to ones seen last year. For example, in the latest exercise, 6,525 bids were received for 3,726 COEs available in the three car categories, or about 1.75 bids for every COE available. A year ago, there were 3,911 bids for 1,891 COEs in the same categories, or about two bids for every COE.

In August 2012, noting that taxis were taking up more COEs in Category A — as much as 25 per cent — the LTA took taxis out of the COE bidding process. The move was also aimed at improving taxi availability: Operators' ability to get COEs to expand their fleet were linked to their meeting taxi availability standards.

Even so, Category A premiums continued to rise, with bidding closing at S$71,001 in October and S$81,889 in December that year, compared to S$68,656 in July. Car traders TODAY spoke to said they have heard talk of private rental car companies, whose cars serve the private-hire car sector, snapping up more cars recently.

The Government's relatively "light touch" approach when it comes to companies like Uber and Grab so far could have prompted these firms to act more aggressively, said Mr Raymond Tang of Yong Lee Seng Motor.

But some transport analysts cautioned against tweaking the COE system too early. Dr Walter Theseira, senior lecturer at SIM University, said: "It's important to distinguish the short-run effects, which are that Uber and Grab have stimulated interest in building up private-hire car fleets, from the longer-run question of whether demand for private cars could be reduced overall if private-hire car apps further reduce the desire to own a private car."

Moreover, it might be difficult for the Government to intervene given that the current COE system does not significantly distinguish between the different types of buyers, he said.

For example, "nothing stops such companies from signing contracts with the authorised car distributors to bulk purchase a large number of vehicles at once", he explained.

SIM University adjunct associate professor Park Byung-joon said the LTA should monitor the situation for now as the overall impact "remains to be seen". "Because it all really depends on how big the demand is ... Any change introduced now could also be an over-reaction and (create further risks)," he said.

National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der Horng, however, said there was no evidence "in Singapore or anywhere in the world" showing that private hire reduces the demand of private-car ownership over time. "It is inadequate in jumping to the conclusion to grow (private hire) fleets before the root cause of taxi demand and supply is properly addressed," he said, referring to efforts to improve taxi availability.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-84628968129816652972016-04-21T11:56:00.002+08:002016-04-21T11:56:52.829+08:00Phthlates and fast food[Another Food Scare!]

Fast-food eaters have more industrial chemicals in their bodies

April 13, 2016

NEW YORK — People who reported eating fast food in the last 24 hours had elevated levels of some industrial chemicals in their bodies, according to a new analysis of data from federal nutrition surveys.

The study is the first broad look at how fast food may expose the public to certain chemicals, called phthalates, that are used to make plastics more flexible and durable. The chemicals, which don't occur in nature, are common in cosmetics, soap, food packaging, flooring, window blinds, and other consumer products. The Centers for Disease Control says "phthalate exposure is widespread in the US population".

Though the health consequences of encountering these substances aren't fully known, scientists have increasingly focused on their effects on health and development, particularly for pregnant women and children. Research in rats has shown that they can disrupt the male reproductive system, and there's evidence for similar effects in humans.

The latest research suggests that fast food is a significant source of the chemicals, which may leach into food from machinery used in processing or packaging, or from gloves worn by workers.

[OMG! Tell those workers to stop wearing gloves! We're better off with Typhoid, Dysentery, E Coli, and other food poisoning than for us to continue to consume INDUSTRIAL chemicals with GOD KNOWS WHAT harmful effect on our bodies! OMG! We're doomed! Doomed! Doomed! With a Capital "D"!]

"Right now there are few choices for individuals who are interested in reducing their exposure, and there's also not very much regulation" of phthalates, said Dr Ami Zota, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. In the US, "research happens once they've been introduced in commerce, rather than before", she said.

[For Gawd's sake, REGULATE the hell out of Phthalates!]

Dr Zota and colleagues from GW analysed data from almost 9,000 people who participated in federal nutrition surveys between 2003 and 2010. Participants answered detailed questions about what they ate in the last 24 hours and gave urine samples that were analysed for by-products that indicated the presence of three chemicals. The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health.

For two of the three substances Dr Zota examined — phthalates designated as DEHP and DiNP — there was a significant relationship between fast-food intake and exposure. People who ate more fast food had more evidence of phthalates in their urine. The third chemical they measured was Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is commonly used to line aluminium cans. That wasn't significantly correlated with fast-food intake.

It's difficult to determine what the health risks of phthalates are. The American Chemistry Council says that they've been thoroughly studied and "phthalates used in commercial products do not pose a risk to human health at typical exposure levels". The Environmental Protection Agency, in a 2012 Phthalates Action Plan, notes that it is "concerned about phthalates because of their toxicity and the evidence of pervasive human and environmental exposure to them".

[WTF! Eat Fast Food = More Phthalates. Phthalates are Toxic. So WTF are the toxicity levels from eating fast food? How many Cheeseburgers will it take to Kill me?!?!?]

Japan banned vinyl gloves in food preparation over concerns about DEHP, and the European Union has limited the use of the chemicals in food products and toys. Some phthalates, including DEHP, were restricted in children's toys in the US by a 2008 law.

The latest study is based on snapshot surveys, rather than following people over time. So it can't establish that eating fast food caused people to have elevated levels of phthalates, but the association is strong. It also doesn't tell us anything about the health effects of potential exposure to the chemicals from eating fast food.

[Panicky yet? Then the news report is working as intended. Now calm down and read carefully:

"Phthalates exposure is widespread in the US population." So what is the adverse effect of this widespread exposure? I dunno. I think it makes people vote for Donald Trump. That's pretty worrying.

Fast food is a significant source of phthalates... and gloves... oh and by the way, milk. And spices:

...DEHP levels in the local, organic group jumped 2,377% over the course of the experiment. Determined to figure out why, the researchers tested all of the foods consumed by the group and found high levels of the phthalate in dairy products and various organic, imported spices.
So it's not just fast food.

And WHAT diseases or health problems exactly does phthlates cause? Well, here is the summary of the possible effects.

But... you say, that study is from 2003! Yes. Please find a more recent study with significant new effects. I picked that one because it seemed to have the most comprehensive list of adverse effects.

The cost of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a group that includes phthalates, in the EU is estimated to be €163 billion (S$249.1 billion) annually, or 1.28 per cent of the EU's gross domestic product, according to a recent paper by Dr Leo Trasande, associate professor of pediatrics, environmental medicine, and population health at NYU School of Medicine. He said the study out today "adds further data to support the notion that people should avoid eating highly processed or highly packaged foods". That doesn't mean just junk food, he notes. Canned vegetables or organic milk that's been piped through plastic tubing could carry the same chemical risks. "It's not fair to say, 'Oh, these exposures only happen if you eat unhealthy foods'."

Dr Zota said that for people interested in reducing their exposure, "common-sense approaches will take you a long way. Eat organic when you can. If you can't still, try to eat fresh vegetables," she said. "Try to eat low on the food chain."

[So in one para, the doctor notes that even organic milk can have phthalates. And in the next, he recommends you eat organic? That is... illogical.]

BLOOMBERG

Science briefs : Study: Fast food high in industrial chemicals

Study: Fast food high in industrial chemicals

Fast food has never been known for being healthy, but it may be even more harmful than previously thought.

Researchers at George Washington University in the United States have found that eating fast food exposes the body to a class of industrial chemicals called phthalates.

Phthalates are used in the manufacture of plastic food- packaging material.

In the study, people who had eaten fast food had phthalate levels up to 40 per cent higher than those who had not.

"Our findings raise concerns because phthalates have been linked to a number of serious health problems in children and adults," said lead researcher Ami Zota.

For example, studies have suggested that phthalates can damage the reproductive system and lead to infertility.

Other research suggests that these chemicals can leach out of plastic food packaging and contaminate processed food.

In 2008, the US Congress banned the use of phthalates in the production of children's toys because of health concerns.

The researchers obtained data on 8,877 participants' diets in the past 24 hours through detailed questionnaires, and quantified the phthalates in their bodies through urine testing.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reported that meat and fast-food grain items, such as bread, cake, pizza and noodles, contributed significantly to phthalate exposure.

Dr Zota said that frequent consumption of fast food is not recommended, owing to its high fat and salt content.

She added: "People concerned about this issue can't go wrong by eating more fruit and vegetables and less fast food. A diet filled with whole foods offers a variety of health benefits that go far beyond the question of phthalates."

Besides food, phthalates also occur in a wide variety of products like toys and perfume.

[The rest of the news summary is on other subjects and has been greyed.

But... overall, this news article is just a "naggy" article. It tells you nothing new. It hints at health effects, but other than infertility, has no other specific health concern to scare us with. Then since we are on the subject of fast food and why it's bad - high fat and salt content (nag), so eat more fruits and veggies (nag!), and whole food (nag!). Except Milk. That might have Phthalates.]

Brain development linked to attentiveness

Remember the doctor monitoring your growth as a child by taking measurements of height and weight? Maybe he should measure your brain too, scientists say.

Researchers at the University of Michigan mapped the networks of nerve cells in the brains of more than 500 children using magnetic resonance imaging and found that those with underdeveloped networks had difficulty paying attention.

The children's ability to pay attention was measured using a standard test that required them to respond to a sequence of letters and numbers on a computer screen.

"Growth charts enable a family and their physician to quickly spot problematic development and, when necessary, intervene appropriately," said lead researcher Chandra Sripada.

"In the future, we want to provide clinicians with the same sort of guidance about brain development that we can about things like height and weight."

The study was launched after the researchers noticed a knowledge gap in how brain development is related to attention, despite the fact that attention span increases dramatically as a child grows.

The researchers said that separate networks in the brain are responsible for self- reflection and day-dreaming, versus doing cognitively demanding tasks, and that these networks become more distinct from each other with age.

In a person with attention difficulties, the "daydreaming" network turns on periodically and interrupts the other types of network. The researchers said that although the results are promising, much more work is needed before the technique is ready for clinical use.

How gene diversity can curb spread of disease

It is well known that the common agricultural practice of growing large tracts of the same genetic variety of food crop, known as monoculture, increases the risk of a disease wiping out the entire crop. But the reason for this is not clear.

Through experiments where bacterial populations were infected with viruses, a team of researchers from the United States and Europe have found a possible mechanism by which genetic diversity could suppress disease.

When the virus was introduced into a monoculture of bacteria with little genetic variation, it spread rapidly because it was able to evolve fast enough to overcome the similar immune systems throughout the bacterial population.

However, when faced with a genetically diverse bacterial population, the virus could not deal with the great variety of bacterial immune systems it encountered, and died out.

The researchers, who published their study in the journal Nature, said in a statement that their findings were potentially applicable to agriculture and nature conservation.

Compiled by Lin Yangchen

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-61513597800041214542016-04-20T15:01:00.002+08:002016-04-20T15:01:43.986+08:00More people lost jobs last year, with manufacturing and services hit hardestApril 20 2016

SINGAPORE - More people were laid off last year than the year before, a Manpower Ministry report on redundancy released on Wednesday (April 20) showed.

A total of 15,580 workers were laid off last year, 2,650 more than in 2014 and the fifth year in a row that redundancies rose. The overall unemployment rate, however, remained low at 1.9 per cent.

Layoffs rose in all broad sectors last year, in particular manufacturing. The fall in global oil prices and a slowdown in demand in the marine and construction sectors caused the industry to shed 5,210 workers, 1,240 more than in 2014.

Services were also hard hit with 8,510 jobs lost, 1,250 more than the year before.

Layoffs also edged up in construction for the third year in a row from 1,690 to 1,780, owing to a drop in construction demand from both the public and private sector.

Wholesale trade and financial services also showed a rise in redundancies.

Those aged 40 and over made up the majority of residents who lost their jobs, at 65 per cent.

Professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) also remained more vulnerable to redundancy and took longer to find new jobs, in a pattern that has been observed since 2012.

PMETs experienced 8,550 layoffs last year, up from 6,530. They were also more at risk of redundancy, with about nine out of every 1,000 employees losing their jobs, compared to less than 7.5 per 1,000 for other groups.

Residents also took longer to find work after being made redundant. Central Provident Fund (CPF) records showed that 66 per cent of residents who lost their jobs in the first nine months of last year found new work by last December, down from 68 per cent in 2014.

Eight in ten residents took about three months or less to re-enter employment, again broadly similar to past years.

Seventy per cent of those who secured new jobs found them in a different industry from before, with wholesale and retail trade and administrative and support services being the most likely areas with vacancies.

Firms cited on-going business restructuring combined with a softer economy as key reasons for retrenching workers last year.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-4421967342781925982016-04-19T10:17:00.000+08:002016-04-19T10:17:20.048+08:00Uber submits 800 COE bids, changes the game for carsApril 16 2016

Just over three years ago, the Transport Ministry removed taxis from the certificate of entitlement (COE) bidding process to take some heat off car bidders.

Now, three years after third-party taxi app provider Uber arrived, the heat is back on.

During last week's COE tender, Uber-owned Lion City Rental submitted more than 800 bids, which accounted for 11 per cent of the total bids made for car COEs.

According to market talk, Lion City is looking to put 1,800 new cars on the road in anticipation of growing demand.

Rival company Grab is also expected to do the same.

The two already have between them some 10,000 cars - mostly old vehicles.

But in recent months, both have started sourcing for new vehicles, and are jostling with private car owners for fresh COEs.

Now, with the Government announcing "light touch" regulations governing third-party taxi apps, the proliferation of private-hire vehicles will accelerate.

Most of the taxi companies are also starting up private-hire subsidiaries to compete with Uber, Grab and other small players like Smove and Tribecar.

This will only intensify the competition for COEs, which explains why car premiums have not fallen in tandem with the growth in supply.

If the demand for private-hire services continues to grow, taxi operators are likely to shrink their cab fleets and switch. Again, this will fuel demand for COEs.

Most private-hire cars are smaller vehicles, so the pressure will be greater on COE Category A bidders (cars up to 1,600cc and 130bhp).

But some are gunning for Open Category too, such as Lion City.

At the last tender, more than 200 of the company's Open bids were disqualified because they had identical values, which sources said was a move to manipulate the market.
The Land Transport Authority said: "As there were more than 237 bids with the same next lower bid amount, awarding the COE to all these bids would exceed the quota. The 237 unallocated COEs will be carried over to the first open bidding exercise in May 2016."

Uber was not reachable for comment.

Car-Sharing Association (Singapore) president Lai Meng said: "The fast growth in the private-hire car services like Uber and Grab is a validation of the sharing economy."

Christopher Tan

[On the one hand, not to over-regulate. On the other hand, loopholes exploited.

What does this means for the future?

One, no more "light touch"? Uber et al to be treated as Taxis?

Two, further tweaking of the COE scheme? New Categories based on usage, perhaps?

Three, Clampdown on loopholes for car purchases like below?

Uber helps car buyers overcome loan limits
MAR 30, 2016,

Ads promote bold financing scheme that promises loan of up to 80 per cent of car price

Christopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent

It has been doing so implicitly for the past year. Now, Uber is making it quite explicit that it is targeting people who want to own a car but cannot afford the 40 per cent to 50 per cent down payment required by law.

In press advertisements yesterday, the San Francisco-based transport app provider marked its third anniversary in Singapore by launching a bold car-financing scheme that seems at first glance to flout regulations introduced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) three years ago. It says Uber consumers can secure loans of up to 80 per cent of the car's price, claiming: "Your dream car is now within reach!"

Uber, which is no stranger to controversy the world over, said the deal does not break any law in Singapore. It stated that cars must be registered under a company name, and under a scheme that allows them to be used for offering paid rides - even if not with Uber. "The government scheme applies to personal cars only," Uber Singapore general manager Warren Tseng said.

MAS concurred: "MAS' motor vehicle financing restrictions do not apply to loans for the purchase of private-hire cars. Drivers should be aware that they will incur additional costs, including higher insurance premiums, should they enter into such arrangements."
Mr Tseng claimed, however, that Uber has "negotiated deals with insurance partners which can offer premiums at as low as $1,300 (per year) for a comprehensive insurance package which covers personal and private-hire use".

The Uber ad which offers a bold car-financing scheme that says consumers can secure loans of up to 80 per cent of the car's price. The firm stated that cars must be registered under a company name, and under a scheme that allows them to be used for offering paid rides - even if not with Uber.

Industry sources said premiums for private-hire cars are typically three to five times that of those for normal private cars.

Checks by The Straits Times also revealed higher interest charges. For instance, Fu Yiap Motor Trading, one of several used car dealers Uber has paired with for this deal, quoted interest rates of between 2.98 and 3.25 per cent - more than one percentage point higher than what leading lenders are quoting.

A customer borrowing $60,000 over five years would end up paying some $4,000 more.

While the deal is not tied to any obligation to drive for Uber, Mr Tseng said the scheme "gives people a way to afford a car... earning money in their spare time and also helping to cover car costs".

Industry watchers are not impressed. Mr Neo Nam Heng, chairman of diversified motor group Prime, said: "It is no big deal. Uber is merely a match-maker, bringing customers to these car dealers. Of course it hopes that these people will end up doing Uber rides."

Additional reporting by Toh Yong Chuan

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-12667934163640260252016-04-19T04:20:00.000+08:002016-04-19T04:20:03.951+08:00SDP's Chee says he will push for retrenchment insurance if elected Kenneth Cheng

April 17, 2016

SINGAPORE — Retrenchment insurance to help laid-off workers tide over periods of unemployment is a measure Dr Chee Soon Juan will push for in Parliament if he wins the Bukit Batok by-election, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) chief said on Sunday (April 17).

Citing retrenchment as the "number one concern" among the area's residents, Dr Chee said that under the proposed scheme, retrenched workers would receive three-quarters of their last-drawn salary – capped at the prevailing median wage – for the first six months of unemployment.

Workers still unemployed after half a year would receive half of their last-drawn salary for the next six months. This would be further reduced to a quarter of their last-drawn wage if they are subsequently still out of a job.

This, he said, would provide temporary respite to workers, giving them "sanity" and allowing them to find jobs without panicking.

"Whilst your income stops, your bills don't. They continue to pile up. You still have the kids to feed, the school fees … (and) your electricity bills to take care of. And (for) many of (the residents), there are elderly parents to take care of as well," Dr Chee told reporters after a morning walk at the Bukit Batok Nature Park, where he was joined by a cadre of party members and his wife, Dr Huang Chih-Mei.

The idea of retrenchment insurance is not new. In the parliamentary debate on the Ministry of Manpower's budget earlier this month, Member of Parliament (Aljunied GRC) Sylvia Lim had suggested the need for redundancy insurance.

Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say said in reply that the priority was to help workers re-enter the workforce through available schemes. And with more layoffs expected among white-collar workers amid the gloomy economic climate, the Government also announced it would expand existing schemes to help such workers should they lose their jobs.

For example, the Career Support Programme will be expanded from next month to include unemployed professionals, managers, executives and technicians below 40 years old if they have been jobless for at least six months, among other changes.

[The rest of the news article is on the plans for the by-election, which is not directly related to the issue of retrenchment insurance.]

Meanwhile, Dr Chee said his party was gearing up for "phase two" of its campaign on the ground, which will see it being "a little bit more targeted" in its approach.

This includes reinforcing the party's message to residents the team has already met. The SDP will also "double up" on meeting residents they have not reached out to, including those who return home late at night.

"We might just concentrate more on the weekends, so the chances of catching them (are higher)," said Dr Chee.

On the social programmes the party was drawing up for Bukit Batok residents – which it first mentioned three weeks ago – Dr Chee said the party was in the final stages of ironing out the details and would announce them "probably sometime this week".

These will focus on the elderly in the area, Dr Chee said, noting that he has seen during his house visits some "very tragic" cases of seniors being left alone. The party has heard such residents voice concerns about having only enough for three meals a day, with nothing else to do, and wants to look into their quality of life.

"It takes a toll on them, and they deteriorate very quickly," he added.

Asked about Friday's announcement by the National Solidarity Party that it would not contest the by-election, Dr Chee said the party was glad to have a "one-to-one contest" with the People's Action Party (PAP).

"We've done our part as well in the past to ensure that the Opposition doesn't split the votes and then let the PAP candidate squeak into Parliament," he added.

The by-election is set to be a straight fight between Dr Chee and lawyer Murali Pillai from the PAP.

The Bukit Batok seat was vacated following the resignation of PAP MP David Ong last month over an alleged extramarital relationship with a grassroots volunteer.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said a by-election will be called "in due course", but no date has been announced yet.

[Online comment:

I am not sure if Chee pushing for retrenchment insurance would be good.

If anything, because he is pushing for it, he makes the issue political and then it becomes difficult to pass because, his proposal would attract resistance from the government, and counter arguments against it.

In any case, his proposal is unrealistic, overly generous, and unoriginal.

Unoriginal: Sylvia Lim had already proposed it recently.
And her proposal was not exactly new or original either. Just recent enough that this proposal by Chee sounds like a cheap attempt to copy and ride on a wave created by others.

Overly Generous: Sylvia Lim's proposal was for 40% for 6 months after retrenchment. Chee proposes 75%, for 6 mths, then 50% for 6 mths, then 25%, (not stated for how long, but assume for another 6 months.) A more generous package means higher premium. Who's going to pay for it? If the premiums are lower, more will buy into it. If it is too expensive fewer will do so. Does Chee intend to make this mandatory? How... PAP of him.

Unrealistic. And political-maneouvering. By proposing an overly-generous package, he is almost guaranteeing that the PAP would not agree. And then he can paint the PAP as being unsympathetic to retrenched workers, while SDP and Chee are champions of the worker.

Also he does not seem to be able to follow the dialogue. He is either stupid, not up to date with current events, or being deliberately obtuse.

The PAP's rebuttal to Sylvia should be the next point in discussion. Not a proposal that ignores what has transpired and simply trumpeting old slogans that have been addressed.

The argument put forth by the PAP is that the govt would rather put effort in getting the retrenched workers re-employed, and that unemployment insurance is not required as retrenched workers get retrenchment benefits, which may be several months of salary which will tide them over as they seek re-employment.

Does Chee's proposal address this? No.

If he were sincere about helping retrenched workers, he would consider the reality of the Singapore employment scene. If there is unemployment insurance (or retrenchment insurance), would this mean that companies would no longer give retrenchment benefits? Is this better for the worker?

If companies here generally give retrenchment benefits, then should unemployment insurance kick in immediately? Or some months later?

Which insurance scheme (below) would cost more in premiums for the company and the workers?

Scheme A (CSJ's proposal): 75% of last drawn salary for the first 6 months, 50%, for the next 6 months, and 25% for another 6 months. If and when the worker is re-employed, the payouts would cease.

Scheme B: No payout for the first 6 months or the number of months of retrenchment benefits provided by the company. Then 40% of last drawn salary for 6 months. So if a retrenched worker got 8 months of salary as retrenchment benefit, there would be no payout for 8 months. If he is re-employed within 8 months, there would be no payouts either.

Companies that have a retrenchment benefit scheme would pay less retrenchment insurance premiums. Companies with NO retrenchment benefit scheme, would pay higher premiums because in the event of a retrenchment, the insurance would kick in immediately, and that means a greater risk for the insurance company.

Did Chee take into account the reality of the Singapore situation or is he just politicking again? And is his politicking helpful or more likely to drum up resistance to his idea so that the workers would NEVER get unemployment insurance?

I do believe that unemployment insurance is the way to go for SG in an uncertain future. Sure, 9 out of 10 retrenched worker gets retrenchment benefit. But what about the 10th who did not? Sure we have very low unemployment rates.

Now. Today.

Will that hold in the future?

Lim Swee Say said that we do not need unemployment insurance, because unemployment in Singapore is low. Like the link suggests, saying we don't need unemployment insurance because unemployment is low, is like saying we don't need fire insurance because our house is not currently on fire.

Brilliantly short-sighted argument.

There is an interesting question in the online comment. Would an unemployment insurance (UI) mean that companies will drop their retrenchment benefit scheme and rely simply on UI.

Short answer: It could.

Long answer: it depends on the terms of the insurance. The Insurance company would want to ensure that premiums for companies with no retrenchment benefits must be prohibitively higher. Another factor would be whether the company have re-employment fairs for their retrenched workers. And just like car insurance, the insurer can work in a deductible. That is, when there is a retrenchment, the company is required to pay the insurer $X per retrenched worker. If there are retrenchment benefits, and re-employment efforts, the $X can be low because there is very little risk that the UI would kick in for the majority of the retrenched employees.

If there is no retrenchment benefit, and/or if there are no re-employment efforts, then the $X can be very high, because UI payments would be sure to be paid out immediately (no retrenchment benefit), and for longer (no re-employment efforts).

Retrenchment Benefit (RB) and UI could be aligned - for example, many RBs exclude very new employees - say less than 2 years of employment - from benefiting from RBs. The UI COULD also exclude such staff. This would keep the UI premiums low for the company.

However the company may want the UI to provide a cover for new employees (who are usually the first to be retrenched in any downsizing exercise), so that they would not be doubly disadvantaged. If so the monthly UI premium would include a "rider" for new employees, and this would raise the premium for the employer.

Another question is whether retrenchment benefits would be preferred or would UI payments be better? Would you rather have 3 months of salary as retrenchment benefit, or 6 months of partial salary?

That depends on your plans, and how soon you are re-employed. If you get 3 months severance package, and a job within a week of being retrenched, then the 3 months of retrenchment benefit is a bonus.

If you are close to retirement and do not intend to look for a job, the severance package could provide seed money for personal projects or investments.

Most workers should prefer a lump sum retrenchment benefit, rather than UI. But that may not have a bearing on the employers' decision. In the long run, it may simply make more sense for a company to use UI as default and only retrenchment benefit.

In which case, the PAP's position may make sense. It may well be that UI will drive out RB which may be better for employees.

So, the govt may need to step in and moderate. Companies that have an RB may be accorded tax rebates or other incentives, such as being allowed to purchase the basic UI cover. Companies without RB could be compelled to buy more comprehensive UI policy that either provides more UI payments, or longer duration of payments, or payment and duration may be dependent on the years of service by the employee.]

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-32931148721180829882016-04-19T03:55:00.000+08:002016-04-19T10:05:18.062+08:00News Reaction: Mass Hysteria at Malaysian School (Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan)The News:

Since Monday (April 11, 2016), about 100 students and staff of the school, SMK Pengkalan Chepa 2, Kelantan, reported seeing apparitions described as black spectres, pontianak, and pochong. Officially, this was described as "mass hysteria". However, the school has enlisted the help of more than 8 ustaz (Islamic Scholars), bomoh (traditional Malay Shaman), and Islamic traditional experts to "help chase away the spirits".

On Wed (April 13) the school was closed to allow the ustaz and bomoh to perform prayers or rituals to cleanse the school of spirits.

On Sunday (April 17) the school was re-opened, though the media was not granted access. However, from outside the school gates, journalists reported hearing screams and shouts from within the schools. So the prayers and rituals did not seem to have worked.

The Question:

So which is it? Mass Hysteria, or haunting? The media (at least the English media) seems to prefer "mass hysteria", but the ground response seems to give credence to malevolent spirit intrusion. Even then, the response of ustaz and bomoh seems to be an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. A Islamic-based response should be using ustaz. A customary approach would mean going with bomoh (traditional shamans). Using both shows a lack of faith in either. If you believe it is a spiritual manifestation, then do you trust your religious scholars to expel the spirits or do you put your faith in traditional shamanistic rituals. Because a bomoh is not a religious leader, and has no standing in the Islamic community. Using both is akin using a Catholic Exorcist, and a Taoist Medium at the same time. It is rather open-minded and inclusive of you, but it speaks volumes about your faith. Or rather the lack thereof.

The Other Question from FaceBook comments was,

So why don't Singapore have such Mass Hysteria incident as well?

And because FaceBook has lots of would-be stand-up comics, here are the ten best answers

#10 Men in White are scarier than any pontianak.

#9 The spirits are coming. They are stuck at the causeway trying to clear custom and immigration.

#8 Singapore too expensive, the spirits can't afford to come. Need almost 3 ringgit to get 1 SGD.

#7 Food is better in Malaysia. And cheaper. And in ringgit. SG hawkers dying out, closing shop.

#6 Three letters: E.R.P.

#5 Who says we don't have? We have! Every weekend at Central Christian Church, City Harvest Church, and New Creation Church thousands of people get hysterical.

#4 Because they are an ungodly nation/state (Kelantan) who do not keep holy the Sabbath!

#3 Three other letters: L.K.Y. (or his spirit)

#2 Those spirits? From MH370. They have nothing to do with Singapore. So no hauntings in Singapore.

#1 "Those Malaysian students, dem lucky. Got time to have mass hysteria. Singapore students don't even have time to sleep because of the homework, the "enrichment classes", the tuition, the CCA, etc. They lucky to be able to dream, dun say see ghosts."

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-45358771942603781512016-04-16T03:01:00.000+08:002016-04-16T03:01:36.560+08:00A Singaporean's journey West, and back homeCharles Tan Meah Yang

April 15 2016

A sojourn through Europe, which is grappling with a migrant problem, led me to rethink my views on the role of government

As a Singaporean who has lived and worked in London for nearly 10 years now, making the decision to finally move back home was not an easy one. After all the deliberation, one thing was abundantly clear - Singapore is my home.

It is where friends, family and fond memories reside. It is where I come from, it is where I must return, and considering my age - 31 - it was better to do so sooner rather than later.

With my resignation tendered last month, my fiancee and I found ourselves with quite a bit of spare time on our hands, and thus we set out to travel around Europe for as much as our backpacks and budgets would allow before returning to Singapore for good.

Friends will remember me as a diehard free-market libertarian with a strong anti-government bent and a fondness for tau hway (soya bean curd) and bak chor mee (minced pork noodles).

The second trait hasn't changed; but the first has swung considerably. I now believe in the need for strong government oversight alongside a largely free-market framework.

The primary reason for that change is the time I have spent in Europe; the experiences here have led me to rethink the role of government and the onerous task of policymaking which we too easily criticise or take for granted in Singapore.

A recent trip to the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, just as the refugee crisis was reaching fever pitch in Europe, brought to life an issue that was, until then, just something you saw happen to other people on TV.

I saw some questioning of the so-called Scandinavian or Nordic model, a socio-economic system characterised by big government, and a generous welfare state - public spending accounts for 40 to over 50 per cent of gross domestic product in the Scandinavian nations of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, as compared with the less than 20 per cent in Singapore and Hong Kong.

This system has historically been lauded for its egalitarian attitudes and high moral ambitions, including an open-door immigration and asylum policy; generous unemployment benefits and maternity-related incentives, as well as the provision of high-quality, universal public services and infrastructure.

The past two years, however, have been testing for Scandinavian generosity as an eruption of geopolitical unrest and economic malaise have sent millions fleeing their homes in Africa and the Middle East in search of a better life in Europe.

Some of these refugees have ended up in the Scandinavian countries, travelling from the warm Mediterranean countries they first landed in, Greece and Italy, and travelling north, presumably seeking the countries with the most generous welfare entitlements, like any rational economic actor would do.

Last year alone, Sweden took in more than 160,000 asylum seekers, with another 160,000 expected to arrive this year (up threefold from about 50,000 in 2013).

The migration agency expects this influx could cost it around 60 billion kronor (S$10 billion) annually, or 1.5 per cent of GDP, and to put this figure into perspective, that is almost how much Sweden spent on healthcare (70 billion kronor) and education (70 billion kronor) respectively last year.

But apart from the financial cost incurred, the crisis has exacted a toll on society as a whole. In many cases, new migrants had difficulty picking up the local language and are physically isolated from the rest of society.

In October, a bus carrying 60 refugees reached Limedsforsen, a Swedish village that the refugees considered "too cold" and too remote. They refused to disembark. The village is 400km north-west of Stockholm and had a population of just over 400 inhabitants.

Understandably, some citizens are asking why valuable taxpayer dollars are spent housing, clothing and feeding a large population of people to whom they feel little ethnic or ideological connection, whose majority religion they associate most closely with unspeakable acts of terror and who seem unwilling or unable to integrate with the broader community in their adoptive country.

Indeed, the rules in effect today were written in a different time, for a different world - before the Syrian conflict created the biggest migration push into Europe since World War II - and the Scandinavians, in a dramatic policy U-turn earlier this year, have begun to toughen their stance.

Norway has begun to deport some 5,000 refugees to Russia, Sweden has outlined plans to expel about 80,000 from last year's cohort, while Denmark has enacted controversial laws to allow the seizure of cash and valuables from migrants to help pay for their stay .

Yet, while we were walking the streets of central Stockholm, we saw a number of young activists holding a "refugees welcome" banner. Such public displays of support belie a smouldering resentment: The latest poll in Sweden now indicates that roughly 55 per cent of the population believe the country should not take in any more refugees (up from only about 30 per cent in September).

While international observers have criticised the policy moves as inhumane and local politicians have invoked the moral imperative to help those in need, I find myself on the side of those favouring a tougher stance.

In my opinion, a government should always place the interests of its people first (that is, those who directly contribute and/or are indigenous to that community) before aspiring to nobler goals further afield .

That is not to say that we shouldn't be donating money and offering help to victims of natural and man-made disasters abroad - after all, charity begins at home but it doesn't end there. Rather, it is to acknowledge that in the absence of a utopian world of limitless resources, promising relatively generous benefits and then throwing the barn door wide open is not charity; it is folly.

There is a lesson to be learnt here about sustainability and how our policymakers need to take tail risks and long-term effects into consideration when introducing new laws. Policies which are popular and/or that appear feasible in the short term often spiral out of control over time, and repealing them at some later date can prove not just difficult or impossible, but also deeply unfair - case in point: Is a refugee arriving today any less deserving of asylum than one that arrived two years ago?

Ten years ago, I started my "Journey to the West", believing, perhaps naively, that free markets and open borders were unquestionably desirable, and society could be relied upon to take care of itself and uphold the basic tenets of a civilised democracy. Examples from across the world, past and present, have convinced me that is evidently untrue.

Instead, I believe we need a strong government with an equally strong moral compass because we rely on our politicians to make important decisions on our behalf - decisions that will affect not just our lives, but those of generations after us.

These decisions will be imperfect and, in some cases, unpopular. But if they are made honestly, transparently and with the long-term interests of Singapore at heart, they should be made regardless.

With Singapore's Jubilee year SG50 just passed, I look forward to celebrating SG100. And if the situations in Europe and the United States are any guide, we will not get there by having a weak and indecisive government, prone to having its policymaking process corrupted by corporate lobbying and myopic populism.

The writer was until recently director of Investment Companies Research at Cantor Fitzgerald in London. He is co-founder of 31-East.com, a start-up that aims to tackle waste, corruption and inefficiency in the property sector.

[See also "The Same Old Criticism of Singapore" and this post on what is the purpose of Democracy.]

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-77913636366982096252016-04-15T11:11:00.000+08:002016-04-15T11:11:35.305+08:00WP declines invite to dialogue, will debate proposed changes in ParliamentBy Laura Elizabeth Philomin -

April 15

SINGAPORE – The Workers' Party (WP) has declined the Constitutional Commission's invitation to speak at public hearings on the proposed changes to the Elected Presidency (EP), preferring instead to debate the matter when the Constitutional Amendment Bill is presented in Parliament.

The nine-member commission, which was formed to review and make recommendations on certain aspects of the EP, had invited 20 groups and individuals who had contributed written submissions to speak during the hearings, which will be held in April and May.

The WP first informed the commission of its decision last month in its cover letter for the party's written submission, and repeated in a Facebook post yesterday that it "respectfully declined the invitation".

"We intend to debate the matter fully when the Constitutional Amendment Bill is presented in Parliament ... The commission ... said it would consider our written submission nonetheless," the party said.

In its written submission, the WP reiterated its call for the EP to be abolished. It noted that the concerns expressed by the Prime Minister about the EP office, such as the potential for political gridlock due to an uncooperative President, are largely of the Government's own making.

"Should the day come when a non-PAP (People's Action Party) government is elected, the EP will represent the PAP's legacy ... A newly elected non-PAP Government might need to replace some of the key appointment holders ... The EP could block such appointments and cripple the new administration," the WP said.

The significant veto powers given to the EP could potentially lead to the President becoming an alternative power centre, it added.

As for protecting the nation's reserves, the WP believes that Parliament serves as a sufficient safeguard, and the party is open to "additional parliamentary safeguards".

The WP also noted that expanding the powers of the Council of Presidential Advisers, comprising eight appointed members with no mandate from Singaporeans, may add another layer of gridlock between the President and the Council.

On concerns about the lack of minority representation, the WP said reverting to the former system of appointed, ceremonial Presidents would nullify the Government's concerns.

"The WP is therefore of the view that the office of the EP should not be refined, and should be abolished," it said.

LAURA PHILOMINEl Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-20181702646954939222016-04-13T11:57:00.000+08:002016-04-13T11:57:06.709+08:00Is vegetable oil really good for you?Cooking with vegetable oil to reduce saturated fats can lower cholesterol, but it may not help curb the risk of heart disease or add years to your life, U.S. researchers say.

13 Apr 2016

(Reuters Health) - Cooking with vegetable oil to reduce saturated fats can lower cholesterol, but it may not help curb the risk of heart disease or add years to your life, U.S. researchers say.

Plenty of previous research has linked polyunsaturated fat in vegetable oil, nuts and seeds with a lower risk of heart disease. Based on these studies, people have been routinely advised to replace animal fats like butter, cream and lard with plant-based oils made from corn, soybean, canola and olives.

But this has never been proven by gold-standard studies that randomly assigned people to specific diets to see how different foods and fats impacted health and longevity, said Dr. Christopher Ramsden, lead author of the current study.

When Ramsden's team examined data from an experiment that did just this with more than 9,400 people, they found the lower cholesterol from swapping saturated fats for vegetable oils didn't lead to improved survival.

"In fact, participants who had greater reductions in cholesterol had higher, rather than lower, risk of death," Ramsden, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said by email.

The researchers studied data from 1968 to 1973 on residents of one nursing home and six mental hospitals in Minnesota, ranging in age from 20 to 97.

Residents were randomly assigned to either a diet that replaced saturated fat with corn oil and margarine made from corn oil, or to a control group that ate meals high in saturated fat from animal fats, common margarine and shortenings.

[Margarine! Transfat! Hydrogenated fats! And this data is from 1973 and earlier?!]

After switching to the vegetable oil diet, residents had a nearly 14 percent drop in cholesterol levels, compared with just a 1 percent dip for the control group, researchers report in The BMJ, April 12. But lower cholesterol didn't turn out to be helpful.

Researchers looked at participants' total serum cholesterol, which includes triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. The American Heart Association says a total serum cholesterol of less than 180 mg/dL is ideal.

For every 30 mg/dL reduction in cholesterol, however, people's risk of death rose 22 percent, based on an analysis of autopsy reports available for the study population as of 2015.

In addition, the vegetable oil diet wasn't tied to a reduced risk of atherosclerosis.

Limitations of the study include the fact that the experimental diet included almost twice as much linoleic acid - the main polyunsaturated fat in vegetable oil, nuts and seeds - as a typical American diet.

[And also Margarine! Transfat!]

Also, because the researchers used concentrated vegetable oils, the findings might not apply to people who consume lots of linoleic acid by eating nuts or seeds.

Even so, the findings suggest that saturated fat and linoleic acid, one particular type of polyunsaturated fat, may not differ much in their effects on vascular health, said Dr. Lennert Veerman, a public health researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

More research is still needed to fully understand which fats are best, Veerman said by email.

"People should focus on recommendations that are not in doubt: avoid trans fats, added sugars, and sodium, (and) eat a varied diet rich in a variety of vegetables, whole fruits, whole grains, sea foods, lean meats, eggs, legumes, and nuts, seeds and soy products," Veerman said.

As for vegetable oil, "it may or may not be better for blood vessels compared to saturated fat, but there is no evidence that it does harm and there is no need to stop using it," Veerman added.

["No evidence that it does harm"? Excuse me, didn't your study say that the participants with lower cholesterol had higher death rates? That is not "harm"? I would like to know your definition of "harm" then.]

- ReutersEl Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-26862375737768149432016-04-13T02:23:00.002+08:002016-04-13T02:23:38.860+08:00French beggar gets a life after saving one

April 12, 2016

Michel Flamant (left) and Jerome (right) working in their bakery.

DOLE (France) — French baker Michel Flamant, who owes his life to the homeless man who begged for handouts outside his bakery, knows more than anyone that man does not live by bread alone.

To show his gratitude, Mr Flamant is selling the business in the eastern town of Dole to Mr Jerome Aucant for a symbolic one euro (S$1.53).

The corpulent Flamant, who wears a tank top and shorts to help him cope with the heat of his bread ovens, says he has always had a big heart despite his "piggish character".

In fact, long before the fateful day in December when he nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning, he would greet Aucant every morning with a cup of coffee and a croissant.

"If Jerome wasn't around that day I would have been a goner," the 62-year-old Flamant said, recounting how a defective bread oven began leaking the odourless, lethal gas.

When Mr Aucant noticed Mr Flamant begin to stagger around the bakery, he called the emergency services.

The poisoning landed Flamant in the hospital for 12 days.

Back at work, the baker initially offered Mr Aucant, 37, a part-time job.

He soon realised how well the tattooed, dreadlocked homeless man applied himself.

"And I'm demanding. The work has to be done as I say and that's that!" the white-haired Flamant said as he lined up baguettes on an oven tray.

He said he loves teaching people like Aucant who are "smart enough to listen to my advice".

The garrulous Paris native says that as a child he thought he would be a truck driver when he grew up.

But his father put him to work in the family bakery when he was 14 and the job pleased him.

His companion minds the till on the ground floor while he makes bread, croissants and pastries in the basement from midnight to noon, six days a week.

'I DON'T CARE ABOUT MONEY'

Mr Flamant, whose three daughters are not interested in taking over the business, had been trying to sell it for the past two years.

Then it dawned on him to cede the bakery to Aucant for a token one euro.

"What's more important, money or life? I don't care about money. I'm not rich but I don't care. I want to be free, I want to take it easy now. And also, if this makes him happy..."

Mr Flamant has taken Aucant under his wing until September when he will retire and hand over the keys.

After that, "It will be up to him to make it work," Mr Flamant said. "Jerome is a hard worker and he wants to succeed. He deserves a chance."

Mr Aucant, who has shorn his dreadlocks, revels in his new work.

"I want to work and the hours don't put me off," he said.

Mr Aucant, with little previous work experience besides occasional seasonal stints at funfairs, is fully aware of the responsibility he will be taking on.

"I have to be 100 percent on the job," he said, adding: "Michel has given me a real gift, and now... I want to be worthy of it."

Mr Flamant, sitting on a stack of plastic crates to rest his arthritic legs, said for his part: "I've made bread all my life, now I'm tired."

AFP

[A life-affirming story. A feel good story.]

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-27839359818912871032016-04-12T14:24:00.003+08:002016-04-13T11:58:12.216+08:00Cholesterol-lowering supplements: Do they really help?April 12 2016

Joyce Teo

These days, you can easily find a plethora of nutritional supplements on shop shelves aimed at promoting cardiovascular health.

You might be tempted to get one of these cholesterol-lowering supplements if you are worried about your cholesterol level.

Here's a look at three common ones:

FISH OILS

Fish oils contain essential omega-3 fatty acids, of which the active components - eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) - have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and anti-thrombotic effects.

While some people may take it with the aim of preventing heart attacks, there isn't any strong evidence of protection for those who have not suffered from heart disease, said Dr Kenneth Ng, consultant cardiologist at Novena Heart Centre.

It does, however, have a protective effect in patients who have had heart attacks or vascular disease.

The main effect of fish oils is that they lower triglyceride levels.

However, the lowering of triglyceride levels by drugs or other means has not been shown to reduce the risk of cardiac events, said Dr Ng.

So far, clinical trials have shown evidence of secondary prevention, that is, in people who already have heart disease, he said.

Two clinical trials involving patients who had suffered a heart attack found that treatment with 850mg of omega-3 fatty acids per day led to a 45 per cent risk reduction in sudden cardiac death, said Dr Ng.

The only side effect is fishy breath if you burp after taking a pill with omega-3 fatty acids.

For high-risk patients, such as those with known heart disease or elevated triglycerides, one to two servings of oily fish (salmon, halibut, sardines and anchovies) per week is recommended, said Dr Rohit Khurana, a cardiologist at Gleneagles Hospital Singapore.

The American Heart Association, which recommends eating at least two servings of fish (particularly fatty fish) a week, said each cooked serving is 99g.

"For those who are unable or unwilling to consume this much fish, we suggest prescribing a daily fish oil supplement (about 1g-2g per day)," he added.

Dr Ng recommends taking at least 800mg of DHA and EPA combined. Always check the label as the actual amount of omega-3 oils to take depends on the concentration of EPA and DHA in each capsule, he said.

"Some brands of fish oils have very low levels of EPA and DHA in each 1g capsule. The good brands will have about 400mg of DHA and EPA in each capsule, so you would probably end up taking two to three capsules a day," he said.

RED YEAST RICE

This is a substance extracted from rice that has been fermented with a type of yeast. The active ingredient in red yeast rice is Monacolin K, which is chemically identical to lovastatin, a prescription drug which blocks the liver from producing bad cholesterol.

It can cause the same side effects as lovastatin, such as muscle pain.

Red yeast rice is marketed and found in varying doses in supplements such as Xuezhikang, Cholestin and Hypocol.

Three placebo-controlled studies have shown that red yeast rice can reduce total cholesterol by up to 16 per cent and LDL cholesterol by up to 24 per cent, said Dr Ng.

This is equivalent to a lovastatin dose of 20mg-40mg, he said.

There is no data as yet showing its benefit in reducing the incidence of heart attacks over the longer term, said Dr Khurana.

Nevertheless, red yeast rice could still be an alternative for those who do not want to take statins as it does have proven cholesterol-lowering effects, said Dr Ng.

In 2007, the United States Food and Drug Administration asked for some red yeast rice products to be withdrawn from the market because they contained more than trace amounts of lovastatin.

It said that the products cannot be marketed as supplements as they are unapproved new drugs.

"However, Hypocol, which is available in Singapore, has monacolins in the ingredients label... I would presume that the red yeast rice sold in Singapore is still effective," said Dr Ng.

There is a risk that lovastatin can cause severe muscle problems leading to kidney impairment but this complication is extremely rare, said Dr Ng.

"I have not encountered a single case in my years of practice. So theoretically, if someone takes a very high dose of statin and is susceptible to this complication, they can suffer from kidney failure."

If we stick to the manufacturer's dose, it is probably safer, he said.

CO-ENZYME Q10 (COQ10)

This is a natural anti-oxidant that is needed for basic cell function. People produce less of it as they age and disease can also deplete its levels.

However, there is no firm evidence that taking CoQ10 supplements can reduce cholesterol levels. So far, only about six randomised controlled studies of CoQ10 in the prevention of heart disease have been done and they were very small, with an average of 25-50 subjects, said Dr Ng.

"The outcomes were varied and nothing firm can be concluded on their effects on hypertension or cholesterol levels," he said.

"We cannot make any firm conclusions about the benefits of CoQ10 in this respect."

Instead, the main use of CoQ10 is now in treating heart failure, said Dr Ng, citing a trial called the Q-Symbio study.

It showed that the intake of CoQ10 resulted in a significant reduction in the death rates among those with heart failure and a lower rate of hospital admissions.

Heart failure happens when the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.

CoQ10 may also be used to reduce the common side effects of taking statins such as muscle pain, although the evidence is inconsistent, said Dr Khurana.

He said the ideal dose from supplements is 100mg once daily and natural dietary sources are mainly from meat and fish.

There is limited research on CoQ10 toxicity from long-term use of this supplement, he added.

[It is tempting to read this article optimistically. But hidden within the article are lots of caveats. In summary, Fish Oil probably works. Make sure the supplements have enough of the essential oils. Red Yeast Rice works similarly to statins. BUT if you overdose, it could cause other problems. You would be surer of the dosage with pills. CoQ10 have not had consistent results for any firm conclusion. May be a waste of money.]

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-60118429383098921792016-04-11T10:47:00.002+08:002016-04-13T00:55:15.394+08:00Why is jury pay so low?April 8, 2016

Dear Cecil:

I was impaneled as a juror in a civil case. For this privilege, I got paid a whopping $5 per day — which, if that wasn't insulting enough, is considered taxable income. OK, New Jersey is on the low end of juror pay. In Maryland, jurors get a whole $10.50 per day. Why is jury pay so low?

— David Weintraub

Cecil replies:

Heck, at least you showed up. One study found that 80 percent of prospective jurors in Dallas County, Texas, simply ignored their summons altogether. And who can blame them? I don't know your specific economic situation, David, but I can think of a lot of people for whom jury duty's not merely a petty hassle but an unaffordable luxury. I think there's a clear case to be made that any jury system that requires folks to work for five bucks a day isn't just annoying, it's plainly undemocratic.

But let's back up. Just how bad is this problem? Well, take federal jurors. In 1968, they could expect to haul in $20 a day, or $136 in 2016 dollars. The actual dollars we pay federal jurors in 2016, however? Only $40 a day, $50 if their term of service stretches past ten days — in other words, just short of the federal minimum wage for a day's work. (Federal workers, we'll note, have it good — they get paid their regular salary, in lieu of the usual compensation, to sit on a jury.)

Outside the federal system, things are pretty patchwork — some states set the rate, and if they don't, the counties do. Nationwide, pay generally doesn't exceed $50 per day and, as your experience illustrates, is often much lower: as one observer crisply pointed out, "Some counties in South Carolina … pay jurors minimum wage for an eight-hour workday — as of 1938." That amounts, by the by, to two bucks a day. In some states, rates improve the longer you sit on the jury: Pennsylvania, for instance, pays $9 for each of the first three days and $25 daily thereafter. You might get lucky and receive compensation for travel, but on the other hand you might have to pay for parking: I give you Mobile, Alabama, where jurors hearing cases at the county courthouse take home a whopping $10 per diem, plus five cents a mile driven there and back, less the $2 (the special jurors' rate!) they're pretty much forced to put down to leave their car in the parking lot. (OK, Alabama employers are required to pay full-time workers for the days they serve on juries, but that's little help to those Alabamans who lack the security of a full-time job.) And of course there are more invisible costs too, like child care (Colorado and Minnesota do make some provisions for this), canceled vacation plans, etc.

As I suggested up top, the implications of this pay regime are pretty brutal. Let's say a person who makes minimum wage (in one of the 40 or so states without laws like Alabama's) is forced to skip work at her full-time job to serve ten days on a jury, for which she might take home, say, $100 — we're looking at a financial disaster. That's why most states allow for hardship exceptions, if potential jurors can prove their service would be an undue burden. In one sense the exception seems merciful. Viewed another way, though, it's downright unconstitutional: someone's getting excluded from meaningful participation in the American democratic system simply because she can't afford it — which may well, according to a 2015 article in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Another paper, from the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems in 2012, argues that because most states link voter registration with jury service, jury duty basically constitutes a poll tax: it's effectively a fee for casting a ballot. Citizens know they'll be put on a jury list if they register to vote; some know they can't afford to miss work to sit on a jury; therefore they don't register, and subsequently can't vote. The paper estimates that up to 7 percent of American citizens are thus disenfranchised, and proposes official sources other than voter rolls — tax or DMV records, for instance — from which potential jurors' names could be culled.

[This is the reason I "clipped" this article. Jury Duty can be used to disenfranchise the poor. ]

Of course, that wouldn't address the problem that juror pay is too low to begin with, or explain the root cause. I don't think the reason for this execrable set of affairs is particularly mysterious. You might as well ask: Why are the country's highways and bridges falling apart? What's the reason for rising maternal mortality rates, or growing hunger and homelessness in major cities? What you're seeing is the result of austerity and misplaced political priorities. In Minnesota, juror pay has actually been cut twice since 2003 due to tight state finances; last year the governor proposed an increase, but his plan didn't make it into the final budget approved by the legislature. Thus did the state's pay rate for jurors remain at a paltry $10 a day. But hey, it's a crumbling empire, man. What did you expect?

— Cecil AdamsEl Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-47101179924821455882016-04-11T00:06:00.000+08:002016-04-11T00:06:33.352+08:00Why ST did not publish Dr Lee Wei Ling's columnIvan Fernandez

Associate Editor

Apr 9, 2016

The editor who worked on Dr Lee Wei Ling's columns responds to her Facebook post alleging censorship of her articles

Several issues of serious journalistic concern arose from recent allegations by Dr Lee Wei Ling, a former columnist of The Sunday Times, after she blogged about events last month to commemorate the death of her father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

In a Facebook post on April 1, Dr Lee wrote: "i will no longer write for SPH as the editors there do not allow me freedom of speech. in fact, that was the reason why i posted the article on LKY would not want to be hero-worshipped."

I had been editing Dr Lee's columns since last November. So it pained me when she also alleged that those who edited her columns had been "commanded to edit certain issues out, and they are to (sic) timid to disobey, and too embarrassed by their timidness to tell me the truth".

In another posting, Dr Lee alleged that her article, which had earlier been sent to me for publication in The Sunday Times, was rejected because I had deemed certain parts as "irrelevant", while she thought them crucial.

I need to set the record straight on this. I did not say they were "irrelevant", although I did have serious concerns about her latest draft, which I shall come to shortly.

I should first clarify an issue of wider interest to readers, namely, how commentaries are edited when submitted for publication.

In reviewing opinion pieces, an editor strives to stay true to the thrust and tone of the commentator, while bearing in mind professional standards relating to accuracy, fairness, the use of language, coherence, relevance, brevity, the law, and judgment on matters such as race and religion, among other things.

In the case of Dr Lee's contributions, her ideas had to be honed and language tightened.

This editing process is necessarily a two-way affair, as with all commentaries in general.

Dr Lee sent me her article on what she considered "hero-worshipping" of her father on March 21. Over the course of that week, there were some 40 e-mails about the column, as we worked to get it ready for publication.

I sent her my edited version for her review on March 23, with the intended date of publication being Sunday, March 27.

She replied on March 23 (the day of Mr Lee's death anniversary), saying: "Reads well. But I want to wait until the day unfolds completely."

So all seemed well up to then. On March 25, I received another version of the column with substantial additions that I found distracting at first reading because of repeated references to China (Mao Zedong's China had already been mentioned higher up in her piece).

But there was another issue as well. Upon checking the accuracy of a quote she cited from British Prime Minister David Cameron, and other further checks, I found that almost three quarters of the additions had been plagiarised.

I had learnt from experience with Dr Lee's columns that her sources needed to be double-checked.

The additional paragraphs are shown below, with the plagiarised parts in italics:

"Firstly when Chairman Mao died on 9 September 1976, the country was in shock. This was partly the result of the keenly felt loss of a semi-divine leader, but also caused by the enormous uncertainty about what the future held in stock for China and its people. The power struggle between Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four on the one hand, and Mao's designated successor Hua Guofeng on the other, which had been smoldering for some time caused grave anxiety for many people in China. However, on 6 October 1976, within a month after Mao's death, Hua had the Gang of Four arrested. Two days after the arrest of the Gang, the highest organs of the party and the state decided that a Memorial Hall would be built as a permanent tribute to the founder of the People's Republic. On 24 November 1976, the foundation stone for the gigantic building, located to the south of the Monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square was put in place. The construction went on day and night, and the building was finished on 29 August 1977. On that same day, Mao's body, which had been embalmed and placed in a crystal sarcophagus, was moved to the Hall. On 9 September 1977, a ceremony was held to commemorate the anniversary of Mao's death and the completion of the Hall.

"The anniversary of the funeral of Winston Churchill took place 50 years after the actual funeral on 30 January 1965, which brought the capital to a standstill and took place a week after his death aged 90 on 24 January, is being marked by scores of events, including a service and wreath laying at the Houses of Parliament, a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, and the rebroadcast by BBC Parliament of the original live coverage. In a tribute to his most famous predecessor, the prime minister, David Cameron, said: 'Half a century after his death, Winston Churchill's legacy continues to inspire not only the nation whose liberty he saved, but the entire world. His words and his actions reverberate through our national life today.'

"Compare the actual time from death to the first commemoration, and the different activities involved in the commemoration in the two leaders above. Which one would Papa wish commemoration to resemble. Also bear in mind, that unlike almost all leaders, Papa was dead set against a personality cult. If he was forced to choose one form of commemoration, Papa would have objected the least if the commemoration resembled that held for Winston Churchill. Do note that Churchill unlike Papa cherished glory and a place in the history of his county. Compare what Churchill's commemoration which was conducted 50 years after his death with the activities that have been taking place in Singapore that lasted a week. I think Papa would have objected if he were able to convey his view."

 The first paragraph was from an obscure website:

 When Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, the country was in shock. This was partly the result of the keenly felt loss of a semi-divine leader, but also caused by the enormous uncertainty about what the future held in stock for China and its people. The power struggle between Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four on the one hand, and Mao's designated successor Hua Guofeng on the other, which had been smoldering for some time, was about to be fought out in public.
 However, on 6 October 1976, within a month after Mao's death, Hua had the Gang of Four arrested.
 Two days after the arrest of the Gang, the highest organs of the party and the state decided that a Memorial Hall would be built as a permanent tribute to the founder of the People's Republic. On 24 November 1976, the foundation stone for the gigantic building, located to the south of the Monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square ( 天安门广场), was put in place...
 The construction went on day and night, and the building was finished on 29 August 1977. On that same day, Mao's body, which had been embalmed and placed in a crystal sarcophagus, was moved to the Hall. On 9 September 1977, a ceremony was held to commemorate the anniversary of Mao's death and the completion of the Hall.

 The second paragraph was from London's The Guardian newspaper:

 The anniversary of the funeral on 30 January 1965, which brought the capital to a standstill and took place a week after his death aged 90 on 24 January, is being marked by scores of events, including a service and wreath laying at the Houses of Parliament, a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, and the rebroadcast by BBC Parliament of the original live coverage.
 In a tribute to his most famous predecessor, the prime minister, David Cameron, said: "Half a century after his death, Winston Churchill's legacy continues to inspire not only the nation whose liberty he saved, but the entire world. His words and his actions reverberate through our national life today."

In Dr Lee's e-mail on March 25, she said she was adamant that The Sunday Times run the latest version of her article unedited.

She added: "I am going to blog this version or a similar version of this. If there are copyright issues, then I won't sell my copy right to SPH. I thought long and hard about it. I want the version I decide on. I hv my reason for my decision. It does not matter to me whether u agree with me or otherwise."

Later that day, without any notice, she went ahead to post that version of the article online, thereby bringing an end to any further discussion on the editing of the column.

Given the plagiarism it contained, there was no question of our publishing her version of the article. Further, as a matter of policy, we do not run a version of a column in our papers when another version of it has been published online.
The relationship between contributors, editors and publishers is one that is based on trust. That is broken when ultimatums are issued; no newspaper editor would accept columns on that basis, however illustrious the writers.

But what matters more, of course, is the relationship between publications and their readers. For the sake of that, I have no choice but to make these disclosures about the pains taken to uphold professional standards.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-82015693207891630882016-04-10T21:56:00.002+08:002016-04-10T21:56:51.043+08:00Jean Marshall: At home in Singapore
10 April 2016

Jean Mary Gray came to Singapore in 1953 to take up a post with the Red Cross, and went on to become a medical social worker. She became Mrs David Marshall in 1961, when she married the man who was Singapore's first chief minister. Sixty-three years later, Singapore remains her home.

In 1953, bound for Malaya, 27-year-old Jean Mary Gray boarded a plane to Singapore from Heathrow Airport, England. Her father used to say: "If you want to see the world and can't afford to, get a job and see it at someone else's expense."

Jean had got a one-year job as a British Red Cross field officer in rural Malaya.

On April 13, Jean turns 90. She lives in central Singapore in a comfortable apartment that she and her husband David Saul Marshall bought in 1993.

Books in every room attest to Jean's love of reading. As a young girl, she was indignant that her local library in England allowed children just one book that they could exchange only the following day. Finishing her book before day's end, Jean waited impatiently for a new book.

Skimpy library loans are now a distant memory. Distinguished Reader status, given by the National Library Board to select Singaporeans for their contribution to national development and their love of reading, gives Jean special access to the library's collections.

Her personal book collection on Singaporean and Malayan history is full of treasures, and her knowledge of this history, extensive. Rare, out-of-print books sit alongside contemporary publications on her bookshelves.

From 1994 until the store closed in 2014, Jean wrote commentaries on new books for the newsletter of Select Books, Singapore's specialist South-east Asia bookstore.

Photographs in her home - of her parents, late husband, children and their families - bespeak strong family connections. Jean's four children were born in Singapore and schooled here until 1978, when David became Singapore's ambassador to France.

Now, their three daughters live in Europe and their son in Singapore.

Besides photographs, select objects in the apartment evoke family history - a painting that David gave Jean when they got married, by a Singapore artist of whose work David was an early admirer; a Kashmiri papier mache lamp that Jean and David bought on holiday in 1966; a blue ceramic jar from a great-uncle who travelled in Persia; a blue Minton china set that was a wedding present to Jean's parents in 1923.

Born in 1926 in Orpington, Kent, in England, Jean took Singapore citizenship on Nov 28, 1960. This was before she knew she would marry a Singaporean.

FORAY TO RURAL MALAYA

In 1953, while working at the Brompton Chest Hospital in London, Jean responded to a Red Cross advertisement for field officers in rural Malaya. She had studied economics and sociology at the London School of Economics and then trained as an almoner (medical social worker).

She says of medical social work: "I liked the purposeful activity, the sense that one was contributing to human well-being and doing something worthwhile."

She got the job in Malaya and was soon on her way, via Singapore, to Kuala Lumpur where she would find out where her posting was to be.

Jean underplays the magnitude of her move at a time when communication was by post and phone calls only for emergencies: "A one-year contract would be manageable, even if I were unhappy."

She learned to drive and, in her white Land Rover, would traverse miles of mountainous jungle terrain during a turbulent time in Malaya. The Emergency, imposed by the colonial government in 1948 to suppress communist insurrection, was still on.

In Jean's weekly letters home, rich descriptions of landscape, people, architecture, cuisine, social life, history and Red Cross work are set in a context of curfews, roadblocks and security restrictions.

In Kuala Lumpur, Jean recalls: "I ate my first papaya... slept under my first mosquito net, and sweated my first quart of sweat."

Momentarily, the newness of her situation registered and she was "very hot and very bleak".

Sights such as traffic driving on the left of the road and billboards advertising familiar products such as Lux and Bovril, comforted her.

But there wasn't much time for homesickness. Unexpectedly, in Raub and Kuala Lipis in West Pahang, where Jean was posted, she found that her job entailed fund-raising as much as social work. In a circular letter to friends in England she wrote, half-jokingly: "I sped hither and thither with concerts, flag days, funfairs and whatnot springing up in my wake... counting out thousands of one-cent pieces, addressing school children... producing concerts and making collecting boxes out of cocoa tins... (The) dollars rolled in, which leaves us free (for) more constructive ordinary work."

Looking back, Jean says: "Besides providing immediate medico-social services, our job was to leave behind a functioning Red Cross."

Knowing that colonialism was ending, Jean "was surprised that in Raub, colonial attitudes weren't just fiction - indeed, they were alive and active". She remembers, for instance, being told off for taking the children of her local schoolteacher friend to the swimming pool at the Raub gold mine, because "Asians" weren't allowed there. Growing up, Jean had been aware of empire, but Walthamstow Hall, her school in Kent, "fostered an ethos of service rather than imperialism".

Back in England after completing her one-year contract, Jean knew she wanted to return to Malaya. She applied to the Colonial Office and was posted to Kuala Lumpur in 1955 as a medical social worker.

In the course of Malayanisation - the replacement of expatriate government servants with local recruits - her post was "abolished" in 1957.

But Jean was immediately appointed to teach a new course in medical social work in the Department of Social Work at the University of Malaya in Singapore. Ann Wee, the distinguished Singapore social worker, says in Daughters Of Singapore (Part 2), a 2015 Media- corp documentary about Jean, that with excellent training and hospital experience in Britain, and experience in Malaya, Jean was by far the best qualified for the position.

ENTER DAVID

One afternoon in 1958, at a university convocation, Jean was introduced to David Marshall, a prominent lawyer and former chief minister of Singapore. Jean soon became a regular guest at David's famous Sunday lunches at Tumasek, his house in Changi.

In early 1961, when Jean was considering moving to Chicago, United States, to pursue a higher degree in social work, David proposed. She accepted and stayed in Singapore. They got married in April.

Marking exam papers left little time to fuss over a wedding dress. She had one tailored by Elsie Mary, a couturier on Battery Road - "plain, light ecru figured silk with a kind of drape, close-fitting hat, ecru shoes", Jean wrote to her parents.

Jean is Christian; David was a leading figure in the Singapore Jewish community. Bishop Amstutz, David's long-time friend from when they were Japanese prisoners of war, performed a simple ceremony of blessing for the couple. A registry wedding followed.

After marriage, Jean stopped doing full-time, paid work. But she started volunteer work at a Singapore Children's Society convalescent home near her new home in Changi. She was soon pregnant, so the flexible hours and location suited her. "The convalescent home work fitted right in," she says. She worked there for almost 20 years.

Jean and David had four children: Ruth, Sarah, Joanna and Jonathan, born between 1961 and 1969.

In 1972, David was suspended from legal practice for six months for alleged professional misconduct. Jean remembers that year as "murderous... the most difficult time of my life, without a doubt. The whole family's future and stability were at stake".

Finances and children's education apart, Jean worried for David who was "desolate beyond measure". The family moved temporarily to Jean's holiday home in Kent. Jean's children remember how their mother soldiered on, holding things together during that dark time.

Soon after their return to Singapore, the Marshalls had to leave their Changi home in 1976 to make way for the new airport.

Then in 1978, to his surprise, David was appointed Singapore's first ambassador to France. In France, Jean worked hard as an ambassador's wife. Her son, Jonathan, comments in Daughters Of Singapore: "I got the sense that being an ambassador's wife was... a full-time job that was not paid."

Jean says she took seriously the work of "representing Singapore to France, and France to Singapore". Before leaving Singapore, besides shopping for accoutrements for the ambassador's residence, Jean met the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for advice about her new role.

Looking back now, she laughs over such incidents as using a hairdryer on lilies, willing them to open in time for one of the many official, "studiously correct" dinners she and David hosted in France.

After 15 years in France, Jean and David came home. David was 85 and ailing. Jean was 67. They moved into her present apartment. Looking out at the flower-filled ledge fronting her living room, Jean remembers David, in his last months, sitting where he could see sunbirds feed from a glass tube of honey water suspended from an orchid plant - appropriate for a man referred to in Paris as "the orchid ambassador" for the distinctive orchid he always wore in his lapel.

Asked why she stayed on in Singapore after David died and her children were grown, Jean is bemused: "I just assumed I'd stay; it never occurred to me to relocate to England. Of course, my ethnicity is permanent. But after 60 years, I identify with Singapore. It is possible, though, to think of more than one place as home."

If any other physical place is close to her heart, it's the "wild, windswept countryside" of Romney Marsh on the south-east English coast. In 1972, Jean bought Romney Cottage, near her parents' home on the Marsh, so her children might visit their ageing grandparents.

Jean recognises her English roots, albeit no longer physical since she sold the cottage. "But my basic roots are here," she says of Singapore.

In Daughters Of Singapore, she says: "I'm glad I've spent the greater part of my life in Singapore... that I've been part of the development, in a small way, of the last 50 or 60 years; never thought it would happen that way, but it has."

Dr Mandakini Arora is an independent historian with a doctorate in history from Duke University. She is writing a book about Englishwomen who moved to Singapore in the 1950s to 1960s.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-46814194273424245642016-04-09T06:10:00.003+08:002016-04-09T06:10:46.819+08:00Ambassador Bilahari successfully trolls high-ranking Europe reps in S'poreMothership

May 14, 2015

Martino Tan

Bilahari 1 Europe 0

We now know that the European Ambassadors in Singapore still read The Straits Times.

Not one, but two European ambassadors in Singapore were not too pleased with an excerpt of a speech by Ambassador-at-Large and public intellectual Bilahari Kausikan that was republished in The Straits Times on May 4.

Bilahari argued for a practical not ideological approach to human rights.

This was what Bilahari said to the French in his speech:

– France has "hobbled itself by its own absolutist belief systems". It "was unable to admit that some values cannot be simultaneously realised and therefore need at least some degree of restraint to be enjoyed at all".

– France paid dearly for persisting in the delusion that all of its citizens shared the same belief in the universality and pre-eminence of certain rights or values.

And this was what Bilahari told the Europeans:

– Europe is tying itself into knots by clinging to systems of values; systems based on an extreme ideological conception of the universality of rights taken to ridiculous lengths. These thinking are out of sync with societies evolving under demographic or other pressures.

– The result? The revival of fascism or extreme right-wing political movements.

– Unfortunately, European elites are not prepared to confront a redefinition of the conception of Europe and what it means to be European.

Ouch. And ouch.

European Union Ambassador to Singapore Dr Michael Pulch and French Ambassador to Singapore Benjamin Dubertret decided to publish a forum letter to rebut our diplomat who just dished out some undiplomatic hard truths.

Below is the joint reply published on May 9:

Source: The Straits Times

A summary of what they said:

– They argued that Bilahari was disingenuous to lump the mode of thought by the Charlie Hebdo tragedy murderers and victims together by saying that the extremists are misguided.

– They added that France has constraints in place against the abuse of freedom of speech since 1881.

– They also said that the EU does not make use of its position as the world's largest donor of development aid, presumably to pursue their thoughts regarding the freedom of speech.

And here is Bilahari having the last word three days later on May 12:

Source: The Straits Times

– He pointed out that there is a stark inconsistency that the French state throws its weight against the discrimination of Jews but not Islam in the name of freedom of speech.

– He also highlighted that the letter by the ambassadors did not address his point that Europe has taken freedom of speech to ridiculous extremes.

– He concluded that this extreme ideology of freedom of speech needs to be exposed. Because Amos Yee.

[The speech that triggered it.]
A practical not ideological approach to human rights
MAY 4, 2015

Ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan advocates a practical approach to human rights in his speech at a seminar on Thursday on "Keeping the Faith: A Study of Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion in Asean", organised by the Jakarta-based Human Rights Resource Centre.

HUMAN rights are undoubtedly a very important subject. But if we are to do justice to their importance, we must take a practical and not an ideological approach. And the first premise of a practical approach must be to admit that not all rights are compatible or capable of simultaneous realisation. There is not one Good but many goods and not all goods are compatible.

A corollary to this is to dismiss from our minds the myth that all rights are really universal. This should not be understood as dismissing the importance of human rights or as an excuse for suppressing them, but as a simple description of reality. The fact is all rights evolve according to specific circumstances and within the context of particular cultures, beliefs, values and changing historical contexts. How we understand rights today is not the same as we understood them 100 or 50 or even, say, just five or 10 years ago.

The idea that human rights have an autonomous reality or are somehow "natural rights" is, as Jeremy Bentham said, "rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts". It is a civilising myth we choose to believe in so that we may at least occasionally live in a civilised manner. But we should not forget that beliefs are not stable; they change and they do not change in a teleological manner towards a single preordained destination.

Of course, all cultures and societies hold some values in common. But this is generally at such a high level of generality as to be practically meaningless as a guide to how specific societies or political systems actually organise themselves or even as a guide to how they ought to organise themselves. Most rights, despite a superficial consensus, are in fact essentially contested concepts, both within societies and between different countries and societies. And it is to my mind pointless to console someone deprived of the basic necessities of life that his or her civil liberties are protected. It is at best naive if not downright cynical.

An ideological approach to the universality of rights not only leads to a meaningless formalism, but it degrades the very values that are held to be universal. But this is too often the approach in the international human rights discourse. Anyone who has served at the United Nations would have at some point encountered the less-than-edifying spectacle of Western, usually European, diplomats threatening the withdrawal of aid from the less developed countries if they did not support some human rights resolution or other. Curiously, these Western diplomats seem to see nothing hypocritical or even merely contradictory in their behaviour.

When the Charlie Hebdo tragedy occurred, I was struck by the similarity between the mode of thought of the murderers and their victims. Both held some belief so absolutely that they thought it justified anything.

The fact that the terrorists had a completely mistaken interpretation of Islam is beside the point. The point is that they believed in it; believed in it as fervently as the cartoonists believed in their right to freedom of expression. Both were equally wrong. I am not arguing that there is a moral equivalency between the terrorists and the cartoonists; clearly there is none. Nothing justifies murder. But is it right to constantly lampoon a religion? I do not often agree with Dr Mohamad Mahathir, but he got it absolutely right when he said killing is wrong and so is insulting someone else's religion.

Circumstances do matter and again the Charlie Hebdo tragedy is an apt case in point for the specific theme of this seminar: how the state can successfully balance the conflicting interests of different belief systems in society. This is not, I think, in principle very complicated if we do not lose sight of the general points with which I began.

Of course, implementation is everything. The conception of rights that is predominant in the West is one in which rights are held by the individual against an overly powerful state. But the essential problem in much of the rest of the world, and in my view certainly in South-east Asia as regards freedom of belief, arises when the state is too weak to hold the balance between competing belief systems or too timid to be willing to resist political pressures to privilege one belief system over another. This does not, of course, mean South-east Asian or other non-Western states cannot be as oppressive as any other state.

But it is a matter of what is regarded as the most urgent priority and that again will vary according to specific circumstances. You cannot - or at least only very rarely can - do everything simultaneously, particularly when the state is weak. Perfection is not to be found this side of heaven and to pursue perfection on earth usually results only in achieving very little all round.

The French state is certainly not weak. But it hobbled itself by its own absolutist belief systems and was unable to see beyond its own nose and admit that some values cannot be simultaneously realised and therefore need at least some degree of restraint to be enjoyed at all. France paid dearly for persisting in the delusion that all of its citizens shared the same belief in the universality and pre-eminence of certain rights or values. And so the French state failed in the most fundamental duty of any state: to adjudicate between different conceptions of the good.

In fact, all of Europe is tying itself into knots by clinging to systems of values; systems based on an extreme ideological conception of the universality of rights taken to ridiculous lengths - a reductio ad absurdum of values - and which moreover are out of sync with societies that are evolving under demographic or other pressures in entirely different directions. The result, among other consequences, is the revival of fascism or at least extreme right-wing political movements. Is it an accident that anti- Semitism is on the rise in France and some other parts of Europe? I don't think so.

I do not think Europe can easily get out of this conundrum of its own making because that would require a redefinition of what European elites have decided it means to be European. They are not prepared to confront this, particularly at a time when the conception of Europe as Europe - as distinct from France or Germany or any other individual country - has been shaken and its place in the international order is in question.

I wish Europe well. But I even more fervently wish that Southeast Asia in general, and Singapore in particular, does not fall into the same trap. Here at least we can learn from Europe's mistakes if we maintain the self-confidence to pursue our own course and ignore advice that may be well-meaning but is too often utterly inappropriate.
El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-68624882634078695132016-04-09T05:33:00.000+08:002016-04-09T05:33:23.448+08:00Tax and the single man (The $80,000 tax relief cap)Ignatius Low
Deputy Editor

April 3 2016

The latest Budget Statement goes back to the principle of tax equity

I have covered almost every Budget Statement by the Finance Minister for the past 16 years. So you would think that by now, nothing would really excite me when the annual exercise rolls around.

Sometimes the economy is in trouble and needs rescuing with schemes and incentives. Then, once in a while, there is a new man in charge, duly photographed leaving for Parliament House with a briefcase of a new style and colour.

So it was this year, with Mr Heng Swee Keat taking the helm as Singapore's new Finance Minister. And as the speech started, it became clear that it was going to be a cautious Budget.

This was the first year of the new term of government, so Mr Heng had to watch the expenditure and avoid going into deficit. The economy is slowing but is not in dire straits yet. So either way, there was no need to bring out the big guns in terms of financial help.

Somewhere at the end of his speech, however, the soft-spoken new Finance Minister suddenly made me sit up.

This will take some explaining.

You see, every year the Government looks at your taxable income to assess how much tax you pay.

To ease your tax burden, the Government offers various tax reliefs, for example, $3,000 for active NSmen. That means that if you had done any reservist duty in the past year, you get to deduct $3,000 from your taxable income. A tax rate is then applied on the smaller figure, which essentially means you pay less tax.

Up to now, there had been absolutely no limit on the total amount of tax reliefs that a taxpayer can claim. That means in theory, you can claim so many tax reliefs that your assessable income drops to zero, and you don't pay any tax at all. The question is: Can anyone really do that?

Apparently the answer is yes. There are many tax reliefs that you can apply for in Singapore, and one of the most powerful is something called the Working Mother's Child Relief (WMCF).

Working mothers get to claim reliefs of 15 per cent off their taxable income on their first child, another 20 per cent off for the second child and 25 per cent off for every subsequent child.

The limit is $50,000 per child, but that still means that a working mother with five children who earns $250,000 a year (making her obviously quite well-off) can theoretically claim 100 per cent in reliefs and pay zero tax.

That sort of mother maybe doesn't exist. Yet analysts have worked out that working mothers who roughly earn $150,000 a year or more do have their tax bills significantly reduced or even eliminated by the combination of the WMCF plus other reliefs such as CPF Relief and Foreign Maid Levy Relief.

So in his first-ever Budget, Mr Heng made a very bold move: to limit the amount of total tax reliefs a person can claim to $80,000 a year.

Now, I have nothing against working mothers. I have two dogs and it is expensive enough to raise them, so I can't imagine what it would be like to raise two children. I know it is also not nice to gloat at someone's misfortune.

There is also much to be said for having tax reliefs that encourage Singaporeans to form families. Our society is ageing and we need more babies, but we are up against the stresses of modern working life. Already, many have criticised Mr Heng for limiting tax reliefs, saying that it is counter-intuitive given all the work Singapore has done to promote childbirth.

But somehow the announcement made the irrational part of me want to stand up and very quietly pump my fist.

I guess I just have tax relief envy.

Ever since I started work and made enough money to pay income tax, I have been made to feel at nearly every Budget that I have clearly led the wrong sort of lifestyle in Singapore.

I am not married, I don't have kids, I don't have a maid and for now, at least, I don't live with my aged parents. In other words, I am as far removed as can be from that Singaporean ideal of having a multi-generational family living under one roof - the stuff of every shiny and smiley government campaign.

But does that mean I have to be taxed that much more?

The question brings me back to the debates we used to have in my first year of working life.

Having studied at a British university on a government scholarship, I returned to Singapore to serve my bond and found myself as a young assistant director in the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

Back in those days, there were "two MOFs" - the Revenue Division that collected money, and the Budget Division that spent it.

I was in the Revenue Division, not in one of the many tax departments but certainly privy to all the big decisions that my bosses had to make on tax policy.

It was here that I learnt that at the heart of a good tax system is a sense of equity and fairness.
Some of these high-income working mothers live in big landed houses. Together with their husbands, many lead a comfortable life with maids to take care of the family.

I even know some of them, having been their classmates in school. We've taken very different paths in life, but haven't necessarily landed too far off from each other in our careers.

Should they be getting such a big discount off their tax bill? Should they be paying the same in taxes as someone who earns far less and is more in need of government support?

I was taught in MOF that you can never really compare two individual taxpayers and ask who should rightfully pay more. Each life is led differently and imposes unique financial stresses.

But as tax policymakers, we should still strive to set the rules such that those who earn more and can afford to contribute more should pay more tax; and those who earn less should pay less.

That was not the only thing I learnt during my days at MOF as a young officer.

From my permanent secretary Ngiam Tong Dow, I learnt that you can buy a tin of Milo from two different shops and pay a very different price. In everything there is value-for-money to be sought, but you must want to seek it.

I learnt the value of saving up for a rainy day. I remember asking my director what was the point of the Government accumulating so much in surpluses and reserves, if the Ministry was (it seemed to be anyway) never going to use it.

Twenty years later, as I read that returns of almost $15 billion from investing those reserves were the only way Mr Heng could balance the Government's budget, the liberal in me finally understood the wisdom of fiscal conservatism.

It was just one small change in a long list of Budget initiatives that was rolled out.

But the Finance Minister's bold and principled move is one that goes back to basics, for me in more ways than one.

[Comment: I was like Mr Low, the author of this piece, for most of my life - until marriage and parenthood. Like him I understood that if I had to pay income tax, it meant that I was earning enough to pay taxes.

If you pay income tax, you are better off than about 1/3 of employed Singaporeans. maybe as much as 40% of employed Singaporeans (once you take into account tax reliefs and deductions). If you pay more than $1000 in income tax, you are probably above the 65th percentile of income earners. That is you are better off than 65% of employed Singaporeans. If you take into account those not employed but earning too little to pay taxes, and the unemployed and unemployable (disabled and retired), you may be better off than 80% (or more) of all Singaporeans.

I understood this. In my early working days, I earned too little to pay taxes for a while. I was happy. And sad that I earn so little the taxman took pity on me. Which is not to say that I jumped for joy when I had to finally pay income tax. My first few tax assessment were quite modest - I believe it was $100 or less. I had been promoted, and the extra salary was welcomed. The tax, well, I would rather not pay taxes, but I was not upset about having to pay taxes. I took it as a sign that I was arriving, if not actually arrived.

In the following years, my tax grew incrementally in line with my salary. It was fair. There were people who earned less than me and they paid no taxes. And people who earned more than me and paid way more taxes.

Today I pay considerably more taxes because of my changed circumstances, and also have more tax relief and once even got to enjoy the Parental Tax Rebate.

But before then I did not have Tax Relief "Envy". It was not as strong as envy. Maybe wistfulness. Then gratefulness. Because if you have a child and you get tax relief for that child ($4000), you can be sure that what you spend on that child, will likely be more than that.

But I understand Mr Low's visceral reaction. I did not respond as he did, because I am no longer in the same circumstances as him. But I do not begrudge him his little fist pump of... joy? validation? satisfaction? :-)

I don't know. Some visceral response cannot be amply explained. Simply understood.

In any case the tax relief cap of $80,000 is not one that most people will be able to enjoy. The related article below suggests that previously, only a woman earning $150k a year would fully benefit]

Why working mums should be happy to start paying tax
Chua Mui Hoong
Opinion Editor

Apr 3, 2016

Seen from a family perspective, taxes paid may give solace to a relative receiving Silver Support

Each year, the Budget rolls around and agitates or delights different segments of society, with its slew of new measures to cut or raise taxes.

This year, two measures in particular have drawn public attention.

The first is the move to cap the amount of personal income that working mothers can claim for tax relief, at $80,000. They will now have to pay tax on income above that amount.

Although the move is expected to hit just about 1 per cent of earners, the outrage from this group of high-earning, and presumably very well-educated and hence vocal, women has been palpable, going by comments from folks I know.

But the fact is that working mothers have enjoyed generous tax relief for years. I didn't realise how much, until I saw a March 28 article in The New Paper that tabulated just how much tax savings a high-earning mother can make.

A working mum below 55 years of age, earning $150,000 a year, can claim tax relief in excess of that amount, if she has three children; supports one set of parents including one who is handicapped; hires a maid, and tops up her retirement savings in the Central Provident Fund (CPF) with the Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS).

In other words, she pays no tax.

The lion's share of relief comes from her children: the working mother child relief for the three kids comes up to $90,000 alone. With the proposed cap of $80,000 in tax relief, she will have to pay tax amounting to about $2,650.

TNP then helpfully computed how much tax the same woman would pay, if she could not claim all those child reliefs and other reliefs, and if she can claim only the earned income relief of $1,000 that all taxpayers can claim.

The answer:$10,950.

In other words, the rest of us taxpayers are subsidising the tax bills of working mums who earn $150,000, to the tune of nearly $11,000 a year. And to think that when the rules change to tax them $2,650, they complain?

[I believe the TNP computations may have some slight errors, but the minor errors do not detract from the point - without a cap on relief, some very rich people (mainly women) could end up having to pay NO taxes, and Ms Chua's point is, if you are earning $150k a year, you can afford to take up some of the tax burden. The cap of $80,000 of tax relief would mean that if one earns up to $100,000, one would pay no income tax with all the relief. At $100,000, one would be in the 77th percentile of tax-payers (and maybe over 90th percentile of all Singaporeans). In other words, it should not present a hardship for these high income women. There are women (and men) in a lot worse situations paying taxes. And and Ms Chua points out, these women are being subsidised by taxpayers.]

At the other end of the spectrum, there is concern in some quarters that Singapore risks becoming too generous to our elderly.

The Silver Support Scheme is a pension payment for lower-income elderly. It was first announced in 2014. Last week, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat fleshed out the details. About140,000 seniors aged 65 and above will get quarterly payouts of $300 to $750. They fall in the bottom 30 per cent of seniors.

[I do not think this is excessive. Quarterly payouts of $300 to $750, is $100 to $250 a month. It would help (every little bit helps) but no one can live on that alone.]

This "major new feature" of Singapore's social safety net will be a permanent scheme. It will cost nearly $320 million in the first year - and will likely grow as Singapore's population ages.

Mr Heng made it clear that Silver Support is not meant to replace other sources of support - such as savings or allowances from children. It will also complement other government assistance programmes such as ComCare and Workfare.

Some concerned citizens have asked if too much social security benefits might erode filial piety.

The fiscal conservative in me understands such concerns. Indeed, few would want to live in a society whose government bankrupts this and future generations on over-generous welfare benefits.

But I also wondered why not more people have spoken up about the dangers of generous tax reliefs for parents eroding their sense of parental responsibility.

If we fear a pension payment for the bottom 30 per cent of our seniors might erode their children's sense of filial piety, should we not worry that giving too-generous tax relief to the top 1 per cent of our working mothers might erode their sense of maternal responsibility?

If we worry that a public pension may crowd out intergenerational private transfers (from children to their parents) shouldn't we also worry that a Baby Bonus and tax benefits for parents may crowd out similar intergenerational transfers (from parents to their babies)?

If one is viewed as a public good, so should the other.

Yet, if we compare the tax relief given to families, we will find that families with children get a lot more in relief than families with elderly folks to support.

[I don't disagree, but while there is a comparability, there isn't a symmetry. With your parents, there is an element of repayment, of gratitude, and so there is a visceral concern (if not fear) that the state providing more benefits may lessen one's perceived obligation. Children are a more or less active choice (you can't choose not to have parents, but you can choose not to have children. Hence the asymmetry). ]

This is not necessarily the most equitable of tax arrangements.

But rather than let this descend into a us-versus-them diatribe, I want to argue here that we should go beyond a world view of seeing taxes from an individual win-lose perspective.

Otherwise, the young family with three kids struggling with childcare fees will begrudge further Silver Support payments to the elderly; and the childless taxpayer will resent tax perks given to those with kids.

But such views are blinkered and divisive. Instead, we can choose to look at taxes from a collective family perspective, and over a lifetime.

Most of us are embedded in family relationships and can and should look at tax benefits accordingly. The working mum who pays $2,600 more in tax this year should consider how her own parents, or a distant uncle, will get some solace from the Silver Support allowance.

The so-called intergenerational conflict disappears if we consider that we are all part of families. Giving a retiree an extra $200 a month in Silver Support benefits not only him, but his family, if his grown-up son struggling to care for an ailing wife and kids, has more money to spend on milk powder or medication.

In any case, filial piety is not a function of how much money one gives to one's parents.

As for the fear that public transfers may crowd out private transfers, the jury is out on this.

A draft paper by Dr Bei Lu from the University of New South Wales, titled Rural Pension, Income Inequality And Family Transfer In China, looked at whether elderly men and women in Gansu and Zhejiang got less money from family members after China introduced a rural pension system in 2009. Her conclusion: There is little or no correlation between parents' retirement income and the allowance children gave.

Dr Lu's paper also gave a useful summary of the literature on the issue. The survey yields mixed results.

One study in China suggested that "public transfer would only crowd out private transfer at very low levels of income but becomes less responsive at or above poverty line". Other studies in Mexico and Peru showed some crowding-out effects.

But this "crowding out of private transfer" (from grown-up children to parents) could just mean more money within the family to be spent on the kids.

If we add a lifetime perspective to understanding tax benefits, we can be more comforted that the costs and benefits may equalise over time.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf cited a study by the London think-tank, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which showed that "in the course of adult life, only 7 per cent of individuals receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes, even though 36 per cent of people receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes in any given year".

The welfare state, in his parlance, is a "piggy bank for life" - into which you put deposits and from which you withdraw when needed.

Understanding taxes and benefits within the context of a family, and as a continuum over the course of a lifetime, has a salubrious effect on tax relief envy.

Rather than see tax and benefits as a win-lose proposition from a self-centred, individual perspective, it is better to adopt a more holistic outlook that takes into account a person's role in a family, our own needs over a lifetime, and ultimately, our shared responsibility as a society.

Working mums hot under the collar over $80,000 tax relief cap

Apr 5, 2016,

Bitter pill to swallow, say some high-earning mums whose tax will jump when it kicks in
Lorna Tan

Invest Editor/Senior Correspondent

The move by the Government in this year's Budget to cap personal income tax relief at $80,000 has got many working mums hot under the collar. Some mothers have told The Straits Times that it is a bitter pill to swallow after having enjoyed generous tax savings in past years.

The change will take effect from the Year of Assessment (YA) 2018 and tax experts estimate that it could affect about 20,000 people, of which most are likely to be working mothers.

Tax experts say that it is those working mothers earning above $150,000 with at least two children who will end up paying more tax, particularly if their chargeable income jumps to a higher tax bracket because of the new cap.

Ms Elizabeth Chan (not her real name), 54, who earns about $250,000 a year and has two children, worked out that her personal income tax will jump 50 per cent to about $15,588 from her current $10,000.

This translates to an additional $500 a month in payable tax. Her total reliefs amounted to about $114,000 last year, of which the lion's share of about $83,000 came from the Working Mother Child Relief (WMCR).

Assuming her reliefs and income remain unchanged, an amount of about $34,000 will be added to her chargeable income when the new cap is imposed. It will push her chargeable income to the higher tax bracket, which attracts 17 per cent of tax, up from her current 15 per cent tax bracket.

With the cap, her overall effective tax would still be considered low at 6.2 per cent, up from the current 4.1 per cent.

But Ms Chan said: "Why target us, working mothers, who have worked hard both in our careers and at raising our children? I belong to the sandwiched generation, taking care of ageing parents and our children. Every cent counts."

[No. you are not being targeted because you are a working mother. You are "targeted" because you are a high income earner. At $250,000 a year, you earn more than 95% of all employed persons in Singapore. And yes, we sympathise with you as the sandwiched generation, but you are a sandwiched generation with $250,000 income. Many other "sandwiches" earn a lot less.]

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has said that the new cap is expected to raise an additional tax revenue of $100 million a year. The cap only affects 1 per cent of tax-resident individuals, which means many can still continue to claim reliefs.

According to MOF, there were about 2.2 million individuals assessed to tax in the 2014 year of assessment and that most of these would be tax-resident individuals. This translates to about 20,000 individuals who would be affected by the new tax relief cap.

And even with the new cap, nine in 10 women can continue to claim the WMCR fully.

There are 15 personal income tax reliefs in the current tax system for eligible individuals. They include reliefs for course fees, CPF cash top- ups, earned income and for those who care for parents, grandparents, disabled family members, and who save for their own retirement.

The most substantial relief is the WMCR, which aims to encourage married women to remain in the workforce after having children. To be eligible for WMCR, the working mother can be married, divorced or widowed. It is calculated on the child order and pegged to the working mother's earned income.

Under the WMCR, working mothers can claim up to $50,000 per child in total child reliefs. The WMCR is tiered: 15 per cent of earned income for the first child, 20 per cent for the second and 25 per cent for the third and up. The cumulative WMCR for all children is capped at 100 per cent of the mother's earned income.

Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat had said that while this cap would make Singapore's personal income tax system "more progressive", the personal income tax burden remains low.

Ms Wu Soo Mee, partner at Ernst & Young Solutions, believes that the new tax relief cap is a move in the right direction to make Singapore's tax system more progressive. After all, in a progressive tax system, higher tax is collected from taxpayers who earn more and lower tax from taxpayers earning less.

This is not the case currently, she said. "The current WMCR is inconsistent with the Government's aim to make the tax rate system a progressive one. WMCR increases with a working mother's earned income as it is based on a percentage of her earned income up to a cap of $50,000 per child."

She added that there are other child-related cash subsidies and grants for parents such as the Baby Bonus, First Step grant and reduced Foreign Domestic Worker Levy Concession, as well as other work-life support measures such as extended maternity leave, paternity leave and child and infant care leave.

El Lobo email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-51739041731210408592016-04-09T05:15:00.000+08:002016-04-28T02:12:37.489+08:00No need for unemployment benefits in Singapore: Lim Swee SayResponding to questions by Members of Parliament, the Manpower Minister explains why it is not appropriate for the Republic to put in place unemployment benefits or redundancy insurance for those who are retrenched.

By Linette Lim

08 Apr 2016

SINGAPORE: Low unemployment rates and a widespread practice of companies in the Republic paying retrenchment benefits are reasons why it is not appropriate for the country to put in place unemployment benefits or redundancy insurance, said Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say in Parliament on Friday (Apr 8).

[That's right. With Low Unemployment rates, there is no need for unemployment benefits such as Unemployment Insurance, for example. Just like Fire Insurance. Is your home currently on fire? No? Then you don't need Fire Insurance! ]

Mr Lim made this case in response to calls by Nominated Member of Parliament Azmoon Ahmad, and MPs Patrick Tay and Sylvia Lim for greater support to retrenched workers.

[Note: Sylvia Lim's proposal is for "Redundancy Insurance". There were not a lot of details, but then, it is just a speech. It would be for workers made redundant by technology. Again, not a lot of details and certainly specifics can be negotiated. But not if it is dismissed out of hand.]

Rejecting the suggestions mooted, Mr Lim said that Singapore's employment situation is "quite different" from that in countries providing unemployment benefits.

"Our unemployment rates are low, our long-term unemployment rates are also low," he said. "At the same time, the practice of paying retrenchment benefits is widespread."

RETRENCHMENT BENEFITS A "STANDARD PRACTICE"

Citing an MOM survey, Mr Lim said it was "standard practice" for companies in Singapore to pay retrenchment benefits, with nine in 10 retrenching firms doing so. At the same time, nine in 10 retrenched workers received retrenchment benefits, including from non-unionised companies.

"I do sympathise and empathise with workers who are affected by retrenchment and I appreciate the suggestions by various members," said Mr Lim, emphasising that efforts to help those retrenched must be focused on getting them to "go back to work as quickly as possible".

[See? If your house is on fire, what you want is the Fire Brigade to come immediately. Fire Insurance is NOT going to put out the fire. Our government has rightly focused on providing Fire Fighting service.]

Responding to a question by MP Lim Biow Chuan, he also explained why Government does not support making retrenchment benefits "compulsory".

Noting that this is a topic discussed from time to time, the Manpower Minister said the tripartite partners agree that it is important to allow for the "flexibility to negotiate … rather than prescribing it in the law".

"This is because different retrenching companies are in different circumstances. And therefore there should not be a one-size-fits-all rule," he said.

- CNA/ll

[As investment advisers will tell you, past performance is not a predictor of future performance. That we have had low unemployment and a "standard practice" of providing retrenchment benefits so far DOES NOT GUARANTEE anything in the future.

More importantly, 9 out of 10 retrenching firms provide retrenchment benefits. Nine out of 10 retrenched worker receive retrenchment benefits. That's GREAT! If you are one of the 9.

But that also means that 1 in 10 do not get any retrenchment benefit. So what does Mr Lim Swee Say say to him? "Too bad"? "Eat shit and die"?

I don't disagree that our unemployment rates are low. But low is not zero. Yes, we make policies to cater for the majority, but there will be some who fall between the cracks, or fall off the edge. What do we have for them?

I agree that the current focus on getting people re-employed and to secure retrenchment benefits for them when they are retrenched is the best approach. Most, maybe even all can be helped this way. But what if some cannot be helped this way?

Unemployment insurance need not kick in straightaway. It could be activated only 12 months or 9 months or 6 months after retrenchment. And provide a proportion of the last draw salary. Sylvia Lim's suggestion is 40% of last drawn salary for 6 months.

Who pays for this unemployment or redundancy insurance?

Well, the beneficiary (the worker) should. If we adopt the Medishield Life approach of sharing the risk, it would be quite affordable.

Or the employer can pay for the basic cover - 40% of last drawn salary for 6 months (using WP's suggestion), that will only kick in 6 months after retrenchment if the worker is still unemployed (and has not turned down job offers with no good reasons. If Lim Swee Say is correct and there is re-employment, then the unemployment insurance would almost never kick in. Most retrenched workers would be re-hired within 6 months.

Employees can enhance their cover for a premium. They can either enhance the quantum of monthly payout (50% of last drawn salary), the duration of the payout (12 months instead of 6 months), or shortened the time for the benefits to kick in (within 3 months).

It would not be a free ride. It would simply present a safety net. That will only deploy after other measures have been exhausted or have failed.

This is actually an idea worth looking at. I won't be surprised if PAP spins this into a new policy to the rolled out in the future, under a different name. ]

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-249142036245875345.post-35064183348784399562016-04-08T17:10:00.000+08:002016-04-08T17:10:22.700+08:00Mosquito v mosquito in fight against Zika virusNina Fedoroff and John Block

April 8 2016

Genetically modified mosquitoes are in the news for good reason: They may be our best hope for controlling the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a preliminary finding of no significant environmental impact and is seeking public comment on a plan to test them in a field trial in the Florida Keys.

So you might think this will resolve the Zika crisis, which has caught the world's attention because of an unexpected spike in microcephaly in babies born to women infected during pregnancy and in the incidence of the paralytic Guillain-Barre syndrome in Zika-infected adults.

You would be wrong. People are apprehensive about the release of these mosquitoes simply because they are genetically modified.

And the company that produces them must traverse a time-consuming federal regulatory process before they can be released in the United States.

This is unfortunate, because biological insect control can eradicate pests over large areas. This is what these genetically modified mosquitoes are intended to do to Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

The story of the screw worm, a particularly nasty insect that once caused millions of dollars of losses in the livestock industry, is instructive. Female screw-worm flies lay eggs in open wounds of animals and humans. The larvae feed on the living flesh and attract more egg-laying females. If not treated, the animal dies.

Around 1950, Mr Edward Knipling, a Department of Agriculture scientist who had been exploring sterilisation as a way to control screw worms, learnt of Nobel laureate H.J. Muller's pioneering genetic work on the fruit fly drosophila.

Professor Muller had discovered that X-rays produced genetic changes in the fruit flies, and that high doses made them sterile. So Mr Knipling wondered whether irradiated, sterile screw-worm flies could still mate. His experiments showed that screw-worm pupae could grow into sterile adults that could mate, but not reproduce.

Mr Knipling believed these sterile insects could suppress the screw worm biologically. The idea was to release lots of them to mate. Since they could not produce offspring, the sterile screw-worm flies should gradually eradicate the species.

The first large-scale test was conducted on Sanibel Island in Florida in 1951. It was a success, as was a 1954 trial that eradicated the screw worm from the Antilles island of Curacao, followed by another successful trial in Florida.

Over the next three decades, the eradication programme was carried out first in Florida, then in the South-west and eventually in Mexico and beyond. Irradiated screw-worm flies raised in Florida, Texas and Mexico were packed in boxes and released from small planes. At the programme's peak, upward of 300 million sterile flies were released weekly.

The impact was decisive. The last cases of screw worm in the United States were reported in 1982.

By the end of 1985, most of Mexico was screw worm-free and the eradication programme had moved on to Guatemala and Belize, now also free of the pest. This ranks as perhaps the greatest insect-control success story.

Now, the world is focused on the public health menace of the Zika virus. Zika is spread by Aedes aegypti, the same mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.

Mosquito-control efforts rely on insecticides and eliminating mosquito-breeding places. But despite a relatively successful hemisphere-wide effort beginning in the 1940s, mosquitoes have roared back, becoming difficult to control because of growing resistance to insecticides.

Diseases carried by mosquitoes that were once relatively well controlled are re-emerging along with newer ones, including the West Nile and Zika viruses.

But there is a promising solution. Building on Prof Muller's legacy, scientists at a small start-up called Oxitec (now a subsidiary of Intrexon) endowed mosquitoes with a lethal gene that prevents development of their offspring. The pupae are sorted, and only the males are released.

Unlike irradiated mosquitoes, which do not compete well with wild ones for mates, genetically modified mosquitoes mate just fine. Small-scale tests conducted in the Cayman Islands, Panama and Brazil since 2009 reduced local mosquito populations by as much as 99 per cent.

So why we not quickly gearing up production and beginning large-scale programmes to release these mosquitoes?

It is because the Oxitec mosquitoes are genetically modified organisms and subject to different regulatory oversight in different countries. In Brazil, for example, release of Oxitec mosquitoes has been approved by one government agency but awaits approval from another agency.

Despite its substantial expertise in insect control, the Department of Agriculture has regrettably not taken a role in helping navigate the regulatory complexities for this mosquito. So these insects are being regulated as a "new animal drug" by the FDA. The agency is now accepting public comments on Oxitec's plan and will then evaluate each one before deciding whether to approve the Florida trial.

You get the picture. None of this happens fast.

Then there is public opinion. More than 160,000 people signed a petition opposing Oxitec's trial in the Florida Keys, but most signed before the Zika crisis. In a recent Purdue University survey, 78 per cent of respondents supported the use of genetically engineered mosquitoes to control the spread of the Zika virus.

The released mosquitoes have no effect on people because males do not bite. While we might wait years for a Zika vaccine, the genetically modified mosquito has been tested, is scalable and ready to go.

Zika looks more devastating with every new study. Are the stakes finally high enough to expedite an effective, hemisphere-wide mosquito-eradication programme that makes use of modern genetic modification techniques?

NEW YORK TIMES

Nina Fedoroff is a molecular geneticist. John Block was secretary of agriculture from 1981 to 1986. Both are advisers to OFW Law, which represents companies and trade associations in the agriculture, food, drug and medical device industries.

El Lobo firstname.lastname@example.com