Latest Posts By pharoah88
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| 20-Jul-2010 16:27 |
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Photographying Floods can be risky too
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World's Most MerItOcratIc fInger
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| 20-Jul-2010 14:07 |
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DOW & STI
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The frustration of his untold story Obama has achieved more than most US Presidents — except convince voters he’s boosted the economy F Within hours of each other on Thursday, BP capped the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the Senate passed the financial regulatory reform Bill. The former brought an end to three months of political agony for the White House as Americans watched those daily video feeds of crude oil gushing into the sea. The latter mercifully concluded an even uglier display — that of the Senate spending a year crafting a Bill. These events inspired a round of commentary agreeing that between healthcare and “finreg”, Mr Obama was the most consequential Democratic President (in terms of domestic legislation) since Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. And yet most of the buzz in the political press over the week involved more chest-thumping about how terrible things were for Mr Obama. A The explanation for this incongruity — a President of accomplishment whose party faces a wipe-out — is not complicated. It rests on the 9.5-per-cent unemployment rate. And in the conviction, shared by up to three-quarters of the public, according to polls, that the steps the administration has taken have not helped and have maybe even hurt. This is maddening, because those steps have helped avert a depression, a possible run on banks, the probable bankruptcy of two major car-makers and other nightmares. It’s standard operating procedure in United States political journalism at this point to note grimly that trying to describe to the public how much worse it could have been is a fool’s errand. I disagree with that strenuously, and think the Democrats could have done a far, far better job of it. For instance, thousands of small businesses have had work because of the stimulus Bill: Why didn’t someone run a television advertising campaign featuring testimonials to this effect from business owners? Too late now: The storyline is set. inally, the old wheel of fate cut Barack Obama a couple of breaks last week.Washington Post poll showing a majority disapproves of his handling of the economy spurred unusually fervent declarations that the Republicans were poised to regain control of the House of Representatives and, for the first time, speculation that now even the Senate might fall too, like overripe fruit, into Republican hands.GRUESOME NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS The Democrats’ failure to mount a stronger case has had massive ramifications, because the storyline is much larger than merely that the stimulus has failed. It is that government is a failure. A poll came out last week that got less attention than the This survey was conducted by the White House’s own pollster for a non-profit group called Third Way, a centrist think-tank. It found that by 48 per cent to 43 per cent, Americans think the administration’s actions have made things worse, not better. By a whopping 54 per cent to 32 per cent, they prefer tax cuts for business over more government spending as a spur to growth. Finally, people were given a choice between two descriptions of corporations. Are they “the backbone of the US economy and we need to help them grow, whether they are large or small”, or do they “have too much power, hurt the middle class, and government needs to keep them in check”. By 55 per cent to 37 per cent, respondents chose the former. American liberals need to think about these numbers. The great bottomline hope back in November 2008 was that Mr Obama was going to restore trust in government and prove it could solve problems. That hasn’t happened. Put aside the Tea Party people. Independent voters who backed Mr Obama over John McCain now give him 38 per cent of their support. And the Third Way poll suggests more large-scale attempts to interject government into the economy won’t fly. Maddening and ahistorical, insofar as history demonstrates that public investment helps a sick economy. But again, the Democrats have already lost this argument. That’s not an argument about the midterm elections. It’s about the party of government’s very raison d’etre. And it’s one the Democrats have backed off from. Mr Obama has tried, albeit without enough conviction or imagination. Certain Democrats in Congress have tried. But many other Democrats in Congress have decided the argument is a loser. It may serve their short-term electoral interests to say so, but it serves their party’s long-term interests quite poorly. Mr Obama has a small gust of wind at his back now. The well is capped. He will sign finreg on Wednesday. His Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will cruise this month towards confirmation. These are important victories. But the larger war is being lost — to a bunch of people whose only agenda is to cut taxes on corporations and millionaires. Americans going back to work is the only thing that can reverse this. Washington Post survey but is more interesting because it gets at these deeper problems, and it heralds gruesome news for Democrats. THE GUARDIANThe writer is editor-at-large at Guardian America. Michael Tomasky |
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:58 |
SIA
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A380 A Great Way to Fly
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nowadays Singapore has ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGEMENT HAVE ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE ATTITUDE MANAGEMENT TOOK AWAY ALL THE 1800 CUSTOMER SERVICE 1800 HOTLINES HOTLINES are as WORST as DEAD LINES HOTLINES must RING for HOURS before they are ANSWERED ALL PROMISES to RETURN CALL are NEVER RETURN |
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:50 |
SIA
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A380 A Great Way to Fly
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ONE Saturday a couple of months back, I received a notification via SMS stating that I had been booked on a Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight to Shanghai the following Monday. An online check of my KrisFlyer account also showed the same booking. I had made no such transaction and immediately called the KrisFlyer hotline for clarification. The officer who attended to my call confirmed the booking. Despite my requests for more details, the officer would only say that the booking had been made by a third-party travel agent called LC Travel Planner, but refused to disclose any further information. I made four attempts to contact LC Travel Planner. Although their office was closed for the day, I managed to reach one of the staff on her mobile. She confirmed that such a booking had indeed been made through her office the previous Tuesday. I wrote to the vice-president of SIA’s customer affairs branch, hoping for an explanation on why SIA did not have the necessary checks in place to prevent unauthorised bookings through the accounts of unsuspecting individuals. The following week, a customer affairs manager from SIA contacted me to explain that other than my KrisFlyer membership number, no other personal information had been released to the third-party travel agent. A week after that, the same customer affairs manager forwarded me a letter from LC Travel Planner, in which the travel agent admitted that the unauthorised booking tagged to my KrisFlyer membership was a result of an error in data entry. I found it unbelievable that the ticketing system of an established organisation like SIA was unable to detect the mismatch between the passenger’s name and my KrisFlyer membership number. I tried to contact the customer affairs manager, but could only reach an answering machine. The message I left was never acknowledged. I then called the KrisFlyer hotline, and was told that the customer affairs manager on duty would contact me by the end of the day. That did not happen. I wrote another email to the vice-president of the customer affairs branch. Within 24 hours of that email, the same customer affairs manager called to reiterate the content of the travel agent’s letter, and insisted that she had done everything she could. Over the next three weeks, I had several conservations with LC Travel Planner and the customer affairs manager, with both parties claiming that the relevant departments were in discussion with each other. But nobody came back to me with any conclusion. Recently, almost two months after I first raised concerns over the breach in SIA’s ticketing system, I called the KrisFlyer HOTLINE and requested to speak to a senior manager. I was told someone would respond to me within 24 hours. Indeed, the same customer affairs manager sent me an email the next day — stating that the case had been closed. Compounding the problem of the unauthorised booking was SIA’s unprofessional customer service. What kind of message is being sent to customers?
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:43 |
SIA
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A380 A Great Way to Fly
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The case of the phantom air ticket Flight booked under my name due to ‘data entry error’ Letter from Wong Kok Fai |
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:39 |
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Hunting for GOD or MFT
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cIgarette kills more people than DRUGS causes more TEENS more DAMAGES than Virus litters more than CHEWING GUMS cIgarette butt literers should be CANNED Smokers, smugglers, sellers should be HANGED CiGARETTE should be legislated as a PRESCRIPTION DRUG SIMPLE WIN WIN WIN SOLUTION PRODUCTIVE EFFECTIVE EFFICIENT ECONOMICAL SAVE the TEENS DON'T GIVE the TEENS the OPPORTUNITY to SMOKE |
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:28 |
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Hunting for GOD or MFT
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cIgarette is a medIocre Isuue which MERiTOCRAY had mIssed Out tOtally |
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| 20-Jul-2010 13:01 |
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Hunting for GOD or MFT
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Smoking out the ‘oxymoron’ Ng Jing Yn g jingyng@mediacorp.com.sg SINGAPORE Singapore’s Subutex experience — when heroin-users became addicted to the replacement substance — is a reminder for him about the efficacy of harm reduction strategies. And the negative results from the introduction of “low tar”, “light” or “mild” cigarettes as well as Snus, a smokeless tobacco product, suggests that “a less harmful tobacco product is an oxymoron”, said Mr Khaw. So, despite Dr Lam Pin Min’s and Dr Fatimah Lateef’s suggestions, the minister is sticking with the new tobacco control measures in the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) (Amendment) Bill that Parliament approved yesterday. Mr Khaw had called for the amendments to ban emerging products that may even be packaged to resemble candy. According to statistics from Singapore Customs, 484 travellers made duty and GST payments on smokeless tobacco last year. The debate on the Bill was an opportunity for some Members of Parliament — out of the 11 who spoke — to also voice strong opposition to smoking, especially in relation to young smokers. Mr Khaw said policing on tobacco retail outlets will be stepped up. MP Alvin Yeo (Hong Kah) asked if the legislative changes, which would impose changes on cigarette package labelling, would contravene certain intellectual property obligations, as “Lights” and “Mild” are registered trademarks here. Mr Khaw said that international obligations have been taken into consideration. Less easy to tackle is the issue of tobacco companies using platforms such as movies and the Internet to entice consumers, he said in reply to MP Sin Boon Ann (Tampines). “How do we censor out scenes of modern-day James Deans ... smoking a particular brand of cigarettes?” asked Mr Khaw. Besides addressing issues on the proposed amendments, Mr Khaw responded to calls to extend the smoking ban to void decks and corridors. He will suggest this to the National Environment Agency. — While two Members of Parliament, both doctors, think that some tobacco products can help smokers kick the habit, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan is not only a sceptic, he thinks it would be disastrous. |
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| 20-Jul-2010 12:32 |
User Research/Opinions
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Investment Philosophy of Warren Buffett
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Warren Buffett is the most successful investor of our time, perhaps of any time. He is famous for his pithy quotes, which often appear in his annual letter to shareholders. Taken together, his quotes pretty well sum up his investment philosophy and approach. Here are his best sound bites of all time on being a sensible investor. 1. Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1. 2. Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future. 3. Never invest in a business you cannot understand. 4. I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over. 5. I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth. 6. If a business does well, the stock eventually follows. 7. It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. 8. Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre. 9. For some reason people take their cues from price action rather than from values. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. 10. In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it's a weighing machine. 11. The most common cause of low prices is pessimism. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism, but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer. None of this means, however, that a business or stock is an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular; a contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling. 12. Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. 13. It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. 14. All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies. 15. Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing. 16. You do things when the opportunities come along. I have had periods in my life when I have had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing. 17. [On the dot-com bubble:] What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history. 18. You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right. 19. You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ. 20. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will. 21. When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. 22. The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago. 23. Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.
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| 20-Jul-2010 12:18 |
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Photographying Floods can be risky too
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Ask any Certified Auditor, Purchasing, Supply and Tendering have many opportunities and weaknesses and . . . . UNbeliveable pOssibilities ? ? ? ?
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| 20-Jul-2010 12:14 |
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After SEPNDING BiLLIONS on FLOODS CONTROL, PUB still has NOT becOme an EXPERT ? ? ? ? (Ooh, were the EXPERTS SACKED and RETIRED ? ? ? ?) Are the PAP [PM and Parliament] REALLY EXPERT in FLOODS CONTROL ? ? ? ? Are they just Guessing (THEORiES only) and playing GAMES (Trials & Errors) with the FLOODS ? ? ? ?
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| 20-Jul-2010 12:00 |
Genting Sing
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GenSp starts to move up again
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When ORCHARD becomes FLOOD RESERVIOR RWS wIll becOme TOURiST HEAVEN |
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:53 |
Genting Sing
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GenSp starts to move up again
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CHECK OUT the ILLEGAL FLOOD PHOTO thread for MERiTOCRACY at Sharejunction |
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:40 |
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nOw is the CRiTiCAL TiME to SCORE POiNTS in QUANTITY (new projects) rather than in QUALITY [especially old project has ZERO SCORE]
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:35 |
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MERiTOCRACY
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:33 |
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ENLiGHTENMENT
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:28 |
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China is becoming more like Singapore Singapore is becoming more like China Bicycles flOOds Accidents OFF-guardities Collapsed Buildings are UNbelievable nOw WiLL this HAPPEN in FUTURE when the Building Structures are WEAKENED in the LONG TERM ? ? ? ? By then, peOple responsible are already DEAD . . . . Oh my dOg . . . .
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:21 |
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HiPPOPOTAMUS
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:16 |
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Marina Bay Sands already built THE ARK
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| 20-Jul-2010 11:13 |
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sEEms LiKE there is mOre MERiTOCRACY in this fOrUm than the whOle of SiNGAPORE ? ? ? ? |
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