BloggerWave

There has been lots of lots of talks and way of making money from Blogs. The latest
one I heard from a fellow Malaysian and blogger is the Bloggerwave.

Bloggerwave wants blogger to write about them (like this) and she (http://tbeeean.blogspot.com/2007/06/earn-money.html) had been paid the $10
promised. I thought I shall give it ago too.


Bloggerwave

Severity of seeker of false charity and the need of law against them

Sometimes ago, I was waiting for a train in Reading (UK) train station in the evening and a teenager approached me saying that she has lost all her money and was desperate to go home. She wanted some money. I refused and got her a train ticket instead. She took the ticket and walk away. Half an hour later I discovered that she was still loitering around the station's lounge area rather than waiting for a train at the train's platform. £4 wasted and I was conned.

Sometimes ago, I was waiting in supermarket car park and again a lady with a child approached me and told me she was in a desperate situation and wanted some money. I refused to give her money and offered her alternative. After a drawn out conversation where she pleaded and begged, she eventually told me she was to go to the toilet and will return shortly. She never returned. 20 minutes later, I saw her again approaching other customer in the car park Wasted my time.

Back in Malaysia, an old man pretended to have difficulties using the ATM machine and a man behind him in the queue offered to help When the money was dispensed, the old man threathened the man that unless he handed over all his money, he (the old man) was going to screamed that he was robbed and the kind man shall then be in deep trouble.

All these, and many others similar fraud are a real threat to our society. It is one thing where a man falls for a scam because of his own greed (e.g. high yield investment, Advance Fee Fraud [You won a lottery but send us $1 million first), it is a total different issue where a man was conned because of his kindness. Such fraud undermines many man's and women's instinct to do good. Worst still, in the ATM scam, one actually gets into deep trouble for trying to do good. An easy way out for many would then be as protective as possible, and be as cold as possible, even to stranger who are in genuine distress.

At present, such fraud are threated as no more than small time con or petty theft. It should not, as it undermines the confidence of the samaritans and potential samaritans who actually bother to care. I was delighthed (albeit thought that the sentence was a little bit too harsh) sometimes back when a Singaporean judge sentence a online credit card thief to 8 years in prisonment, citing that the thief undermines the public's confidence in ecommerce.

It is time where those who undermines the public confidence to do good faces severe punishment. Perhaps we need a Defraud Your Samritan Act. We need a caring society. Not one where everyone is trying to rip everyono else off.

Work is the only way out of poverty

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c44729fe-dbc7-11db-9233-000b5df10621.html reported
that Jim Murphy, the UK employment and welfare minister said at an international conference on welfare reform in London that the welfare state could not and should not pay welfare recipient the £220+/week that is necessary to ensure a lone parent + 2 kids family has an income of at least 60% of the median income. 60% of the median income is currently the UK government's definition of poverty line.

Why such statement no doubt invite uprorar from the left, I think it is time for people to understand that one's honest effort, and not charity is the best way to improve one's condition. Theo Patities, the millionaire dargon den investor once said that making multi million is not difficult, but making the first million is. Charity (welfare payment), like pamper from parents surpresses one's natural capability and desire to improve one's conditions as it devoids one's of the challenges that keep the mind thinking of ways to move upwards.

Also the 60% of median income is absurd anyway (that is around £12000pa, a sum probably enough to feed an African family for a decade or so) otherwise a millionaire living among the billionaires in Monaco will still be needing handout !

Another quirk is that people earning up to £12k (especially singles) or on minimum wage has to pay tax. I don't suppose the Gordon can justify that on one hand these people are considered below poverty line, but at the same time consdidered to be earning too much such that they should be taxed.

So, how about those genuine cannot work (i.e. low IQ, insane, seriously disable)? Again, I think Mr Murphy got it right by saying that they deserve higher payment but not necessarily up to 60% of the median income. While the society should put in reasonable effort to ensure that these unfortunate one's live with dignity, it would be totally unfair to rob from other's who work hard, seriously degrades their standard of living simply to ensure that the unfortunate ones have a standard of living which is many times superior than those living in a developing country, simply because they are borned in the right place (UK) at the right time (post 1945).

There has to be a degree of fairness here. If UK is a society where food, milk and gold falls from the sky and plasma TV grows on trees, then the society should of course ensure that the unfortunate ones enjoy these free wealth. But the issue is that an ordinary middle class family in UK is struggling to pay its bills. It is a known fact that the middle layer of the society bare the most burden of UK taxation and any significant increase in welfare payment will indeed come from this middle (unfortunate) group. Requiring these people to subsidise the unfortunate one's a little more than beyond their basic needs would not be fair. It is not like these family has tons of spare cash under their pillow.

It is also worth noting that inner peace and happiness does not come solely from amount of money to spend. I would think that an African family with a warm house, a tiny TV and running water would be a very happy already.

Unfortunately, we are living on earth, not heaven.

The very different justice

I came across in a Singapore newspaper that reproted a Malaysian chap was jailed for 12 years for skimming cards in Singapore. Initially, he was sentenced for 52 months and the prosecutor successfully obtained a lengthier 12 years sentence on appeal. The judge warned that card skimming damages public confidence in e-commerce and must be severely punished.

Personally, I think 12 years is a bit too harsh and there would be no easy parol where most criminals are out by half time as in the UK.

How strongly this contrast the UK Criminal Justice system today. In UK, now criminals are not to be put to jail because there is no place in the jail for them. The Home office claims that jails are too expensive to build - of course, they need to building something that ensure that the human right of the criminals are not infringed, or perhaps, they are trying to build a hotel. A converted prison from an abandon warehouse would probably cost a lot lot less. There was another report that I read sometimes back - there was a US Prison head that managed to build a prison for < $100k (I think) and people who goes there never would want to be there ever again (and hence no reoffending). Card frauds and online banking fraud is sky rocketing in UK and yet in most cases, banks and police are not even interested to investigate [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/6281883.stm]

Now given the new Home office guideline, they can even be guaranteed (if John Reid remain in office for the next few weeks of course) that they are not jailed.

UK becoming a heaven for criminals ?

Thailand Coup and democracy

Thailand military kicked out Takhsin in a coup that surprised the world last week. It occured after months of stand off between Thai middle class who wants Takhsin to go and the rural (and urban poor) that wants him to say.

"British prime minister Churchill once said, Democracy is absurd, but all other systems are worse. "

I observed something interesting from the event. Depending on how you look at it, this can be very democractic (or undemocractic indeed).

Democracy is defined as political system where the minority subjugates to majority's will. This definition disregard factors such as quality of fairness of the will. A society that say, enslaves a ethnic minority group and where most of the majority group agrees that is is ok to enslave the ethnic minority is a democractic society, despite a barbaric one. Robert Mugabe would probably have won a popular vote in a free and fair election, but then the democratic system had created something that is worse than state like the tiny island off the coast of Florida led my Mr C.

All democratric political systems around the world also has a concept of universal suffrage and also rules to exclude certain people (like those who are insane) from voting. The bottom line of these restrictions is to ensure that those who votes are rational and knows what they are doing.

So, now it comes the question, do those vote for Thai Rak Thai knows what they were doing and hence, are they 'qualified' voter in a democratic system. On closer look, the 'poorer' voters were in fact very rational indeed - they tried to support somebody who they think would benefit them, even if such benefits is derived from means that would otherwise be deemed objectional in civilised societies. For someone who is not certain about where the next meal will come from, taking $100 in exchange for a vote would be a perfectly rational behaviour.

Human are indeed rational beings (bar being constrained by their intellectuai ability to make a long term and holistic consideration of the situation).

So, if 55% of the population are willing to take a bribe (either from private resources or from promised tax redistribution) and to elect a government who offers that, is the government not a democracratically elected government? By the the above definition, they must be, because that is what the majority wants.

So, there we go. Ultimately, democratic or otherwise, as long as a political action that is taken can ensure long term wellbeing of the majority of the population, then the action is justified. Unfortunately, this is something that cannot be determined at the time the action is taken, but can only be jolted down in the history book.

Another example was that Chinese mass would never have imagined that CCP that they propelled to power, the one which they thought was their saviour, would cause tremendous suffering to the many during the 60s and 70s.

Let's hope for the best for the Thais although it does not look negative at the moment.

Free Speech, Singapore and PAP

Before I wander any further, I would like to clarify two points here:
Firstly, the word "free" speech here refers to the ability to speak without fear. It does not mean that speech will cost $0 :-).

Secondly, I am not really suppose to write about Singapore on this blog because that is supposed to be off topic. But I can't resist :-)

I have a suggestion for the PAP government, why not charge people who wants to speak at the speaker's corner a "space rental fee" of say $50 an hour. and an 'entrance fee (say $1 each)' for those who want to sit there and listen. At the same time, the defamation law can be amended to specifically exclude everything that is said within border of the speaker's corner.

This will not just help Singapore government to raise additional revenues, but at the same time encourages the speakers to deliver 'quality speech' and encourages only quality audience. On the PR side, at least PAP can claim that it now allows true 'free speech'.

The money can then be used then be used for social development programme, and hence keeping the left happy also.

Just my two cents. Of course I am sure the elites will figure out a better solution :-p

Malaysia Underqualified Graduates and PhD

Another fellow blogger alerted me to an interesting article
at LittlePeck which was originally published at MalaysiaKini. The articles highlighted the low quality of some of the Malaysian graduates, including PhD holders that cannot write/speak in english properly.

While disappointing, it did not surprise me and I dare say that it is not just the Malaysian Uni system that produces these underqualify graduates and PhD holders.

Before we go any further, we need to define underqualify a little bit more. Many of the shortcomings highligthed in article mentioned above may well steemed from a single factor - the failure of these graduates to command the English language.

To me, while not having a decent command of english will no doubt put these graduates at a serious disadvantage, as long as the graduates know their technical stuffs and can deliver in the real world, they should not be regarded as failure. Many Japanese students who graduate from Japanese Ivy League university cannot write/speak english properly, but that does not in anyway imply that they are not able to produce superior quality work. During my tenure at a multinational, I worked with colelgues from Japan and other european countries and quite a few of them had difficulties express themself effectively in english but we were able to able to understand each other in the end and achieved our objectives. Without knowing who the article refers to exactly, it would be unfair to just brush all these graduates who can't speak english properly as 'unemployable'

The article appeared to suggest that those teaching Malaysian uni kids should be qualified individuals who graduated from universities in the developed world (and some developing country). Is the grass really that much greener over the 'developed world fence'? I won't dare to generalised that. No doubt, graduates from cambridge, oxford, imperial, harvard, yale, princeton are almost certainly up to scratch, the same cannot be extended unconditionally to graduates from other western univesities. In UK, there are over 100 universities and there are fair share of 'underqualified graduates' that are the product of these university.

I knew an IT graduates who completed his final year project with 3 days worth of effort (one is supposed to take the whole year to do it!) and passed with 40%. I have serious doubt that the individual can write a simple 'hello world' program without referring to 'template programs' either. But yes, the individual did graduate from a reasonably well ranked UK university. During my university days, I worked with Ang Moh in project group who talked a lot in order to cover up the fact that they knew nothing. While I did not maintain contact with those ex-uni friends, they most probably graduated in the end after a few resits.

Recently, UK universities (As reported Daily Mail etc) became increasinly concern about the 'capitalistic behaviour' of the UK university students. Want to know what they do? They put up essay/programming project request on certain websites that were originally designed to allow companies to outsource proramming etc projects to individual around the world. They offered something like £20 for it and some well learned individuals from India, Philippines will respond to those ads and get the assignment/course work done for them. As the result is customised, these students often passed through the lecturer's scrutinity. Knew of another first class graduates that basically got there by cheating in exams. BBC also reported that passing mark in some UK university can be as lowed as 26%. Well, they have to allow the students to pass, else who is going to come to a university with 90% failure rate ??!!

Having said that, I had personally met a Malaysian university IT course students several years ago who have zero clue about how a programming language works and whose knowledge is probably worse than a secondary three students in my secondary school's computer society. I however have no doubt that the IT students eventually graduated from Malaysia univeristy system. We need to look at how the university education works to understand why such disgraceful situation can occur.

Of course, compared to foreign university, Malaysian universities faced additional political pressure to get certain group of people to pass so they they escaped grillings by various intersted party who are likely to politicized those events. These add a unique factor to the rottening of tertiary education standard that has been occuring round the globe when tertiary education become commoditise.

Solution, strangely, as a capitalist, I think the solution is market force. What Malaysia can do is to allow private universities to be setup and when we have, say 50 or so university than market force can come into play. Those crappy ones will churn out graduates that no one wants and eventually either have to improve or disappear. Entrace to all these will be based on internationally acceptable qualifications such as A Level, STPM and IB only. No matrikulasi !!
Then we apply a levy on top 100 malaysian companies in the KLSE index to sponsor a prize of say RM10million per year for university that managed to improve themself in the Times Education ranking (yes... that has to be judge by a reputable source, not by a certain chancellor who decided that advertising is the best way to convince people that his uni is world class).

And actually this works pretty well with the secondary schools already. All parents tried hard to avoid sending their kids to schools that are producing failing students. At the ripe age of 18, these kids will avoid going to crappy university, and competition ensure improvement and survival of the fittest.

I don't hold my breath, I am sure this is a topic that I will come back again in the future...

Globalisation, immigration, protectionism and David Cameron

Read BBC news today [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5318636.stm]. Conservative party leader David Cameron says that UK wage depression is dued to globalisation and it is incorrect to blame it on immigrant (I think it is mainly eastern european that he is referring to).

Well, perhaps there is no one to be blamed and the UK residence just have to wake up and realise that honey moon is over and it is time to work hard, brush up their skills and compete diligently.

Industrialisation that began in the 1500+ has made many european countries, including UK of course, very rich and placed them way ahead technologically, politically and strutucally of Asian competitors. When basic needs are met, people tend to look for ways to improve their quality of life. After a while, they take for granted that it is their god damn right to live comfortable, simply because they are lucky to be borned (or live) in the right country. By doing so, they effectively live off capital (this includes the system, the building, roads) etc that the previous generations have created and yes, they believe that it is their right to live that way.

Being riched, having a well function political system and large education budget put the Brits at tremendous advantage compared to Asian competitors. But yet, the products of the education system is fair disappointing. Rather than taking advantage of the advantage, many squanders the opportunities.

Suddenly, China economic progress grew tremendously in the 1990s (Actually China was growing at about 10% since Deng's 1978 free economic zone experiment, but as the size of the economy was small, it can easily be ignored. In the 90's China economy has reached a significant size, and growing at 10% from that size is now sufficient to shake the world. Also, suddenly, India under M. Singh reformed its economy and now their enterprise are able to compete around the world. Suddenly, Internet changed the way we communicate and the world becomes so much closer. Suddenly, telecom advancements has brought down telephone call prices significantly.

All these factors contributed to a very globalised world where the most competitive will stay on an edge, and those who are in high cost areas must strive to deliver high value products and services. e.g. Eletronic Design Services where while an engineer cost £30k per year but the end product is worth, say £10m a year. For those who are in the IT field will clearly know that any years ago, you could get a good job by knowing how to use WordStar, but as more and more people comes to the bandwagon, unless one upgrade oneself, one will be in trouble. This is exactly the scenario we have today - upgrade or suffer. Strangely, rather than calling the brits to move up the value chain, Mr Cameron choose to blame globalisation. Even more strangely, globalisation is nothing new. UK companies have been known to move production to the colonies during the era of british empire. Back then, it was easier for the Brits to move up the value chain and stayed OK as the colonies and other competitors wasn't fiecely competitive. Their adapted, albeit, probably, more easily. Today situation is the same, despite harder, the only way is to upgrade, rather than blaming globalisation (I think that means China and India) for their woes.

Putting this into another analogy, a group of students use to get good results because it was easy to pass (assuming that the pass rate is defined according to the mark achieve by say 40th percentile of the exam-mark curve). Now, the school opens its place to pupils from the next neighbourhood who works much harder. The original set of students will now suffer because it is no longer easy to achieve the 40th percentile mark. So, those students decided that they should blame the new comers. It is an easy way out, but that will change nothing. Working harder is the only way out...

Now China and Indian company has gone global to begin their shopping spree (Mittal Steel bid for Accelor), Legend's bid for IBM PC division, Huawei invasion in Europe. Next 10 years will be quite different from what we have today. Upgrade, or be left behind....

Full Welfare or make people feel the urgency to work

A report in Sunday Times 06-Sep-06 caught my eyes when it reported about the progress of the US Welfare reform that was signed into bill by Bill Clinton in 1995. The reform was kicked started by Charles Murray, a US social thinker in his 1984 book "Losing Ground". The reform stipulated that welfare will be cut off after 5 years if recipient did not find a job although the US Social Security wasn't really serious about letting people starve to dealth. The deadline had howevered change people mindset and subconciously pushed them back to work. Social workers also change their advice from "you don't need to get a job because the state will take care of you" to "you have got to go and look for a job".

10 years ago, the socialist and nay sayer claimed that American children will be begging on the street soon and street of US will be like street of a 3rd world country.

At 2006, statistic overwhelmingly show that the reform was a success and many of those previously on benefit are now happier and prouder as they are standing on their their feets.

Among the statistic quoted are:

1994 - 5.1m American families were on welfare. By 2004, this number had been reduced to 2m and Teenage (aged 15-19) birth fell from 58 per 1000 to 41 per 1000 [this seemed to contradict UK Family Planning Unit figure which stated US figure is about 80/1000]. While part of the reduction was probably caused by economic boom, the trend has persisted over the 2001 recession.


The article also reported that a lady named Giddiens started with a job selling health insurance outdoor (not a really nice job, standing under rain and sun) for $10 an hour 3 years ago. Now she has been promoted indoors and now makes $15 an hour. Now she even wants to take an online degree in marketing and gets promoted to a manager. Her daugther was also inspired by her example.

I suppose the once the momentum starts rolling, people will want to be self sufficient and feed themself with their own effort.



Looking back to UK, recent Labour government policy has went further to make the social welfare system favours the lone parents where a well-planned family with 10 kids can end up doing much better than an IT engineer earning £30k per year. (Wellfare money are mostly untaxed, and such welfare provision usually includes a house which is very expensive to rent/buy with mortgage at the moment).

A recent BBC articles (http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=3341&&edition=1&ttl=20060907004151)
regarding EU migrants attracted lots of comment from British residents, some of those notably hostile, accusing the new comers from taking their jobs. The truth is (although many poster denied) is that the current welfare system means that it is simply no worthwhile UK resident to take up low paid job and if these jobs were filled by eastern european, it actually benefits the UK people (even those who claimed that they cannot find a job) because that keeps the cost of living under control. Several poster also said that if there weren't these EU immigrant, employers would be forced to pay more to hire local people. Well, that is true but that also means that their cost of living will shoot up and a Macdonald will cost £5 rather than £3. Unless Brits can demonstrate that they are much more knowledgable and efficient, demanding additional pay simply will not help improve their standard of living (unless they are the ONLY ones getting the increased pay while expecting others to still be paid cheaply so that their bigger wages can now actually buy them more things).

Looks like European and UK welfare state in its presence form (which is based on rights with no mention about responsibility) is there to stay and attempt to reform it would be a politicians' darkest nightmare....so, I expect them to leave it alone until the state can no longer afford such extravagance.

The First

This is my first blog entry and I will start by a quick introduction of myself. I originates from Malaysia and now live in the United Kingdom. I am trained in electronics engineering and currently involves in the Telecom Industry. Things and conditions around me sometimes make me feel depressed and occasionally they make me feel that the future of man is still hopeful.


I will write in this blog about my 2 pennies about my view of these events, situations, incidents.


Wish me luck :-)