Once again this is proof that statistics can be bent in anyway you like. Wouldn't it be more accurate to find the mean or median salary of engineering grads? If that is impossible then don't publish this article at all! After years of emphasising other professions, now you find not enough engine grads. This is one of the major perils of micro managing. Normal demand and supply economics will dictate the number of people going into each profession! If there is anything that this article proof, it is that you must go into mgt if you want high pay, no matter what degree you hold.
From The Straits Times
Lucrative engineering degrees
Many highly paid chiefs of listed firms have degrees in engineering
By Michelle Quah
FINANCE, banking, law and accountancy are often tipped to be the university courses which students hoping for a lucrative career should take.
Too often have we heard parents and peers alike extolling the fiscal benefits of earning one's livelihood in the financial and legal sectors.
But now, a recent bit of research by The Business Times might suggest otherwise.
Our examination of the most highly paid chiefs of listed companies here shows that it is the engineering and hard-science degrees that have stood these professionals in good stead. A BT check of annual reports and corporate websites found that senior executives with engineering degrees form the bulk of top earners from companies in the Straits Times Index (STI).
This list of the 55 best-paid executives of STI companies gained fame when it was distributed by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Parliament in April - to illustrate the earning power of the private sector during the debate over the increase in ministerial pay.
An updated version by BT shows how much these executives - mostly CEOs, executive chairmen and managing directors - earn. Their annual pay packets range from above $250,000 to more than $9 million.
RELATED LINKS
Singapore's best paid executives
And engineers feature prominently among the big earners. Seventeen of the 55 executives - that is, 30 per cent, the most of any profession - graduated with engineering degrees.
Science degree holders were the next best achievers, with 12 of them making the top 55 list. It is possible that some of these also specialised in engineering - with most engineering degrees being bachelor of science - but further information was not available.
As a group, accounting, business administration, economics and commerce graduates made up 11 of the top 55. Others, like UOB chief Wee Cho Yaw and DBS Group Holdings chief operating officer Frank Wong, have not said what first degrees they hold but are well-known bankers.
Arts graduates took two positions on the list. Dr Lim Cheok Peng, managing director of Parkway Holdings, is the sole doctor - he is a cardiologist. City Developments executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng is the sole law graduate. And Total Access Communication CEO Sigve Brekke is the sole holder of a degree in public administration.
The others have not stated, either in their companies' annual reports or websites, what first degrees they hold.
The findings should assuage the fears of those who worry that engineering may be less lucrative than other professions.
Such concerns arose when the Government published the benchmark to which civil service pay will be pegged. The median salaries of the top eight earners for six professions used to compute the salary benchmark indicated that the earnings of engineers were a far cry from those of other professions.
Member of Parliament Lee Bee Wah addressed those concerns in Parliament, pointing out that some engineers have gone on to do very well as CEOs of top companies. Other than those in the top 55 list, she also said 'that more than 40 per cent of our current ministers and many more top civil servants are engineers by training too'. And 'this shows the flexibility of someone with an engineering background'.
PM Lee picked up on Ms Lee's remarks, saying: 'Lee Bee Wah did us a favour explaining that engineers have done very well and lots of bright students ought to go and study engineering.'
Of the engineers, the most highly paid is Keppel Corp's executive chairman Lim Chee Onn, who took home between $7.25 million and $7.5 million in the financial year just ended. Mr Lim is a science degree holder with a doctorate in engineering.
The trio from Venture Corp - all engineers - also featured prominently. Chairman and CEO Wong Ngit Liong took home between $4.25 million and $4.5 million for the year ended Dec 31, 2006. He holds a first class honours degree in electrical engineering from the University of Malaya.
He was followed by fellow executive directors Soo Eng Hiong and Tan Choon Huat, who were paid between $1 million and $1.25 million in 2006. Mr Soo has a degree in electronics from the University of Southampton in the UK, and Mr Tan has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Liverpool in the UK.
SembCorp Marine group president and CEO Tan Kwi Kin and ST Engineering CEO Tan Pheng Hock - both engineering graduates - also received impressive pay packages last year.
But it is not just engineers working in engineering-related fields who are among the top earners. Many others have made good in other industries.
Property giant CapitaLand's president and CEO Liew Mun Leong graduated from the University of Singapore with a civil engineering degree and is a registered professional civil engineer. He was the fifth-best-paid executive on the list, with a pay packet of $5.14 million in 2006.
Fraser & Neave chairman Michael Fam and Singapore Airlines CEO Chew Choon Seng each took home between $2.75 million and $3 million in FY06. Dr Fam has a first class honours degree in engineering from the University of Western Australia, Perth. Mr Chew has a first class honours degree in engineering from the University of Singapore.
Genting International's executive chairman Lim Kok Thay holds a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from the University of London; Keppel Land's managing director Kevin Wong holds a first class honours degree in civil engineering from Imperial College, London; and Singapore Press Holdings' CEO Alan Chan holds a diplome d'ingenieur from the Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile in France, which is equivalent to an engineering degree.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
THE SEED - Very good story
A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose
a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his
directors or his children, he decided to do something different.
He called all the young executives in his company together.
"It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO," he said. "I
have decided to choose one of you."
The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going
to give each one of you a seed today - a very special seed. I want you
to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with
what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge
the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received
a seed.
He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get
a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.
Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After
about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about
their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept
checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now,
others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and
he felt like a failure.
Six months went by - still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had
killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had
nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however. He just
kept watering and fertilizing the soil - he so wanted the seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company
brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that
he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest
about what happened.
Jim felt sick at his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing
moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right.
He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed
at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were
beautiful--in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor
and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!
When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young
executives.
Jim just tried to hide in the back.
"My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown," said the
CEO.
"Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his
empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front.
Jim was terrified. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he
will have me fired!"
When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his
seed.
Jim told him the story.
The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and
then announced to the young executives, "Here is your next Chief
Executive! His name is Jim!"
Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed. How could he
be the new CEO the others said?
Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a
seed.
I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me
today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not
possible for them to grow.
All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers.
"When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another
seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and
honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one
who will be the new Chief Executive!"
Moral:
If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.
If you plant hard work, you will reap success.
If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap
later.
a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his
directors or his children, he decided to do something different.
He called all the young executives in his company together.
"It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO," he said. "I
have decided to choose one of you."
The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going
to give each one of you a seed today - a very special seed. I want you
to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with
what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge
the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received
a seed.
He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get
a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.
Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After
about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about
their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept
checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.
Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now,
others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and
he felt like a failure.
Six months went by - still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had
killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had
nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however. He just
kept watering and fertilizing the soil - he so wanted the seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company
brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that
he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest
about what happened.
Jim felt sick at his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing
moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right.
He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed
at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were
beautiful--in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor
and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!
When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young
executives.
Jim just tried to hide in the back.
"My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown," said the
CEO.
"Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"
All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his
empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front.
Jim was terrified. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he
will have me fired!"
When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his
seed.
Jim told him the story.
The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and
then announced to the young executives, "Here is your next Chief
Executive! His name is Jim!"
Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed. How could he
be the new CEO the others said?
Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a
seed.
I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me
today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not
possible for them to grow.
All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers.
"When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another
seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and
honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one
who will be the new Chief Executive!"
Moral:
If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.
If you plant hard work, you will reap success.
If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap
later.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
County Court papers have been served on Manchester United Football Club Limited.
County Court papers have been served on Manchester United Football Club Limited.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 13 JULY 2007
The implementation of a compulsory automatic cup ticket scheme (ACS) has been widely condemned by thousands of Manchester United supporters as well as the major independent supporters’ groups MUST, IMUSA and the fanzines.
Now MUST is backing legal action being taken by one of its members against Manchester United over what many season ticket holders at Old Trafford see as an unfair move to force them to join the ACS, in addition to paying a 13-14% price rise on their season tickets next season. On top of steep rises for the last two seasons, it means that many season ticket holders will be paying well over £1000 a year to watch games at Old Trafford, more than twice what they were paying 2 years ago.
County Court papers were served on Manchester United Football Club Limited last week and they now have until 19th July to respond (either admitting or defending the claim) before a date is set for the hearing.
Many supporters cannot afford this kind of increase and the anger among United season ticket holders is growing at what they see as an abuse of their loyalty to the club over many years. Being forced to buy up to £500 worth of additional home cup tickets, whether or not they can actually attend the games (e.g. midweek, school nights for kids), has triggered this anger. Up to now the cup scheme has been voluntary. The change has stirred one season ticket holder to take legal action based on what he regards as a clear breach of contract but MUST has a list, already over 100 and growing daily, of others interested in pursuing similar claims..
MUST has engaged a law firm, Underwoods, to help with initial advice on mounting a class action on behalf of aggrieved ST holders. MUST is also talking to another major City of London firm on ways of challenging the compulsory ACS but as such an action is complex and potentially expensive, the quickest and most cost effective route initially is to support an individual member's claim in the County Court.
The purpose of this is to test the legality of the compulsory ACS through an action alleging (i) breach of contract; and (ii) in the event that the contract is not deemed to be breached, that it is invalid and unenforceable to the extent it requires compulsory ACS membership. The individual taking this legal action is MUST member John Mayall, who renewed season tickets for himself and his son in May at a cost of £1444, receiving confirmation shortly after that his purchase had been successful and that the tickets would be delivered in June. About one week later United wrote to him refusing to supply the paid-for tickets unless he joined the ACS, which would commit him to purchase cup tickets for all home matches at unspecified cost likely to amount to hundreds of pounds. Mr Mayall and his son have not joined the ACS and United officials have been unmoved by his efforts to persuade them that he and his son will not be able to go to midweek games due to cost and school commitments.
We have also heard of similar issues from Irish United fans where it is impossible for them to attend mid-week cup games due to the distance and yet United is unwilling to make any exception to the compulsory nature of the cup scheme. United say that fans can sell their tickets if they do not want them, but if it were that easy to sell them United would not be forcing fans to buy tickets they do not want in the first place. Additionally you can only sell the tickets through United's own system Viagogo - on which they make a profit! Viagogo adds on a charge of about 25% so the seller gets less than they paid and the buyer has to pay more than face value too. Furthermore supporters cannot sell their tickets on Viagogo until United have sold all of their own remaining tickets first. Therefore it will not be available for unpopular midweek matches that don't sell out - exactly the matches where most people would wish to sell the unwanted ticket that the club have forced them to buy. So supporters end up paying for tickets they didn't want and cannot sell and the Glazers have the money in the bank.
Many other fans have joined the ACS under protest, while we understand that over 6,000 fans have not renewed their season tickets at all next season. Those renewers who refuse to join the ACS have been threatened with cancellation or invalidation of their season tickets. We believe all of these fans may have grounds to take action similar to Mr Mayall.
Success in this legal action, and others which will inevitably follow, could ensure that the ACS remains voluntary for all season ticket holders, which would be a victory for loyal fans who feel that they are being exploited by the Glazers to help pay the family’s debts. It could also undermine the Glazers’ efforts to refinance their debt by issuing a bond secured on stadium income (including ‘guaranteed’ ticket income from the ACS) as the banks will shy away from any controversy which jeopardises this revenue.
United say that this system is fairer than at some other clubs where you pay for all cup games up front. That is irrelevant - just because some other clubs are exploiting their supporters loyalty to an even greater degree it doesn’t make it any better for Manchester United supporters. Furthermore United have not so far come clean on what the cup tickets will cost, but they expect fans to sign up agreeing to buy them.
MUST member John Mayall says: “United are threatening to stop me and my son from attending premiership games using the season tickets we have already bought unless we also join the automatic cup ticketing scheme. This would add hundreds of pounds each to the £1444 I have already paid for our season tickets. It’s disgraceful."
"I think the ACS (Automatic Cup Scheme) should be renamed the BCS - the blank cheque scheme. They expect fans to enter into a contract obliging them to buy all cup tickets for all three competitions without knowing what they will cost. In my understanding they could charge outrageous prices for these tickets after fans have signed up and there is nothing they could do about it. I think the OFT should look into this".
“If the Glazers think unwanted tickets for evening cup games would be that easy for fans to sell on through Viagogo then I don’t understand why they are trying to force us to by them in the first place. Why don’t they just sell them themselves?”
MUST Chair Nick Towle added: “As a supporters trust, MUST is responding to the anger of match-going members who have asked us to do something about this decision. We don’t recommend legal action against our club lightly, but attempts to change minds about this have been brushed off. This decision clearly comes from the Glazers, against the advice of senior management we understand, so that they can get fans to pay off more of the debts they took out to buy the club. This shows contempt for many thousands of loyal Reds who have held season tickets for years but who cannot now afford them with the cup games on top.”
“We call on United to return to the status quo now and retain the ACS as a voluntary scheme because it is inherently unfair to force fans to buy tickets they do not want or cannot afford. We are supporting this initial legal action and we expect more will be on the way both from individuals and possibly also on a collective basis”.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 13 JULY 2007
The implementation of a compulsory automatic cup ticket scheme (ACS) has been widely condemned by thousands of Manchester United supporters as well as the major independent supporters’ groups MUST, IMUSA and the fanzines.
Now MUST is backing legal action being taken by one of its members against Manchester United over what many season ticket holders at Old Trafford see as an unfair move to force them to join the ACS, in addition to paying a 13-14% price rise on their season tickets next season. On top of steep rises for the last two seasons, it means that many season ticket holders will be paying well over £1000 a year to watch games at Old Trafford, more than twice what they were paying 2 years ago.
County Court papers were served on Manchester United Football Club Limited last week and they now have until 19th July to respond (either admitting or defending the claim) before a date is set for the hearing.
Many supporters cannot afford this kind of increase and the anger among United season ticket holders is growing at what they see as an abuse of their loyalty to the club over many years. Being forced to buy up to £500 worth of additional home cup tickets, whether or not they can actually attend the games (e.g. midweek, school nights for kids), has triggered this anger. Up to now the cup scheme has been voluntary. The change has stirred one season ticket holder to take legal action based on what he regards as a clear breach of contract but MUST has a list, already over 100 and growing daily, of others interested in pursuing similar claims..
MUST has engaged a law firm, Underwoods, to help with initial advice on mounting a class action on behalf of aggrieved ST holders. MUST is also talking to another major City of London firm on ways of challenging the compulsory ACS but as such an action is complex and potentially expensive, the quickest and most cost effective route initially is to support an individual member's claim in the County Court.
The purpose of this is to test the legality of the compulsory ACS through an action alleging (i) breach of contract; and (ii) in the event that the contract is not deemed to be breached, that it is invalid and unenforceable to the extent it requires compulsory ACS membership. The individual taking this legal action is MUST member John Mayall, who renewed season tickets for himself and his son in May at a cost of £1444, receiving confirmation shortly after that his purchase had been successful and that the tickets would be delivered in June. About one week later United wrote to him refusing to supply the paid-for tickets unless he joined the ACS, which would commit him to purchase cup tickets for all home matches at unspecified cost likely to amount to hundreds of pounds. Mr Mayall and his son have not joined the ACS and United officials have been unmoved by his efforts to persuade them that he and his son will not be able to go to midweek games due to cost and school commitments.
We have also heard of similar issues from Irish United fans where it is impossible for them to attend mid-week cup games due to the distance and yet United is unwilling to make any exception to the compulsory nature of the cup scheme. United say that fans can sell their tickets if they do not want them, but if it were that easy to sell them United would not be forcing fans to buy tickets they do not want in the first place. Additionally you can only sell the tickets through United's own system Viagogo - on which they make a profit! Viagogo adds on a charge of about 25% so the seller gets less than they paid and the buyer has to pay more than face value too. Furthermore supporters cannot sell their tickets on Viagogo until United have sold all of their own remaining tickets first. Therefore it will not be available for unpopular midweek matches that don't sell out - exactly the matches where most people would wish to sell the unwanted ticket that the club have forced them to buy. So supporters end up paying for tickets they didn't want and cannot sell and the Glazers have the money in the bank.
Many other fans have joined the ACS under protest, while we understand that over 6,000 fans have not renewed their season tickets at all next season. Those renewers who refuse to join the ACS have been threatened with cancellation or invalidation of their season tickets. We believe all of these fans may have grounds to take action similar to Mr Mayall.
Success in this legal action, and others which will inevitably follow, could ensure that the ACS remains voluntary for all season ticket holders, which would be a victory for loyal fans who feel that they are being exploited by the Glazers to help pay the family’s debts. It could also undermine the Glazers’ efforts to refinance their debt by issuing a bond secured on stadium income (including ‘guaranteed’ ticket income from the ACS) as the banks will shy away from any controversy which jeopardises this revenue.
United say that this system is fairer than at some other clubs where you pay for all cup games up front. That is irrelevant - just because some other clubs are exploiting their supporters loyalty to an even greater degree it doesn’t make it any better for Manchester United supporters. Furthermore United have not so far come clean on what the cup tickets will cost, but they expect fans to sign up agreeing to buy them.
MUST member John Mayall says: “United are threatening to stop me and my son from attending premiership games using the season tickets we have already bought unless we also join the automatic cup ticketing scheme. This would add hundreds of pounds each to the £1444 I have already paid for our season tickets. It’s disgraceful."
"I think the ACS (Automatic Cup Scheme) should be renamed the BCS - the blank cheque scheme. They expect fans to enter into a contract obliging them to buy all cup tickets for all three competitions without knowing what they will cost. In my understanding they could charge outrageous prices for these tickets after fans have signed up and there is nothing they could do about it. I think the OFT should look into this".
“If the Glazers think unwanted tickets for evening cup games would be that easy for fans to sell on through Viagogo then I don’t understand why they are trying to force us to by them in the first place. Why don’t they just sell them themselves?”
MUST Chair Nick Towle added: “As a supporters trust, MUST is responding to the anger of match-going members who have asked us to do something about this decision. We don’t recommend legal action against our club lightly, but attempts to change minds about this have been brushed off. This decision clearly comes from the Glazers, against the advice of senior management we understand, so that they can get fans to pay off more of the debts they took out to buy the club. This shows contempt for many thousands of loyal Reds who have held season tickets for years but who cannot now afford them with the cup games on top.”
“We call on United to return to the status quo now and retain the ACS as a voluntary scheme because it is inherently unfair to force fans to buy tickets they do not want or cannot afford. We are supporting this initial legal action and we expect more will be on the way both from individuals and possibly also on a collective basis”.
that we are still a young species, and we have much to learn...
From The Straits Times
Escape from hell
Born in a North Korean prison camp, Shin Dong Hyok never knew family life and thought torture was a normal way of life until he learnt about the outside world and escaped at age 23
By Choe Sang Hun
SEOUL - ON NOV 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions.
The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp's torture compound, and the teenager assumed they were among those to be put to death.
Instead, the guards brought out Shin's mother and his 22-
year-old brother. The mother was hanged, the brother was shot by a firing squad.
'Before she was executed, my mother looked at me,' Shin, now 24, said in a recent interview. 'I don't know if she wanted to say something, because she was bound and gagged. But I avoided her eyes.
'My father was weeping, but I didn't cry. I had no love for her. Even today, I hate her for what I had to go through because of her.'
Shin's story provides a rare glimpse into one of the least-known prison camps in North Korea.
He was a political prisoner from birth. He had known no other life from the day he was born in 1982, in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon, until he escaped in 2005. Guards beat up children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed that everyone lived this way.
He had never heard of Pyongyang, the capital city 90km to the south, or even of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.
'I didn't know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea,' he said.
'I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors' crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair.'
Since 1992, about a dozen former North Korean prison camp inmates have fled to South Korea. But most were held in the 'revolutionising zone' at Camp No. 15 in Yodok in eastern North Korea. The emphasis was on 're-educating' the prisoners. If they survived long enough to complete their sentences, they were released.
Shin is the first North Korean who came south who is known to have escaped from a prison camp. Moreover, he was confined to a 'total-control zone'.
According to a report released last month by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, 'prisoners sent to a total-control zone can never come out. They are put to work in mines or logging camps until they die. Thus the authorities don't even bother to give them ideological education. They only teach them skills necessary for mining and farming'.
The Yodok camp's name has become synonymous with human rights abuses, thanks to the stories of former inmates. But there are at least four other prison camps in North Korea, including Camp No. 14 in Kaechon. These others are far less known because so few have emerged to describe them.
Shin 'is a living example of the most brutal form of human rights abuse', said Mr Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, where Shin is taking temporary shelter.
'He comes from a place where people are deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred and even a sense of being sad or mistreated.'
A North Korean named Kim Yong who came south in 1999 and now lives in the United States said he spent two years in Kaechon, but some refugees have questioned his claim.
Ahn Myeong Cheol, who worked as a driver and guard at four camps before reaching South Korea in 1994, has no doubts that Shin was in a total-control zone. He said that when he met Shin in June, he immediately noticed the telltale signs: the avoidance of eye contact and arms warped by heavy labour from childhood.
'An instruction drilled into every guard's head is: Don't treat them like humans,' the ex-guard said.
According to Shin, the prison authorities matched his father, Shin Kyong Sup, with his mother, Chang Hye Kyong, and made them spend five days together before separating them. This sort of arrangement was known as 'award marriage', a privilege given only to outstanding inmates. An exemplary worker might be allowed to visit the woman chosen as his wife a few times a year.
Shin's brother was born in 1974 and Shin himself in 1982. Young children lived with their mothers, who worked from 5am to midnight. Once they turned 11, children were moved to communal barracks, but they were allowed to visit their mothers if they excelled at their work.
'I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year,' Shin said. 'I never saw my whole family together. I don't think I saw my brother more than a few times.'
There were up to 1,000 children but no textbooks in the school at Valley No. 2, the part of the camp where Shin lived. Pupils were taught to read and write, and to add and subtract, but little more. After school, children worked in the fields or mines. In most of North Korea, villages are decorated with Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong Il. Valley No. 2 had only one slogan carved into a wooden plaque: 'Everyone obey the regulations!'
Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth. They scavenged whatever else they could find: cucumbers and potatoes from the fields, frogs, mice, dragonflies and locusts. Shin said he once ate corn kernels he found in cow droppings.
When a teacher found a girl had hidden wheat grains in her pocket, he beat her on the head with a stick. She died the next day.
Shin's life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.
During the interrogations he learnt for the first time that his father's family belonged to a 'hostile class' - a category that entailed punishment over three generations - because his uncles had collaborated with the South Korean Army during the Korean War.
Shin owed his unusual escape from the camp to two friends: an older cellmate who helped him recover from his torture wounds, and a man he met in the garment factory where he worked in 2004, who told him about life beyond the camp.
'Everything he told me about the outside world - the food, China - was fascinating,' Shin said. 'I loved his stories. Once I heard about the outside, I thought I would go crazy. I wanted to get out. I couldn't focus on work. Every day was an agony.'
On Jan 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp's electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.
Shin is still struggling to understand what happened next. His friend fell against the high-voltage fence, his body creating an opening.
'I climbed over him, through the hole,' Shin said. 'I ran down the hill like a mad man. I looked back and he wasn't moving.'
In July 2005, Shin reached China. In February last year, a South Korean helped him seek asylum at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. He arrived in Seoul last August.
Today, he bears burn scars from the torture and the electrified fence, and walks with a slight limp. He says he has recurring nightmares about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father and about the man he left behind at the fence. Did he sacrifice himself to help Shin escape?
Now in Seoul, Shin said he sometimes finds life 'more burdensome than the hardest labour in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told'. His limited vocabulary has caused him to twice fail the written driver's licence test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.
'However I try, I can't forgive her,' he said. 'She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn't she think (about) what would happen to us?'
Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learnt about the greater world, 'without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At times reading these stories really puts things in your perspective. Could anything else be worse than not even knowing about the possibility of love? And not even knowing that there is a free world outside?
I wonder how many of you weeped when Bumble Bee was captured and freezed by Section 7. I did. And the words of Optimus Prime could never be more appropriate after reading this article...
that we are still a young species, and we have much to learn...
Escape from hell
Born in a North Korean prison camp, Shin Dong Hyok never knew family life and thought torture was a normal way of life until he learnt about the outside world and escaped at age 23
By Choe Sang Hun
SEOUL - ON NOV 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions.
The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp's torture compound, and the teenager assumed they were among those to be put to death.
Instead, the guards brought out Shin's mother and his 22-
year-old brother. The mother was hanged, the brother was shot by a firing squad.
'Before she was executed, my mother looked at me,' Shin, now 24, said in a recent interview. 'I don't know if she wanted to say something, because she was bound and gagged. But I avoided her eyes.
'My father was weeping, but I didn't cry. I had no love for her. Even today, I hate her for what I had to go through because of her.'
Shin's story provides a rare glimpse into one of the least-known prison camps in North Korea.
He was a political prisoner from birth. He had known no other life from the day he was born in 1982, in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon, until he escaped in 2005. Guards beat up children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed that everyone lived this way.
He had never heard of Pyongyang, the capital city 90km to the south, or even of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.
'I didn't know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea,' he said.
'I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors' crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair.'
Since 1992, about a dozen former North Korean prison camp inmates have fled to South Korea. But most were held in the 'revolutionising zone' at Camp No. 15 in Yodok in eastern North Korea. The emphasis was on 're-educating' the prisoners. If they survived long enough to complete their sentences, they were released.
Shin is the first North Korean who came south who is known to have escaped from a prison camp. Moreover, he was confined to a 'total-control zone'.
According to a report released last month by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, 'prisoners sent to a total-control zone can never come out. They are put to work in mines or logging camps until they die. Thus the authorities don't even bother to give them ideological education. They only teach them skills necessary for mining and farming'.
The Yodok camp's name has become synonymous with human rights abuses, thanks to the stories of former inmates. But there are at least four other prison camps in North Korea, including Camp No. 14 in Kaechon. These others are far less known because so few have emerged to describe them.
Shin 'is a living example of the most brutal form of human rights abuse', said Mr Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, where Shin is taking temporary shelter.
'He comes from a place where people are deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred and even a sense of being sad or mistreated.'
A North Korean named Kim Yong who came south in 1999 and now lives in the United States said he spent two years in Kaechon, but some refugees have questioned his claim.
Ahn Myeong Cheol, who worked as a driver and guard at four camps before reaching South Korea in 1994, has no doubts that Shin was in a total-control zone. He said that when he met Shin in June, he immediately noticed the telltale signs: the avoidance of eye contact and arms warped by heavy labour from childhood.
'An instruction drilled into every guard's head is: Don't treat them like humans,' the ex-guard said.
According to Shin, the prison authorities matched his father, Shin Kyong Sup, with his mother, Chang Hye Kyong, and made them spend five days together before separating them. This sort of arrangement was known as 'award marriage', a privilege given only to outstanding inmates. An exemplary worker might be allowed to visit the woman chosen as his wife a few times a year.
Shin's brother was born in 1974 and Shin himself in 1982. Young children lived with their mothers, who worked from 5am to midnight. Once they turned 11, children were moved to communal barracks, but they were allowed to visit their mothers if they excelled at their work.
'I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year,' Shin said. 'I never saw my whole family together. I don't think I saw my brother more than a few times.'
There were up to 1,000 children but no textbooks in the school at Valley No. 2, the part of the camp where Shin lived. Pupils were taught to read and write, and to add and subtract, but little more. After school, children worked in the fields or mines. In most of North Korea, villages are decorated with Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong Il. Valley No. 2 had only one slogan carved into a wooden plaque: 'Everyone obey the regulations!'
Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth. They scavenged whatever else they could find: cucumbers and potatoes from the fields, frogs, mice, dragonflies and locusts. Shin said he once ate corn kernels he found in cow droppings.
When a teacher found a girl had hidden wheat grains in her pocket, he beat her on the head with a stick. She died the next day.
Shin's life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.
During the interrogations he learnt for the first time that his father's family belonged to a 'hostile class' - a category that entailed punishment over three generations - because his uncles had collaborated with the South Korean Army during the Korean War.
Shin owed his unusual escape from the camp to two friends: an older cellmate who helped him recover from his torture wounds, and a man he met in the garment factory where he worked in 2004, who told him about life beyond the camp.
'Everything he told me about the outside world - the food, China - was fascinating,' Shin said. 'I loved his stories. Once I heard about the outside, I thought I would go crazy. I wanted to get out. I couldn't focus on work. Every day was an agony.'
On Jan 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp's electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.
Shin is still struggling to understand what happened next. His friend fell against the high-voltage fence, his body creating an opening.
'I climbed over him, through the hole,' Shin said. 'I ran down the hill like a mad man. I looked back and he wasn't moving.'
In July 2005, Shin reached China. In February last year, a South Korean helped him seek asylum at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. He arrived in Seoul last August.
Today, he bears burn scars from the torture and the electrified fence, and walks with a slight limp. He says he has recurring nightmares about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father and about the man he left behind at the fence. Did he sacrifice himself to help Shin escape?
Now in Seoul, Shin said he sometimes finds life 'more burdensome than the hardest labour in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told'. His limited vocabulary has caused him to twice fail the written driver's licence test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.
'However I try, I can't forgive her,' he said. 'She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn't she think (about) what would happen to us?'
Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learnt about the greater world, 'without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At times reading these stories really puts things in your perspective. Could anything else be worse than not even knowing about the possibility of love? And not even knowing that there is a free world outside?
I wonder how many of you weeped when Bumble Bee was captured and freezed by Section 7. I did. And the words of Optimus Prime could never be more appropriate after reading this article...
that we are still a young species, and we have much to learn...
Mexican Fisherman Joke
An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.
"How long it took you to catch them?" The American asked.
"Only a little while." The Mexican replied.
"Why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" The American then asked.
"I have enough to support my family's immediate needs." The Mexican said.
"But," The American then asked, "What do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor."
The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats."
"Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "15-20 years."
"But what then, senor?"
The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions, senor? Then what?"
The American said slowly, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos..."
The Mexican replied, "You mean that is what you will need to do in your lifetime to get to where I am today?"
"How long it took you to catch them?" The American asked.
"Only a little while." The Mexican replied.
"Why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" The American then asked.
"I have enough to support my family's immediate needs." The Mexican said.
"But," The American then asked, "What do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor."
The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats."
"Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "15-20 years."
"But what then, senor?"
The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions, senor? Then what?"
The American said slowly, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos..."
The Mexican replied, "You mean that is what you will need to do in your lifetime to get to where I am today?"
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
You must be kidding me?
It takes quite a bit to be pissed off at letters in the Straits Times forum these days, given the amount of ridiculous letters that I have read over the last 5 years or so. Such as those letters which actually have the cheek to demand all cyclists (think about the old wobbly uncles and aunties cycling leisurely on their way to the market every morning) stay on the roads andface the might of the bendy buses, concrete mixers, construction lorries etc. I mean seriously? These are the same people who have NEVER cycled on our roads before and think human rights is the best thing since sliced bread. What is needed is a huge dose of common sense and politeness and the problem is solved! Fast, competitive (and by that I also mean the 2 FT workers who 2F2F on Orchard Road and beat the red lights) cyclists go onto the road, uncles and aunties cycling to the market stay on the pavement. Young kids educated on civic responsibility to limit their speed on pavements. Must we really have regulations for everything?
But I digress. Like I said, I wasn't even moved enough by those letters to post them here, until I read the letter below. When I saw the title I was like wow! somebody has guts to point out a customer was wrong in the first place. Until I read that the manager fired his 2 staff in the end ANYWAY coz they are in the service industry.
All together now, WTH???????????? Seriously, this is a world gone politically mad! If the customer is unreasonable beyond doubt, stick to your guns! After all 2 persons' livelihoods are at stake here! I would be extremely pissed if this becomes the United States whereby you can sue your neighbour when you trip over a tile in front of his home because he did not fix it, and you are a bigot and intolerant if you say Merry Xmas instead of a dumb Happy Holidays.
Lighten up world!! I hope the customer is happy he caused 2 persons to lose their jobs.
From Straits Times
Customer who complained of service was unreasonable
I AM writing to clarify Mr Ong Weisheng's letter ('Atrocious manners from Max Brenner staff and supervisor'; ST Online Forum, June 30) pertaining to an incident at my shop on May 30. Following his initial feedback, I conducted an investigation. I also had an eyewitness account from another customer present that the situation was entirely provoked, resulting in the unpleasant exchange between my supervisor and Mr Ong.
I had told Mr Ong he would be updated on the outcome of my probe in an earlier e-mail reply. However, I am not surprised at his lack of patience in allowing due process in the matter as he displayed the same impatience while waiting outside my shop on May 30.
My CCTV recording paints the full picture as follows:
Mr Ong and a friend arrived outside my shop and waited a grand total of 48 seconds before approaching staff who were all busy with a full house inside. Mr Ong and his friend then returned to the queue post and waited a further two minutes before approach the same female employee and that is when the exchange took place with my supervisor joining in to assist the female employee.
Despite Mr Ong's inflated claim of how long he waited and the eyewitness who came forward to vouch for my employee's behaviour, I have asked both staff to resign in view of the fact that we are, after all, in the service industry and that means good service to all - regardless of the situation. Mr Ong has been told of the outcome of my investigation in an e-mail reply.
Kenning Koh
Managing Director
Max Brenner Chocolate Bar
But I digress. Like I said, I wasn't even moved enough by those letters to post them here, until I read the letter below. When I saw the title I was like wow! somebody has guts to point out a customer was wrong in the first place. Until I read that the manager fired his 2 staff in the end ANYWAY coz they are in the service industry.
All together now, WTH???????????? Seriously, this is a world gone politically mad! If the customer is unreasonable beyond doubt, stick to your guns! After all 2 persons' livelihoods are at stake here! I would be extremely pissed if this becomes the United States whereby you can sue your neighbour when you trip over a tile in front of his home because he did not fix it, and you are a bigot and intolerant if you say Merry Xmas instead of a dumb Happy Holidays.
Lighten up world!! I hope the customer is happy he caused 2 persons to lose their jobs.
From Straits Times
Customer who complained of service was unreasonable
I AM writing to clarify Mr Ong Weisheng's letter ('Atrocious manners from Max Brenner staff and supervisor'; ST Online Forum, June 30) pertaining to an incident at my shop on May 30. Following his initial feedback, I conducted an investigation. I also had an eyewitness account from another customer present that the situation was entirely provoked, resulting in the unpleasant exchange between my supervisor and Mr Ong.
I had told Mr Ong he would be updated on the outcome of my probe in an earlier e-mail reply. However, I am not surprised at his lack of patience in allowing due process in the matter as he displayed the same impatience while waiting outside my shop on May 30.
My CCTV recording paints the full picture as follows:
Mr Ong and a friend arrived outside my shop and waited a grand total of 48 seconds before approaching staff who were all busy with a full house inside. Mr Ong and his friend then returned to the queue post and waited a further two minutes before approach the same female employee and that is when the exchange took place with my supervisor joining in to assist the female employee.
Despite Mr Ong's inflated claim of how long he waited and the eyewitness who came forward to vouch for my employee's behaviour, I have asked both staff to resign in view of the fact that we are, after all, in the service industry and that means good service to all - regardless of the situation. Mr Ong has been told of the outcome of my investigation in an e-mail reply.
Kenning Koh
Managing Director
Max Brenner Chocolate Bar
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Negative Negative Me
As it is with every major change in TosH's life, TosH tends to get negative and worry excessively unneccessarily.... However, this time the worries seems to be more macro in nature, things that even the most optimistic of persons will concede that he is rather powerless to do anything about....
1. The environment
You know in secondary school Geography we learnt so much about the problems with the weather, climate etc and I was really quite worried. Melting of glaciers, rising sea water level, desertification, floods, droughts etc seemed so worrying then, but somehow nobody seemed to care about them. As I moved onto JC, I stopped taking Geography and somehow or rather, as they say, out of sight and out of mind. I stopped thinking about these issues, after all, the world could not end in my lifetime isn't it?
But all of a sudden, the shit has hit the fan! The buzzwords are now global warming and climate change. What a drastic change, and it seems like we have less than a decade to really save ourselves, dear oh dear... I must admit I have not been the most devoted environmentalist. I mean I do try and recycle most of my waste now that I have a bin outside my place and I do not use the air con in my room to save electricity... but I am guilty of one of the biggest sins - driving around. Even when it seems taking the bus is possible. I am just too lazy and short tempered to take public transport regularly now... In addition, I really love the feeling of freedom when cruising along the TPE at nigt. So even though the thought of giving up my Altis sometimes crosses my mind, I am still pretty unwilling to do so, will Mother Nature forgive me?
2. Singapore
Don't think I feel comfortable enough to talk about everything here on this public place. But I guess the layman will also know that the income gap, elitism etc are problems that will threaten the long term fabric of this country. I know I do not have the answers, so I am not really willing to be those who only complain with no solutions, but is this really the best that we can do? Can't we have our cake (economic progress, clean government, cosmopolitan) and eat it at the same time (equality, cohesiveness, quality of life)?
3. Myself
OK maybe this is something that I am not so powerless but still.... Even at this stage, I am still not sure if I made the right choice. Will I be able to survive the bond? Or would I be sacked for some gross misconduct? Will I be a good mentor? Will I earn enough money to support my parents and my above mentioned Altis? Will I save enough money for my retirement? And at the risk of sounding very very despo here.. Will I ever get married? If yes, where is THE SPECIAL ONE going to come from? Or is it a case of finding someone whom I can live with, rather than someone I can't live without? What do I do if i manage to survive my bond after 6 years? Go out and get more experience? Take risks? Pursue a PhD and try to find ways to eradicate poverty and global warming profitably? Or would I be forced to stay in even if I do a bad job simply because it might pay well or I have too many commitments? Or will I be happy to stay on coz i am doing a good job?
Questions, questions and more questions, and questions to which I have no answers at all.. Is it really the case that I can only take each day as it comes? What does life have in store for me? I really want to know.... but yet I fear I do not have the energy to keep on going...
1. The environment
You know in secondary school Geography we learnt so much about the problems with the weather, climate etc and I was really quite worried. Melting of glaciers, rising sea water level, desertification, floods, droughts etc seemed so worrying then, but somehow nobody seemed to care about them. As I moved onto JC, I stopped taking Geography and somehow or rather, as they say, out of sight and out of mind. I stopped thinking about these issues, after all, the world could not end in my lifetime isn't it?
But all of a sudden, the shit has hit the fan! The buzzwords are now global warming and climate change. What a drastic change, and it seems like we have less than a decade to really save ourselves, dear oh dear... I must admit I have not been the most devoted environmentalist. I mean I do try and recycle most of my waste now that I have a bin outside my place and I do not use the air con in my room to save electricity... but I am guilty of one of the biggest sins - driving around. Even when it seems taking the bus is possible. I am just too lazy and short tempered to take public transport regularly now... In addition, I really love the feeling of freedom when cruising along the TPE at nigt. So even though the thought of giving up my Altis sometimes crosses my mind, I am still pretty unwilling to do so, will Mother Nature forgive me?
2. Singapore
Don't think I feel comfortable enough to talk about everything here on this public place. But I guess the layman will also know that the income gap, elitism etc are problems that will threaten the long term fabric of this country. I know I do not have the answers, so I am not really willing to be those who only complain with no solutions, but is this really the best that we can do? Can't we have our cake (economic progress, clean government, cosmopolitan) and eat it at the same time (equality, cohesiveness, quality of life)?
3. Myself
OK maybe this is something that I am not so powerless but still.... Even at this stage, I am still not sure if I made the right choice. Will I be able to survive the bond? Or would I be sacked for some gross misconduct? Will I be a good mentor? Will I earn enough money to support my parents and my above mentioned Altis? Will I save enough money for my retirement? And at the risk of sounding very very despo here.. Will I ever get married? If yes, where is THE SPECIAL ONE going to come from? Or is it a case of finding someone whom I can live with, rather than someone I can't live without? What do I do if i manage to survive my bond after 6 years? Go out and get more experience? Take risks? Pursue a PhD and try to find ways to eradicate poverty and global warming profitably? Or would I be forced to stay in even if I do a bad job simply because it might pay well or I have too many commitments? Or will I be happy to stay on coz i am doing a good job?
Questions, questions and more questions, and questions to which I have no answers at all.. Is it really the case that I can only take each day as it comes? What does life have in store for me? I really want to know.... but yet I fear I do not have the energy to keep on going...
Asia fighting poverty by helping poor to save
From The Straits Times
Asia fighting poverty by helping poor to save
Microfinancing schemes can be useful in reducing income inequality, says NUS professor
By Shefali Rekhi, Assistant Foreign Editor
SMALL loans to help the little people have been taking off in Asia as a way to help tackle poverty in the region.
Microfinancing, as a financial tool, began when Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus started an experiment in 1974, during a famine in his home country, to give the poor small loans.
That proved immensely successful and, through the Grameen Bank that he founded in 1983, he managed to change the lives of more than 6.61 million people.
Today, bringing the 'unbanked' within the formal financial system has become the mantra in financial circles, with the phenomenon fairly widespread in Asia, and many involved in India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and elsewhere.
According to Washington University's Centre for Social Development director, Mr Michael Sherraden, the potential is enormous, with nearly half the people in the world not having access to secure and low-cost financial services.
Consequently, banking and financial institutions have been widening their reach to add a social dimension to their regular businesses as a way to tap into the untapped cashflow and contribute to reducing income inequality.
In China - where millions live in rural areas under poor living conditions - a local government initiative called the Hu Du Bi project in a county in western China has been attracting the central government's attention. It allows farmers to withdraw money from their social insurance accounts as loans for investments in agriculture.
According to Professor Yang Tuan of the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, the default rate has been zero in the past eight years of the scheme, and thousands have benefited.
In India, where close to a quarter of the people live below the poverty line, Basix, founded in 1996, has supported the livelihoods of more than a million rural poor households through microcredit, savings and insurance services.
But the task is by no means easy.
Said British researcher Stuart Rutherford, who heads a non-governmental organisation in Bangladesh: 'When poor people save, sometimes they have a goal, and sometimes not. It >really depends on whether they view it as risk management or are thinking of it (the savings) in terms of a lump sum.'
Accordingly, banking and financial institutions need to devise suitable tools. Mr Rutherford's Safesave Bangladesh has been working to introduce the poor to simple banking services.
The method of financing might also be applied to relatively more affluent Singapore, said Associate Professor Ngiam Tee Liang, head of the Department of Social Work at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
He argued that with globalisation, all countries, including Singapore, need to consider financial inclusion of all sections of society.
'With economic growth, you do not want the economic divide to widen, and you have to understand - how do you empower the low-income poor with facilities to motivate them to save?'
Prof Ngiam was speaking to The Straits Times on the sidelines of a global symposium - Savings, Assets and Financial Inclusion - organised by the NUS, together with Washington University in St Louis, the New America Foundation and the New York University, with Citi Foundation as its lead sponsor.
The three-day event, attended by delegates from across the world, ended yesterday.
Microfinancing follows from a belief that the poor can also save when encouraged to do so.
Many banks and financial institutions have been developing affordable schemes for the poor to do so, and Prof Ngiam said that Singapore could adapt some of the schemes to address the needs of the low-income groups here.
'The notion of saving and the purpose of saving may not be the same for all. We need to understand the dynamics of how people make choices,' he said. 'You cannot have policies for the middle class and just trim them down to the basic model for the poor.'
shefali@sph.com.sg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMPOWERING THE POOR
'With economic growth, you do not want to widen the economic divide, and you have to understand - how do you empower the low-income poor with facilities to motivate them to save?'
ASSOCIATE PROF NGIAM TEE LIANG, who says microfinancing could help reduce income inequality in Singapore
Asia fighting poverty by helping poor to save
Microfinancing schemes can be useful in reducing income inequality, says NUS professor
By Shefali Rekhi, Assistant Foreign Editor
SMALL loans to help the little people have been taking off in Asia as a way to help tackle poverty in the region.
Microfinancing, as a financial tool, began when Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus started an experiment in 1974, during a famine in his home country, to give the poor small loans.
That proved immensely successful and, through the Grameen Bank that he founded in 1983, he managed to change the lives of more than 6.61 million people.
Today, bringing the 'unbanked' within the formal financial system has become the mantra in financial circles, with the phenomenon fairly widespread in Asia, and many involved in India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and elsewhere.
According to Washington University's Centre for Social Development director, Mr Michael Sherraden, the potential is enormous, with nearly half the people in the world not having access to secure and low-cost financial services.
Consequently, banking and financial institutions have been widening their reach to add a social dimension to their regular businesses as a way to tap into the untapped cashflow and contribute to reducing income inequality.
In China - where millions live in rural areas under poor living conditions - a local government initiative called the Hu Du Bi project in a county in western China has been attracting the central government's attention. It allows farmers to withdraw money from their social insurance accounts as loans for investments in agriculture.
According to Professor Yang Tuan of the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, the default rate has been zero in the past eight years of the scheme, and thousands have benefited.
In India, where close to a quarter of the people live below the poverty line, Basix, founded in 1996, has supported the livelihoods of more than a million rural poor households through microcredit, savings and insurance services.
But the task is by no means easy.
Said British researcher Stuart Rutherford, who heads a non-governmental organisation in Bangladesh: 'When poor people save, sometimes they have a goal, and sometimes not. It >really depends on whether they view it as risk management or are thinking of it (the savings) in terms of a lump sum.'
Accordingly, banking and financial institutions need to devise suitable tools. Mr Rutherford's Safesave Bangladesh has been working to introduce the poor to simple banking services.
The method of financing might also be applied to relatively more affluent Singapore, said Associate Professor Ngiam Tee Liang, head of the Department of Social Work at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
He argued that with globalisation, all countries, including Singapore, need to consider financial inclusion of all sections of society.
'With economic growth, you do not want the economic divide to widen, and you have to understand - how do you empower the low-income poor with facilities to motivate them to save?'
Prof Ngiam was speaking to The Straits Times on the sidelines of a global symposium - Savings, Assets and Financial Inclusion - organised by the NUS, together with Washington University in St Louis, the New America Foundation and the New York University, with Citi Foundation as its lead sponsor.
The three-day event, attended by delegates from across the world, ended yesterday.
Microfinancing follows from a belief that the poor can also save when encouraged to do so.
Many banks and financial institutions have been developing affordable schemes for the poor to do so, and Prof Ngiam said that Singapore could adapt some of the schemes to address the needs of the low-income groups here.
'The notion of saving and the purpose of saving may not be the same for all. We need to understand the dynamics of how people make choices,' he said. 'You cannot have policies for the middle class and just trim them down to the basic model for the poor.'
shefali@sph.com.sg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMPOWERING THE POOR
'With economic growth, you do not want to widen the economic divide, and you have to understand - how do you empower the low-income poor with facilities to motivate them to save?'
ASSOCIATE PROF NGIAM TEE LIANG, who says microfinancing could help reduce income inequality in Singapore
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Article 3
And the Independent:
Brian Viner: I was as ridiculously wide of the mark last week as a penalty hitting the corner flag
Published: 09 June 2007
Hell hath no fury like Manchester United fans scorned, and as the dispenser of some of that scorn, I have this past week been the object of the fury. There have been long periods when emails have been dropping into my in-tray at the rate of about one a minute, not all of them questioning my parentage and making suggestions about my perverse habits in the bedroom, but not all of them not.
My act of provocation was to write last Saturday, in the "Who I Don't Like" item adjacent to this column, that with another league title won and £50m worth of new players already lined up for next season, the United fans who waged a campaign of hatred against the Glazer family should be feeling a little apologetic. I suppose I had in mind the people who burnt effigies and issued threats of violence.
To those United fans who raised my own club loyalties - "I would have thought that an Everton fan with its great history and tradition of loyal support would have understood exactly why many Man U fans remain bitterly opposed to these carpetbaggers taking over our club," wrote a Mr Paul Roby - I replied that I feel the same contempt for the Evertonians who scrawled "Rooney die" on the walls near Goodison Park. The game has no place for such sentiments, whether aimed at wonderful young footballers or rich American "carpetbaggers".
But I am drifting away from the point, which is unequivocal contrition. I have read every email sent from outraged United fans, or at least the relatively temperate ones, and I have also consulted journalistic colleagues who know more than I do about the situation at Old Trafford. As a consequence, I realise that what I wrote was ill-considered, naive, and as spectacularly wide of the mark as a penalty kick hitting a corner flag.
The Glazers, and chief executive David Gill, and even to a certain extent Sir Alex Ferguson, are plainly entitled to the disgust of United fans; indeed, I have been astounded by how low Ferguson has sunk in the estimation of many. None of them question his brilliance as a manager; lots of them question his character. "Lifelong socialist? He's an absolute hypocrite," wrote one of my correspondents. "I would rather go for a pint with Tommy Doc than 'Sir' Alex any day of the week."
My journalistic source, a man with impeccable contacts at Old Trafford, tells me that the Glazers, terrified of a major boycott by fans after saddling the club with debts of over £650m, knew that they had to keep Fergie on-side. "They are also personally scared of him," my friend said, "and he loves that. He's having a much better time than he did in the latter days of the plc."
In the meantime, season-ticket prices have been hiked by 26 per cent since May 2005 and next season, season-ticket holders will not have the option to pay for cup games as well as Premiership games, but will be compelled to do so, taking the cost of most season tickets well over £1,000. Clearly, the fans are being asked to pay off the Glazers' unwieldy mortgage, and Ferguson, as many of them see it, is complicit.
On the new players, the chairman of the Manchester United Supporters Trust, Nick Towle, wrote: "The money for these transfers does not come from the Glazers. It comes from the club's own funds. The Glazers have not put a penny of their own money into the team and never will. All funds for the team and even for the Glazers to acquire United has been borrowed by the club itself at vast cost to it (£62m a year paid out in interest, confirmed by the Glazers' own spokesman). So who actually pays for these players? Why, the fans of course. One reason why you have not heard from anti-Glazer fans about these transfers is that we are busy preparing legal challenges against the club for (i) raising ticket prices by 11-14 per cent next season, the third large rise in the two years since the Glazer takeover, and (ii) forcing season-ticket holders to join the 'Automatic Cup Scheme'."
The only good thing to have come out of the Glazer takeover, I have been told time and time again this week, is Bury-based FC United of the Northern Premier League, formed by disillusioned Reds and thriving. I have been invited to a game next season and look forward to it, if I can tear myself away from my perverse bedroom habits.
As for another bedroom habit I have been accused of this week, they say that it makes you blind. Yet I have had my eyes opened, to the determination not only of the Glazers but of all the Americans flooding into Premiership football to make money, not least Messrs Hicks and Gillett at the other end of the East Lancs Road. They are not interested in the trickledown effect, in the grassroots of the game being watered, because they are not interested in the game. I apologise for elevating them on this page last week. I should have known better, and now I do.
Brian Viner: I was as ridiculously wide of the mark last week as a penalty hitting the corner flag
Published: 09 June 2007
Hell hath no fury like Manchester United fans scorned, and as the dispenser of some of that scorn, I have this past week been the object of the fury. There have been long periods when emails have been dropping into my in-tray at the rate of about one a minute, not all of them questioning my parentage and making suggestions about my perverse habits in the bedroom, but not all of them not.
My act of provocation was to write last Saturday, in the "Who I Don't Like" item adjacent to this column, that with another league title won and £50m worth of new players already lined up for next season, the United fans who waged a campaign of hatred against the Glazer family should be feeling a little apologetic. I suppose I had in mind the people who burnt effigies and issued threats of violence.
To those United fans who raised my own club loyalties - "I would have thought that an Everton fan with its great history and tradition of loyal support would have understood exactly why many Man U fans remain bitterly opposed to these carpetbaggers taking over our club," wrote a Mr Paul Roby - I replied that I feel the same contempt for the Evertonians who scrawled "Rooney die" on the walls near Goodison Park. The game has no place for such sentiments, whether aimed at wonderful young footballers or rich American "carpetbaggers".
But I am drifting away from the point, which is unequivocal contrition. I have read every email sent from outraged United fans, or at least the relatively temperate ones, and I have also consulted journalistic colleagues who know more than I do about the situation at Old Trafford. As a consequence, I realise that what I wrote was ill-considered, naive, and as spectacularly wide of the mark as a penalty kick hitting a corner flag.
The Glazers, and chief executive David Gill, and even to a certain extent Sir Alex Ferguson, are plainly entitled to the disgust of United fans; indeed, I have been astounded by how low Ferguson has sunk in the estimation of many. None of them question his brilliance as a manager; lots of them question his character. "Lifelong socialist? He's an absolute hypocrite," wrote one of my correspondents. "I would rather go for a pint with Tommy Doc than 'Sir' Alex any day of the week."
My journalistic source, a man with impeccable contacts at Old Trafford, tells me that the Glazers, terrified of a major boycott by fans after saddling the club with debts of over £650m, knew that they had to keep Fergie on-side. "They are also personally scared of him," my friend said, "and he loves that. He's having a much better time than he did in the latter days of the plc."
In the meantime, season-ticket prices have been hiked by 26 per cent since May 2005 and next season, season-ticket holders will not have the option to pay for cup games as well as Premiership games, but will be compelled to do so, taking the cost of most season tickets well over £1,000. Clearly, the fans are being asked to pay off the Glazers' unwieldy mortgage, and Ferguson, as many of them see it, is complicit.
On the new players, the chairman of the Manchester United Supporters Trust, Nick Towle, wrote: "The money for these transfers does not come from the Glazers. It comes from the club's own funds. The Glazers have not put a penny of their own money into the team and never will. All funds for the team and even for the Glazers to acquire United has been borrowed by the club itself at vast cost to it (£62m a year paid out in interest, confirmed by the Glazers' own spokesman). So who actually pays for these players? Why, the fans of course. One reason why you have not heard from anti-Glazer fans about these transfers is that we are busy preparing legal challenges against the club for (i) raising ticket prices by 11-14 per cent next season, the third large rise in the two years since the Glazer takeover, and (ii) forcing season-ticket holders to join the 'Automatic Cup Scheme'."
The only good thing to have come out of the Glazer takeover, I have been told time and time again this week, is Bury-based FC United of the Northern Premier League, formed by disillusioned Reds and thriving. I have been invited to a game next season and look forward to it, if I can tear myself away from my perverse bedroom habits.
As for another bedroom habit I have been accused of this week, they say that it makes you blind. Yet I have had my eyes opened, to the determination not only of the Glazers but of all the Americans flooding into Premiership football to make money, not least Messrs Hicks and Gillett at the other end of the East Lancs Road. They are not interested in the trickledown effect, in the grassroots of the game being watered, because they are not interested in the game. I apologise for elevating them on this page last week. I should have known better, and now I do.
Article 2
And Jim White in the Telegraph....
'Over the last couple of weeks there has been a growing feeling abroad, as demonstrated in newspaper columns and on various radio phone-ins, that the Glazer administration is proving to be nothing like as bad for Manchester United as the naysayers and doom mongers insisted it would when the first family of Florida took over at Old Trafford three years ago.
Consider the evidence, say the Americans' new found supporters: United have won the League, Sir Alex Ferguson tells us he has never been happier in his job, the team have played the most sparkling football imaginable.
What's more, in the last fortnight, Ferguson has embarked on a transfer spending spree that has left his rivals floundering. Owen Hargreaves, Anderson and Nani have been signed for big, big money. Far from being constricted as he once was by limits imposed by the plc, under the Americans' benevolent ownership, the manager has been able to pay whatever is required to bring the top talent to Old Trafford. And in the case of Cristiano Ronaldo's new contract, to pay them to stay once they have arrived. It is all, so we have been told, thanks to Uncle Malcolm and his smiling, hands-off way of doing things.
Anyone who has recently received an invitation to renew their season ticket to Old Trafford, however, will know precisely how way off the mark this new received opinion is. Far from the Glazers cheerily dipping into their bottomless pockets, the demands now popping through letter boxes reveal precisely who is financing not only the development of the team but also the Glazers' very ownership of the club.
To watch United's home Premiership games during 2007-08, season-ticket holders will have to pay 14 per cent more than they did last time round, with typical prices rising from £665 to £760. In short, the kind of above-inflation rise that not even rail companies would impose on their customers. It is important to remember there is no additional benefit to the fan in this new charge: their seat is not to be padded during the summer break, there will be no increase in leg-room or any addition of central heating.
Moreover, this is not the end of the extra cost. A pernicious additional charge is there in the small print, overlooked by many who automatically renew year on year. For the privilege of buying a season pass, holders are obliged to buy tickets for every home cup game.
Now many of them may wish to. But the point is, from now on they will have to. Even if work or family circumstances prevent them from attending a midweek Carling Cup game, they are required to fork out for it. Thus, in effect, if United have a decent cup run, season tickets will be costing as much as £500 more than they did last term.
Where all this extra money is going to is simple: it is to pay down the Glazers' mountainous debt. That plus financing the purchase of the new players whose presence is absolutely essential to maintaining a saleable product. In other words, far from being proven wrong by what has been happening recently, what the anti-Glazer movement said all along is coming to pass: it is the fans who are buying the club for a set of owners they were never consulted about in the first place. The only choice they have in the issue is to walk away and no longer support their team.
Before followers of rival teams snigger too hard into their beer, this is precisely the threat to Manchester City diehards should the Thais take over, or Arsenal fans if the Americans move in. Don't be fooled by glitzy promises of new investment. The only investment the new style of foreign owner makes is in the initial purchase. For everything else, there's the fans.'
'Over the last couple of weeks there has been a growing feeling abroad, as demonstrated in newspaper columns and on various radio phone-ins, that the Glazer administration is proving to be nothing like as bad for Manchester United as the naysayers and doom mongers insisted it would when the first family of Florida took over at Old Trafford three years ago.
Consider the evidence, say the Americans' new found supporters: United have won the League, Sir Alex Ferguson tells us he has never been happier in his job, the team have played the most sparkling football imaginable.
What's more, in the last fortnight, Ferguson has embarked on a transfer spending spree that has left his rivals floundering. Owen Hargreaves, Anderson and Nani have been signed for big, big money. Far from being constricted as he once was by limits imposed by the plc, under the Americans' benevolent ownership, the manager has been able to pay whatever is required to bring the top talent to Old Trafford. And in the case of Cristiano Ronaldo's new contract, to pay them to stay once they have arrived. It is all, so we have been told, thanks to Uncle Malcolm and his smiling, hands-off way of doing things.
Anyone who has recently received an invitation to renew their season ticket to Old Trafford, however, will know precisely how way off the mark this new received opinion is. Far from the Glazers cheerily dipping into their bottomless pockets, the demands now popping through letter boxes reveal precisely who is financing not only the development of the team but also the Glazers' very ownership of the club.
To watch United's home Premiership games during 2007-08, season-ticket holders will have to pay 14 per cent more than they did last time round, with typical prices rising from £665 to £760. In short, the kind of above-inflation rise that not even rail companies would impose on their customers. It is important to remember there is no additional benefit to the fan in this new charge: their seat is not to be padded during the summer break, there will be no increase in leg-room or any addition of central heating.
Moreover, this is not the end of the extra cost. A pernicious additional charge is there in the small print, overlooked by many who automatically renew year on year. For the privilege of buying a season pass, holders are obliged to buy tickets for every home cup game.
Now many of them may wish to. But the point is, from now on they will have to. Even if work or family circumstances prevent them from attending a midweek Carling Cup game, they are required to fork out for it. Thus, in effect, if United have a decent cup run, season tickets will be costing as much as £500 more than they did last term.
Where all this extra money is going to is simple: it is to pay down the Glazers' mountainous debt. That plus financing the purchase of the new players whose presence is absolutely essential to maintaining a saleable product. In other words, far from being proven wrong by what has been happening recently, what the anti-Glazer movement said all along is coming to pass: it is the fans who are buying the club for a set of owners they were never consulted about in the first place. The only choice they have in the issue is to walk away and no longer support their team.
Before followers of rival teams snigger too hard into their beer, this is precisely the threat to Manchester City diehards should the Thais take over, or Arsenal fans if the Americans move in. Don't be fooled by glitzy promises of new investment. The only investment the new style of foreign owner makes is in the initial purchase. For everything else, there's the fans.'
Article 1
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/manchester_united/s/1008/1008808_glazer_protesters_were_right.html
Glazer protesters 'were right'
Stuart Brennan - Comment
11/ 6/2007
I'LL bet those United fans who protested about the Glazer takeover feel really stupid now.
How many times have you heard that said over the past fortnight?
Actually, those United fans who protested long and hard about the occupation of their club feel more justified than ever that they were right to stand up to what amounts to an insidious threat not just to Manchester United, but to English football, and even European football, in particular.
The fact that United have just won the Premiership in thrilling style, have splashed out on three players who could boost them from top English team to a European super-power once more, and continue to play in front of packed houses, is irrelevant.
The argument was never about that.
If you truly think that the Glazer takeover was a good thing, try asking the people who can no longer afford to go and watch their beloved team, on top of 12 per cent price increases in 2006, 14 per cent price increases in 2007, and the introduction of the compulsory automatic cup ticket scheme.
And then consider where this is leading. Talk to people in the Glazer camp and one thing becomes crystal clear - the economic cleansing of Old Trafford is not yet over.
There will be more price increases, more ways of screwing every last penny out of the support, until there is a threat of empty seats. Then the Glazer family will either ease off or cut and run.
United's response is that ticket prices still represent good value for money, and that there is a 14,000-strong waiting list for season tickets.
That last point is a sickening reminder of where United fans now stand. If you don't like it, clear off because we will find someone else to take your place.
United are no longer interested in their traditional fan base. Your average Joe from Stretford turns up at five to three, cheers on the team and then goes home for his tea and a couple of pints in his local boozer. All you get out of that particular economic unit is the price of his ticket.
But if you can get rid of him, and replace him with an economic unit called Henry from Surrey, the club also gets money from his Megastore shopping spree, dining at Red Cafe, museum visit, hotel stay and so on.
Shackles
It makes perfect business sense in the short term, get rid of the old fans, bring in McFans.
And if, or when, the football boom starts to grind to a halt as the yuppies find a new craze, it is the traditional support to whom United will turn, to find that they have discovered the joys of FC United, bird- watching, or DIY on a Saturday afternoon.
When the battle raged over the rights and wrongs of the takeover two years ago, the pro-Glazer lobby said that the family would bring a wealth of business nous, a pedigree of sporting success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and would free the club from the shackles of reporting its every move to the Stock Exchange.
Those people are now smugly pronouncing themselves right, but that was never the issue.
The title success this season was achieved despite the Glazers, not because of them. It was entirely down to the genius of Sir Alex Ferguson and the enduring quality of the likes of Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs.
And the money that has been splashed on Nani, Anderson and Owen Hargreaves is not the Glazers' money. They have not put a penny into Manchester United - the money the club has been spending has been from its support, is a result of last year's windfalls from the sales of Ruud van Nistelrooy and Jon Obi Mikel, and from the unexpected bonanza from the sale of overseas TV rights.
What the Glazers have done is take £44m OUT of the club, to pay some of the interest on the debts they incurred to buy United. That money could have been used to peg back prices.
It is curious that at a time which should have been one of great exhilaration for United fans, and then bringing in interesting new players, the internet was full of cries of anguish.
I wrote an article two years ago which claimed that the Glazer era might just coincide with a new era of trophy success, but that many of the club's traditional support would be left with their noses pressed against the window, watching the party going on in what used to be their house.
This is not a `told-you-so' but a warning - the situation will continue to get worse.
Glazer protesters 'were right'
Stuart Brennan - Comment
11/ 6/2007
I'LL bet those United fans who protested about the Glazer takeover feel really stupid now.
How many times have you heard that said over the past fortnight?
Actually, those United fans who protested long and hard about the occupation of their club feel more justified than ever that they were right to stand up to what amounts to an insidious threat not just to Manchester United, but to English football, and even European football, in particular.
The fact that United have just won the Premiership in thrilling style, have splashed out on three players who could boost them from top English team to a European super-power once more, and continue to play in front of packed houses, is irrelevant.
The argument was never about that.
If you truly think that the Glazer takeover was a good thing, try asking the people who can no longer afford to go and watch their beloved team, on top of 12 per cent price increases in 2006, 14 per cent price increases in 2007, and the introduction of the compulsory automatic cup ticket scheme.
And then consider where this is leading. Talk to people in the Glazer camp and one thing becomes crystal clear - the economic cleansing of Old Trafford is not yet over.
There will be more price increases, more ways of screwing every last penny out of the support, until there is a threat of empty seats. Then the Glazer family will either ease off or cut and run.
United's response is that ticket prices still represent good value for money, and that there is a 14,000-strong waiting list for season tickets.
That last point is a sickening reminder of where United fans now stand. If you don't like it, clear off because we will find someone else to take your place.
United are no longer interested in their traditional fan base. Your average Joe from Stretford turns up at five to three, cheers on the team and then goes home for his tea and a couple of pints in his local boozer. All you get out of that particular economic unit is the price of his ticket.
But if you can get rid of him, and replace him with an economic unit called Henry from Surrey, the club also gets money from his Megastore shopping spree, dining at Red Cafe, museum visit, hotel stay and so on.
Shackles
It makes perfect business sense in the short term, get rid of the old fans, bring in McFans.
And if, or when, the football boom starts to grind to a halt as the yuppies find a new craze, it is the traditional support to whom United will turn, to find that they have discovered the joys of FC United, bird- watching, or DIY on a Saturday afternoon.
When the battle raged over the rights and wrongs of the takeover two years ago, the pro-Glazer lobby said that the family would bring a wealth of business nous, a pedigree of sporting success with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and would free the club from the shackles of reporting its every move to the Stock Exchange.
Those people are now smugly pronouncing themselves right, but that was never the issue.
The title success this season was achieved despite the Glazers, not because of them. It was entirely down to the genius of Sir Alex Ferguson and the enduring quality of the likes of Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs.
And the money that has been splashed on Nani, Anderson and Owen Hargreaves is not the Glazers' money. They have not put a penny into Manchester United - the money the club has been spending has been from its support, is a result of last year's windfalls from the sales of Ruud van Nistelrooy and Jon Obi Mikel, and from the unexpected bonanza from the sale of overseas TV rights.
What the Glazers have done is take £44m OUT of the club, to pay some of the interest on the debts they incurred to buy United. That money could have been used to peg back prices.
It is curious that at a time which should have been one of great exhilaration for United fans, and then bringing in interesting new players, the internet was full of cries of anguish.
I wrote an article two years ago which claimed that the Glazer era might just coincide with a new era of trophy success, but that many of the club's traditional support would be left with their noses pressed against the window, watching the party going on in what used to be their house.
This is not a `told-you-so' but a warning - the situation will continue to get worse.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Everton vs United - Rooney Goal - 2-3
It's only in football that you get grown men behaving like idiots =) I miss going to matches!! =(
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
It's never just about you...
Those of you have caught the news about 2 days ago would probably have noticed the news about a traffic accident along Changi Coastal Road. If not, can read some of the news here...
Changi Coastal Rd accident
Pictures(warning, could be disturbing)
The extent of the damage is truly disturbing, and the driver probably died instantly =S Being rather bad tempered and a bit of a speed lover myself, I always need to be constantly reminded of such stuff to be a more responsible road user. I can only imagine the fear that the driver felt when he saw the lorry heading towards him at high speed (whether it was the speed of his own car or the lorry doesn't really matter...)
Rumours has it that the driver was racing with another car and in order to overtake he went onto the oncoming lane and it was there that he collided headon with the lorry. To be honest it doesn't really matter now, if he did race, he paid with his life, if he did not, some couple had just lost a son, some girl lost a bf etc etc.
As much as it is to remind myself, let this be a lesson to all too.
SPEEDING, IT'S NEVER JUST ABOUT YOU...
Changi Coastal Rd accident
Pictures(warning, could be disturbing)
The extent of the damage is truly disturbing, and the driver probably died instantly =S Being rather bad tempered and a bit of a speed lover myself, I always need to be constantly reminded of such stuff to be a more responsible road user. I can only imagine the fear that the driver felt when he saw the lorry heading towards him at high speed (whether it was the speed of his own car or the lorry doesn't really matter...)
Rumours has it that the driver was racing with another car and in order to overtake he went onto the oncoming lane and it was there that he collided headon with the lorry. To be honest it doesn't really matter now, if he did race, he paid with his life, if he did not, some couple had just lost a son, some girl lost a bf etc etc.
As much as it is to remind myself, let this be a lesson to all too.
SPEEDING, IT'S NEVER JUST ABOUT YOU...
Which is your mindset?
Read this from some other blog, thought it was pretty interesting.... just to share....
-------------------------------------------------------------
A Chinese walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer.He tells the loan officer that he is going to Taiwan on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Chinese hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checked out.The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.
The bank's president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Chinese for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.Two weeks later, the Chinese returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest,which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says,"Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are alittle puzzled. While you were away,we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is,why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"
The Chinese replies: "Where else in NewYork City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?"However, its more than funny. Its thinking out of the box and being creative. That's why the client is a millionaire and the bank officers are just employees.This applies to our daily lives as well.
Is yours the millionaire's or the bank employee's mind set ?
-------------------------------------------------------------
A Chinese walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer.He tells the loan officer that he is going to Taiwan on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Chinese hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checked out.The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.
The bank's president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Chinese for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.Two weeks later, the Chinese returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest,which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says,"Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are alittle puzzled. While you were away,we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is,why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"
The Chinese replies: "Where else in NewYork City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?"However, its more than funny. Its thinking out of the box and being creative. That's why the client is a millionaire and the bank officers are just employees.This applies to our daily lives as well.
Is yours the millionaire's or the bank employee's mind set ?
For the greater good of Man United, pls let the Glazers die...
Dear oh dear, you all have been warned, but yet most of you chose to do nothing... and you shall pay the price...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Soccernet
United fans anger after hefty ticket price rise
Manchester United supporters are facing ticket price rises of up to 14% next season.
The Old Trafford outfit have released details of pricings for the 2007-08 campaign, which could yet see them defending the treble.
While a range of measures have been introduced to effectively cut the cost of concessionary tickets, meaning an adult with two children will pay less next season than they did this, full price tickets have risen sharply.
The biggest increases are in the lower tiers of the North and South Stands, which will rise from £665 to £722, while the most expensive seats in the stadium are the upper tier of both stands, which rise over 12% to £836.
In addition, all season ticket holders not currently a member of the club's automatic cup scheme, which forces fans to buy tickets for cup games whether they intend to watch the game or not, will be required to join.
Junior tickets in the Family Stand will be frozen at £190, while all junior tickets in other sections of the stadium will be £10, a 48.7% reduction.
Over 65s will pay £20 or half the cost of an adult ticket in the appropriate section of the stadium, whichever is the lower.
Despite those initiatives, United are sure to be condemned by fans' groups, who warned of hefty increases in ticket prices once Malcolm Glazer completed his controversial takeover two years ago.
However, United officials can argue their move - which bucks the trend of other north-west clubs such as Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan who have cut the price of tickets - is justified given Old Trafford continues to sell out for virtually every home game.
The lowest crowd for any Red Devils' first-team game this season is 61,325 for the recent FA Cup sixth round replay with Middlesbrough, while all 18 Premiership home games have had attendances topping 75,000.
Chairman of the Independent Manchester United Supporters' Association (IMUSA), Mark Longden, blasted the price hike, insisting there is 'absolutely no justification' for it.
He told PA Sport: 'Clearly, it flies in the face of the thinking all over the country, from Bolton to the Emirates (Arsenal's stadium).
'They have all frozen prices and in some cases reduced them.'
In particular, Longden believes it is hard to justify any price rises given the mammoth new television rights deals sealed by the Premier League in recent months.
'It's just slightly strange with the new money that is coming in from the TV deal - the club is getting £30 extra per seat across the board for the next three years,' he added.
'For every person that goes through the turnstile they could give them £30 back and not be any worse off, so surely there must be some scope for reducing prices or at least freezing them.
'There is absolutely no justification for putting prices up.'
The linking of season tickets to the automatic cup scheme will also prove highly unpopular with fans, Longden claimed.
'If they are tying tickets to going in the automatic cup scheme, that is going to be a step too far for a lot of people at Old Trafford.
'Every time there is a price rise people don't renew but they seem to be able to find new people to fill those seats - but whether that happens this time remains to be seen.'
The reduced prices for concessions were to be welcomed, Longden added, although he dismissed the cuts as 'just a bit of window dressing' in an attempt to appease angry supporters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Soccernet
United fans anger after hefty ticket price rise
Manchester United supporters are facing ticket price rises of up to 14% next season.
The Old Trafford outfit have released details of pricings for the 2007-08 campaign, which could yet see them defending the treble.
While a range of measures have been introduced to effectively cut the cost of concessionary tickets, meaning an adult with two children will pay less next season than they did this, full price tickets have risen sharply.
The biggest increases are in the lower tiers of the North and South Stands, which will rise from £665 to £722, while the most expensive seats in the stadium are the upper tier of both stands, which rise over 12% to £836.
In addition, all season ticket holders not currently a member of the club's automatic cup scheme, which forces fans to buy tickets for cup games whether they intend to watch the game or not, will be required to join.
Junior tickets in the Family Stand will be frozen at £190, while all junior tickets in other sections of the stadium will be £10, a 48.7% reduction.
Over 65s will pay £20 or half the cost of an adult ticket in the appropriate section of the stadium, whichever is the lower.
Despite those initiatives, United are sure to be condemned by fans' groups, who warned of hefty increases in ticket prices once Malcolm Glazer completed his controversial takeover two years ago.
However, United officials can argue their move - which bucks the trend of other north-west clubs such as Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan who have cut the price of tickets - is justified given Old Trafford continues to sell out for virtually every home game.
The lowest crowd for any Red Devils' first-team game this season is 61,325 for the recent FA Cup sixth round replay with Middlesbrough, while all 18 Premiership home games have had attendances topping 75,000.
Chairman of the Independent Manchester United Supporters' Association (IMUSA), Mark Longden, blasted the price hike, insisting there is 'absolutely no justification' for it.
He told PA Sport: 'Clearly, it flies in the face of the thinking all over the country, from Bolton to the Emirates (Arsenal's stadium).
'They have all frozen prices and in some cases reduced them.'
In particular, Longden believes it is hard to justify any price rises given the mammoth new television rights deals sealed by the Premier League in recent months.
'It's just slightly strange with the new money that is coming in from the TV deal - the club is getting £30 extra per seat across the board for the next three years,' he added.
'For every person that goes through the turnstile they could give them £30 back and not be any worse off, so surely there must be some scope for reducing prices or at least freezing them.
'There is absolutely no justification for putting prices up.'
The linking of season tickets to the automatic cup scheme will also prove highly unpopular with fans, Longden claimed.
'If they are tying tickets to going in the automatic cup scheme, that is going to be a step too far for a lot of people at Old Trafford.
'Every time there is a price rise people don't renew but they seem to be able to find new people to fill those seats - but whether that happens this time remains to be seen.'
The reduced prices for concessions were to be welcomed, Longden added, although he dismissed the cuts as 'just a bit of window dressing' in an attempt to appease angry supporters.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Cyril - Magic Revolution = LACOSTE
All right besides the tricks pls notice the cute Japanese girl in white =)
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)