A new hybrid variant of the coronavirus was detected in Vietnam. Nguyen Thanh Long, the health minister, said it had characteristics of both the Indian and British variants and was particularly transmissible through the air. The new variant has been linked to the recent surge in infections in Vietnam
Economist
More about the Viet Kong variant: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57296803
Despite being snubbed at last GE (only 60% leh), and S’poreans giving PM the finger, the PAP govt is still working hard, serving S’poreans.
Where the millionaire ministers are failing is not telling us the end game? Are they aiming for 100% vaccination before opening the floodgates to Indian FTs to infect us? Or is it 60% before allowing them in?
Using technology developed at Oxford University ,Ivy Farm Technologies saya it can produce pork cultivated in tanks.
This “guilt-free” meat could be available as soon as next year in the UK.
The process involves cutting small amounts of fat and muscle from an anaesthetised pig before supplying the samples with nutrients, minerals and vitamins.
Ivy Farm Technologies hopes to be able to produce enough pork by 2025 to save 170,000 pigs a year from being slaughtered.
Seems that it’s now illegal to work in the office if the work can be done from home
I was recently told the story of MoM inspectors raiding an office and fining the employer S$2000 because the employer and two employees were found working in the office. Did Syazana Yahya lodge a police report? She believes that one police report against her gang, deserves another in retaliation: bit like Hamas retaliating for Israeli attack, after first attacking Israel.
The employer told the Gestapo inspectors that as the office could accommodate 10 people pre Covid-19 and so under Phase 2, less than five people could work in the office, why was he being fined? There were only three people in the office.
He was told that under Phase 2 (Heightened), it was illegal to work in the office, if the work could be done from home. He (like me) thought that working from home was the recommended option, not mandatory.
Here’s one very upset S’porean that the Indian variant came in because of lax procedures at Changi Int’l Airport, and because of lax immigration rules. He won’t be voting for the PAP govt at the next GE.
Btw, on the correct terminology that should be used by the PAP govt, I think Phase 2 (Heightened) is the real Circuit Breaker. Last yr’s Circuit Breaker was actually Lockdown Lite.
But then when it comes to the use of words, the PAP govt is so Orwellian.
Look at the above and one wonders why Muslims criticise the US so much. Four of top five aid recipients are Muslim countries.
Only US$50bn needed to reopen world by mid 2022
The covid-19 pandemic could be ended by mid-2022, if donor countries were willing to cough up a combined $50bn, according to the International Monetary Fund. The sum is the estimated cost of vaccinating 60% of the world’s population. It pales in comparison with the $16trn that governments have already spent supporting people and businesses during the pandemic.
Economist
UK government figures suggest a single shot is less effective against the fast-spreading Covid-19 Indian variant, in the UK.
Two vaccine doses needed for strong protection against variant found in India, UK data show.
But if you got two shots of the Pfizer or AZ (not approved here) nothing to worry about says the UK govt.
Note Moderna vaccine was approved in UK only in April. so no data available yet.
Kung Flu started in Wuhan, China, But Modi seems to want India to remembered as a Kung Flu enabler. Anything China can do, India will imitate. SAD.
The crypto exchange Coinbase was showing a bitcoin price just above US$34,000 late in the US afternoon on Friday, a 12% fall.
Earlier in the week, it reached a low of around US$30,000 set on Wednesday.
Scientists at the Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University and US research facility City of Hope said a new antiviral drug they are working on had almost wiped out coronavirus in mice and could be suitable for humans. It’s 99.9% effective in mice.
Even if the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental energy forecaster, thinks it can.
World is still spending too little on renewable energy capacity.
The IEA predicts that 630 gigawatts of solar power and 390GW of wind power would have to be added to the world’s supply each year until 2030. By comparison, just 280GW of renewable energy capacity of all types was added in 2020. Such a dramatic energy transition would require $5trn of investment annually, versus just over $2trn today.
Economist
IEA says that among other things, there must be an an immediate halt to all new oil and gas exploration projects. But at the same time it says that “continued investment in existing sources of oil production are needed”.
Buy Chevron and Exxon?
The PAP govt and the constructive, nation-building but independent media tell us that govt policies are reducing FT numbers especially in the PMET segment. But doesn’t seem to show does it? 2020 is different because of the travel restrictions and the collapsing economy.
No wonder the local PMETs are not happy and the 2020 GE showed this.
Worse
Singapore’s heavy dependency on large number of migrant workers has led to us being unable to close our borders despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
For example, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng told Parliament that there was a net outflow of 5,600 work permit and S Pass holders from the construction, process and service sectors each month from March 2020 to April 2021.
Entry approvals were granted to an average of 5,100 workers per month from last November to address the shortfall – but even this could not be sustained due to the dramatically worsening Covid-19 situation in the workers’ home countries.
Comment :These facts validly illustrate the risks which our immigration policies have created for Singapore!
Lam Keong Yeoh on FB. He was GIC’s chief economist before he retired.
This writer has a low opinion of Lim Tean
Look at Lim Tean’s record. Still no jobs rally after collecting money in 2017 for rally, and no picture, no sound after collecting money to sue CPF yrs ago: Finally Lim Tean called to account on a “broken promise”. To be fair, he did deliver on defamation video two years late. But it was BS.
Can he be trusted to do anything but grab the money?
Is there really a better alternative to PAP 4G?
But I 100% agree with him for once.
The above is in his letter to PM’s lawyer. The bolded bit is spot on.
“Dear Sirs
Please found our client’s DBS cashiers order for the amount of $262,327.22 being full and final payment of the damages together with legal costs and disbursements awarded to your client.
Your client will be aware that every cent of this amount was donated to our client by the people of Singapore in an epic demonstration of their condemnation and anger at your clients use of the libel laws to silence and chill dissent.
It was conduct unbefitting of a Prime Minister.
The courageous citizens of Singapore were determined not to allow your client the satisfaction of suing critics until their pants drop.
Your client may have won in a court of law, but this cashiers order is proof that he has lost decisively in the court of public opinion.“
China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine was 67% effective in preventing symptomatic infection, data from a huge real-world study in Chile has shown. The vaccine was 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 80% effective in preventing deaths. An earlier trial carried out by Brazil’s government showed that the shot had an efficacy rate of just 50.7%. So China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine is effective against Kung Flu aka “Wuhan virus” “aka China virus”.
The u/m appeared in the Economist’s letters-to-the-editor:
Tearing down barriers to occupations through meritocratic access to education and retraining will not create more opportunities for low-skilled workers hoping to “climb the ladder” to high-skilled jobs (“Riding high”, April 10th). This assumes talent and ability are evenly distributed and that some people will work harder to jump on a waiting empty elevator, pushing the button to reach a higher socioeconomic position.
Mobility is upward and downward. The higher floors have a finite space. The elevators are also full of people on the way down. Anne Case and Angus Deaton call this the dark side of democracy in “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”. Those left behind are devalued and disrespected as “losers”. The meritocratic elite contribute to the culture of overwork, their success making everybody else feel that they have failed.
Christopher Voisey
Singapore
SPH Media chairman designate Khaw Boon Wan tells us that independent newsrooms are the key to success of SPH Media and that undermining independence of the newsroom will impact the success of SPH Media Trust.
As the nation-building, constructive ST said
An independent newsroom is one of the crucial factors that will determine the success of the new SPH Media Trust, said the company’s chairman-designate Khaw Boon Wan yesterday.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/independent-newsrooms-are-key-to-success-of-sph-media-khaw
“If you undermine that, you undermine what we are trying to achieve,” he added. “That is my position. It is, to me, crystal clear.” ‘
It may be crystal clear to him but didn’t LKY, the 9th Immortal,
decree in 1971 that the news room must be subordinate to the government not independent of it?
LKY said:
“What role would men and governments in new countries like the mass media to play?… The mass media can help to present Singapore’s problems simply and clearly and then explain how if they support certain programmes and policies these problems can be solved.
…
More important, we want the mass media to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities.
https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19710609a.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1duUEgiczd8OXwzNAtuiSAgIRQp3sEFaKdFShJsqySoiRwxifhf-0HrWY
How does LKY’s words chime with Khaw’s vision of an independent news room.
Either he’s BSing us about an independent media, or he’s saying LKY was talking cock.
Or is there a middle ground where the news room can be independent but be constructive and nation-building? Maybe, but pigs will fly first.
The US’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 could stop wearing masks and socially distancing in most indoor and outdoor settings (excluding health-care clinics and public transport).
No I didn’t think up the above title or topic. An intelligent TRE contributor did. Below is his piece which I commend for yr reading. It’s good.
The recent show of arrogance, talking down and condescending by the paper general who sank two ship is nothing new. If you look carefully at Cotton Chan and Paper General Gan, they talk in similar body language and tone. The typical top down, please do not question, your duty is to take order; the typical army SOP. Remember Cotton Chan was secretly recorded at some business meeting belittling the sheep with his army style talk?
If you look at the exchanges in parliament, most of them are armed with absolute arrogance and condescending style. Remembering how Slyvia Lim was cornered by a pack of wolves for her “test balloon”, those wolves also displayed the “Umbrage” quality.
Pappy loves to groom these “umbrage” quality and put them in key positions. Despite sinking one ship, he is again made captain of another. If you look at the overall, many things are sinking and quality deteriorating, all those lapses and poor quality in new BTOs. This explains the overall deterioration of PAPPY standard since they embraced such quality. Mind you, we complain but 61% is happy with such. Even the recent survey, the young people felt confident with this govt. Honestly, I don’t know what to say. It is a strange phenomenon to why people would embrace such BS quality.
Singapore’s growth cannot be just restricted to massive foreign immigration, all kind of price hikes and changes to CPF policies. This country needs new blood and people with humility to steer this ship in a new direction, the old umbrage ship has shown its decline and the crews’ heads now bigger than the ship.
We have to vote in new crew to either replace these umbrage quality or to have competition so that their heads are not swelling this big. If I were you, I will go and convince 10 more people to VTO “Umbrage Team” out in 2024.
VTO 2024
Here Time to buy M’sia? I reported that palm oil prices are rocketing, so is that of corn
Copper must rally 50% for supply to meet demand, Glencore’s chief says. Note Glencore is a major copper producer.
But to be fair to him, the transition to cleaner energy has ignited a powerful rally in the price copper.
And there are concerns about the long-term supply of copper due to lack of investment by large miners. This has has also pushed up prices.
(Writer’s afterword on 12 May 2021 a7 4.30am: This piece underestimates the loss of value to shareholders. Will rewrite soon. Sorry for the ST standard of analysis. LOL)
SPH explained that its operating revenue has halved in the past five years due largely to a decline in print advertising and print subscription revenue caused by an ‘unprecedented disruption in recent years’.
Over the past five years, SPH increased spending in technology, product development and data analytics talent by 48%, to more than S$20m. It has also invested S$35m into digital content and audience development talent in the newsrooms.
So it has spent at leastS$55m on these projects: S$11m a year.
SPH also spent on new consumer-facing digital platforms and products, averaging more than S$20 million a year over the past five years: more than S$100m over 5 years.
It has thus spent over the last 5 years more S$155m or an average of at least S$31m a year.
SPH’s average monthly unique audience across all SPH titles over the past two years has nearly doubled to a record 28 million, with digital circulation surpassing print circulation.
However, digital subscription and digital advertising have been unable to offset the decline in print advertising and print circulation revenues. As a result, SPH expects the losses of the media business to continue and widen.
SPH’s media business … recorded its first-ever loss of $11.4 million for the financial year ended 31 August 2020. If not for the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS), the loss would have been a deeper $39.5 million. For the six months
https://investor.sph.com.sg/newsroom/20210506_102600_T39_AYO9VPTD5YJANBTE.2.pdf
ended 28 February 2021, pre-tax profit before tax fell 71% to $3.1 million compared to the same period last year. Again, if not for the JSS grant, the media business would have incurred a pre-tax loss of $9.7 million.
S$155m is not all. SPH plans to give away another S$120m to get rid of SPH Media
SPH will provide the initial resources and funding by capitalising SPH Media with a cash injection of $80 million, $30 million worth of SPH shares and SPH REIT units, as well as SPH’s stakes in four of its digital media investments.
That means its NTA falls from S$1.98 to S$1.82: 16 cents (8%).
Btw, SPH’s Chairman, CEO and other board members, and chief editor earn more than a successful global news magazine (Economist prefers to call itself a newspaper) pays similar posts: https://sudhirtv.com/2021/05/06/the-elites-have-run-the-straits-times-into-the-ground-whats-next/?fbclid=IwAR3yZmEtEjswt_68Jjlt9PCSHR_47s1-hkotvine51Qk2EfJyzyuqKJfVq4
Sounds the saying “Pay peanuts, get monkeys” is wrong: Pay gold, get monkeys?
Related post: All those years when SPH was minting $, we had quality journalism meh?
I tot the above when I saw this
SPH media restructuring: The challenge of funding and sustaining quality journalism
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/sph-media-restructuring-the-challenge-of-funding-and-sustaining-quality-journalism?utm_campaign=stfb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2LDSOLMANoJny42fwa7LC7KPJmb3YqUAzKxXk8hzfsptHYfF-zUX34w-s
In a survey of 10,500 people, led by Géraldine Fauville at the University of Gothenburg, around 14% of women reported feeling very to extremely fatigued, compared with less than 6% of men. This is partly explained by the way that women, who take on a lot of other tasks like childcare, organise their workday. Women reported having roughly the same number of meetings per day as men but their meetings tended to be longer with shorter breaks between.
More at economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/04/17/a-new-study-suggests-that-zoom-fatigue-is-worse-for-women-than-men
When I was in stockbroking, soaring palm oil prices meant that consumer, construction and property stocks would fly because the palm oil farmers, palm oil plantations and the govt would have plenty of $ to spend.
But are the PM and the 4G leaders intelligent enough to understand that S’poreans are sending them a message?
Money talks, bullshit walks in S’pore, so the PAP should be worried that people are donating $ to those the PM successfully sued.
No fan of Roy Nrerng. But he’s spot on when he recently said after raising the money to pay off PM’s defamation suit:
You have used each and every cent and dollar to directly send a message to Hsien Loong that you disagree with his behavior. This is what he will see when he sees the S$143,000 in his bank account! It is not just the damages he asked for. It is a statement that each of you are sending, and I am glad to have helped you carry it to him.
Likewise the fact that Leong Sze Hian crowdfunded the S$133,000 that he was ordered to pay the PM for the defamation suit brought against him by PM Lee shows that many S’poreans don’t like PM’s sue and sue everyone except his White Horse siblings.
And Uncle Leong has raised another S$56,298 to pay PM’s costs of $130,000.
The PAP are being sent a message, but are the PM and the 4G leaders intelligent enough to understand this?
Exports to US declined, like that from Switzerland. Other East Asian countries and Asean countries increased their exports. Even the Shithouse that is India increased exports.
Young S’poreans are optimistic about their future prospects.
Interesting table. Compared to young people in other developed countries, younger S’poreans are pretty optimistic about their future.
What this means is that young S’poreams unlike their counterparts in the the West believe that the governing party can deliver the good life.
The next GE has to be held by sometime in 2026.
I was arguimg that GST will not up until after the next GE because increasing it in 2024 or 2025 will be good politics and any earlier could tank any recovery: Double confirm, no GST rise until after next GE . Related post: Why there’ll be no GST rise until after next GE
But this by PM has me thinking that it could go up next yr or in 2023
Singapore’s economy could recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2021: PM Lee
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/global-recession-less-protracted-initially-feared-singapores-economy-could-recover-pre
He said that the outlook has brightened considerably with
economic growth this year is likely to exceed 6%, if there’s no setback to the global economy.
So you heard it first here, GST can go up next yr.
Recently I read that more than a quarter of British households could not find £850 ($1,568) in an emergency, the UK stats authority reported.
Any idea about the stats for S’pore anyone?
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 