Qantas grounds its flights

SYDNEY - Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is no stranger to clashing with unions. But his extraordinary move to ground the airline's global fleet over labor unrest is his biggest gamble yet and has angered unions, passengers and the Australian government.

The increasingly bitter dispute, which has dragged on since September, covers the sensitive issue of jobs in Australia being outsourced to Asia and even the very survival of the iconic 90-year-old national carrier nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo."

http://www.cnbc.com//id/45093268

MY VIEWS:

When the workers go on strike, they disrupt the operations and cause inconvenience to the public. In this interesting case, it is the management of Qantas that took the unusual decision to "go on strike" and ground its operations.

I respect the actions taken by the Australian unions in fighting for the rights and job security of their members. Many businesses find ways to increase their profits at the expense of their workers, and the profits can be absurdly large. I do not know if, in the case of Qantas, the airline has to reduce cost to survive, or just to increase its profits.

FISCA Financial Planning Workshop on 29 October

The workshop on 29 October was well attended with over 30 people, mostly young people. The participants told me that the talk made them more aware about the good and bad financial products and was very useful to them. I asked them go get their friends and parents to attend the next talk, which will be held monthly. It is important that they make the right financial decision and avoid giving away a lot of money on bad products.

Several participants said that they came especially to hear my talk! They must have got the recommendations from their friends!

More details of future workshops can be found at http://easyapps.sg/assn/Org/Event.aspx?id=5. Register early!

Speculators are increasing the prices of hard disks

Quote: "Speculators are gouging the market significantly and in some cases making enormous profits out of the people of Thailand's misery," Buckley told Reuters. He declined to say which distributors.

http://www.cnbc.com//id/45082719

My comments: It is bad to allow speculators to make profit by taking advantage of the misery of other people. This applies not only to hard disk prices, but to oil, food and most other essential products. The speculation should be stopped. The world system, under the control of financial speculators and the greedy banks and based on the "free market", has to be changed - to make a fairer world for the ordinary people.

Security at the airport

The security procedures at Changi airport is excessive and is causing a lot of inconvenience. Here is my experience.

1. On arrival at the airport terminal, I have to screen my bags. Why is this necessary when the bags are also screened at the check-in counter and at the boarding room?  I suspect that this is to prevent a bomb going off before check-in. Is this so important?

2. Before entering the departure hall, I have to show my ticket and passport to the policeman.

3. After going through the automated gates and have my finger printed, there are still people to look at my passport. I recall that this procedure was implemented when someone passed the immigration desk though with a wrong passport. Do we need to over-react to this mistake by introducing another set of check?

4. Before entering the boarding room, I have to go through a detailed screening. The laptop and mobile phones and other metallic objects have to be removed  In spite of removing so many items, it is likely that the metal detector will beep and subject me to a physical check.

5. I still have to show my passport to the staff who scan my ticket.

Altogether, I have to show my passport three times and have my bags scanned twice. I suspect that more requirements will be introduced to combat other security concerns. The question is - are these measures overdone?

In the name of security

In the name of security, we do many unnecessary things and cause a lot of hassle to the ordinary people. This makes life stressful.

Look at the excessive security in the airport. I do not mind the necessary security, but the excessive security does not make sense. I shall talk about some of these excessive measures.

Look at the need to register your particulars before you enter a building. It is a regular affair. Why do they need to spend the time to record people entering into a building? How many records are being kept? Are they of any use? In fact, I am worried that the records could be abused - as it is intrusion on privacy. Is privacy and the rights of the individuals important in Singapore also?

With all the excessive security in some places, why is SMRT not paying sufficient attention to prevent outsiders from entering into their depots? Surely, this is more important than checking all the visitors to a building?

We need to speak up on measures that intrude into our lives, and do not serve a useful purpose.

Investor's guide to investing in gold

http://tankinlian.com/admin/file.aspx?id=587

A friend sent me this guide to investing in gold. Reading through this document, one can see that there are many ways of investing in various types of gold products, but the investor should be careful about selecting the trusted parties, as there is a real risk that some of these products are fraudulent. I know of a product which offers a buyback guarantee, but the investor did not know that he is paying for the gold at 50% higher than its real market value!

A safe way is to invest in gold bullion, but it is a big hassle to store the gold. It may be safer to invest in the Gold ETF (e.g. the ETF managed by SPDR) or to invest in gold futures through a regulated exchange.

Desalination

TIANJIN, China — Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.


There is but one wrinkle in the $4 billion plant: The desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for. Nevertheless, the owner of the complex, a government-run conglomerate called S.D.I.C., is moving to quadruple the plant’s desalinating capacity, making it China’s largest.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/45042111/