Blowin' In The Wind

UK top 25 karaoke hits

It's official. Waterloo, the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winner by Abba, the Swedish pop group, tops the list of 25 most popular karaoke songs in Britain.

The list was compiled by PRS for Music, formerly the Performing Right Society, a licensing organization which monitors music use to collect royalties for songwriters.

Another Abba hit, Dancing Queen, is the fifth most popular karaoke song, reports the Telegraph.

The only other artists with two entries in the top 25 is the band Queen, with Bohemian Rhapsody, at number two, and Don’t Stop Me Now, at number 16.

Here are my own favourites from the top 25, followed by the full list.

The Beatles, of course, my all-time-favourites, singing Hey Jude surrounded by fans on the David Frost Show in 1968. The music begins after the first minute.

Next up: The Rolling Stones, Don MacLean, the Monkees, Neil Diamond, and --- yes --- Abba at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest!

The Twelve Days Of Christmas by Carol Ann Duffy

 
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has written a new Twelve Days Of Christmas for Radio Times. It's all about current affairs, touching on Afghanistan, the drought in sub-Saharan Africa, the financial crisis, the election of Barack Obama, the British MPs' expenses scandal, and the Copenhagen climate summit. This is how the poem goes:

1
ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS,
a buzzard on a branch.
In Afghanistan,
no partridge, pear tree;
but my true love sent to me
a card from home.
I sat alone,
crouched in yellow dust,
and traced the grins of my kids
with my thumb.
Somewhere down the line,
for another father, husband,
brother, son, a bullet
with his name on.

NTU professor named among top global thinkers

Indian political scientist C Raja Mohan at the S Rajaratnam School of Political Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has been named one of this year's Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. He is also a columnist for the Indian Express newspaper.

Singapore will host another top global thinker when former United Nations general secretary Kofi Annan joins the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore next year.

Also on the list is the Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

60 per cent of Singapore households earn less than national average

Sixty per cent of the households earn less than the average household income in Singapore while the top 20 per cent can save twice as much as they spend.

That's clear from the government statistics department's latest household expenditure survey covering 2007-2008. This chart from the survey shows the average monthly household income of all the income groups.

 
It says the average monthly household income was 7,440 Singapore dollars (about $5,390) in 2007-2008, up from 5,535 Singapore dollars in 2002-2003, when the last survey was done.

But look at the highlighted row outlined in red. That represents the 41st to 60th income quintile. And what's their average monthly household income? 5,480 Singapore dollars in 2007-2008, up from 4,193 Singapore dollars in 2002-2003.

That means the average monthly income of 60 per cent of the households was 5,480 Singapore dollars --- nearly 2,000 Singapore dollars less than the national average household income.

Boosting the average household income are the high earners. The top 20 per cent's average household income of 18,472 Singapore dollars is more than six times as much as the bottom 20 per cent's --- and more than three times as 60 per cent of the households'.

The income gap has grown slightly since 2002-2003 when the average household income was 5,535 Singapore dollars but 60 percent of the households earned on average 4,193 Singapore dollars --- 1,300 Singapore dollars less.

One reason for the growing gap:

DBS' Dubai loans exceed most foreign banks' UAE loans

It looks like Singapore's DBS Bank has a greater loan exposure to Dubai than the majority of foreign banks in the United Arab Emirates.

DBS says its total exposure to Dubai is about 1.8 billion Singapore dollars ($1.28 billion).

"The bank believes the situation is manageable," it said in a statement on Monday. "As of today, the only credit that is captured under the standstill notice is a SGD558 million (USD400 million) bilateral loan to Dubai World Finance which represents 0.2% of DBS’ total balance sheet."

That may be so.

But DBS' $1.28 billion worth of loans to Dubai is more than most of the foreign banks had lent to the entire United Arab Emirates by the end of last year, according to the Emirates Banks Association.

These were the top lenders, according to the  Emirates Banks Association publication titled Financial Position of Banks in the United Arab Emirates, Issue 2007-2008.

Rank	Bank	Loans in thousands of AED
1	HSBC Middle East Bank	62,555,055 ($17,030,124)
2	Standard Chartered	28,544,360 ($7,770,894)
3	Barclays Bank	13,137,733 ($3,576,793)
4	ABN-Amro	8,234,372.00 ($2,241,859)
5	Arab Bank	7,663,117 ($2,086,337)
6	Citibank	7,058,598 ($1,921,752)
7	Bank of Baroda	6,536,936 ($1,779,726)
8	Bank Sedarat Iran	6,375,766 ($1,735,847)
9	BNP Paribas	6,200,101 ($1,688,016.61)
10	Lloyds TSB Bank	5,774,513 ($1,572,150)
11	Habib Bank AG Zurich	5,260,91 ($1,432,319.65)
12	United Bank	3,075,281 ($837,266.84)

For some reason, DBS was not among the 28 foreign banks in the United Arab Emirates named in the Emirates Banks Association publication.

But its $1.28 billion worth of loans to Dubai is more than the 12th ranked United Bank had lent to the entire UAE.

Singapore & the Economist: After the sentence cut

One sentence stuck in my mind from journalist Ben Bland's article in the Guardian after his working visa was not renewed by the Singapore government.

In the article, Ejected from Singapore, he wrote:

One senior editor at a major international newspaper in Asia admitted that he line-edits every single story about Singapore for fear of upsetting the powers-that-be.

Maybe the editor has a longer memory than most of us.

For the Economist magazine got into trouble after cutting just one sentence from a letter written by the then Singapore High Commissioner in London, Abdul Aziz Mahmood, to fit in another letter by the opposition politician, JB Jeyaretnam.

Yes, that's what it says in a Columbia University Journalism School case study of Singapore and the media.

It looks at how Time got into trouble in 1986, the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1987, Asiaweek in 1987, the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1987, the International Herald Tribune in 1994, Bloomberg News in 2002 and the Far Eastern Economic Review again in 2006.

But the Economist case seems most interesting because it started with just one sentence being edited out of a letter. Editors had better be careful!

The case involved prominent figures: Patrick Daniel, who is now editor-in-chief of the English and Malay Newspapers Division of Singapore Press Holdings, and Tharman Shanmugaratnam, now the Finance Minister of Singapore.

SMRT's Dubai partner halts bond trade

Let's hope Singapore MRT fares won't go up if SMRT suffers losses in Dubai. Its Dubai partner has a cash problem and construction in the area where the Singapore transport operator has a monorail is falling behind, according to reports from Abu Dhabi.

SMRT has a six-year contract worth about 120 million Singapore dollars (about $87 million) with the Dubai World property developer Nakheel to operate and maintain a monorail running through the Palm Jumeirah development in Dubai, reported the Straits Times.

SMRT chief operating officer Yeo Meng Hin told the Straits Times: "We are long-term partners with Nakheel, and will continue to work closely with its management during this challenging time."

The SGD120 million, six-year Palm Jumeirah monorail contract is really chump change for SMRT.

It almost made as much in just six months here in Singapore. SMRT reported in its latest financial results:

Net profit after tax for the first half of the year rose to SGD101.0 million, 21.9 percent higher on account of higher operating profits.

Things are not hunky-dory in Dubai, though.

Nakheel said today it had asked for three of its listed Islamic bonds worth $5.25 billion to be suspended from trade until it provides details about its restructuring plans, reports the Khaleej Times in Dubai. It adds:

5.9% Singaporeans jobless, most new jobs are for less than three months

Consider yourself better off if you earn more than 2,600 Singapore dollars ($1,880) a month. For half the 1.99 million working Singaporeans and permanent residents earn less than that. And the majority of workers who found new jobs this year were hired on contracts for less than three months.

Let me quote from the Ministry of Manpower's Singapore Workforce, 2009 report released today:

Amid the global recession, the proportion of residents aged 25 to 64 in employment fell for the first time in six years to 75.8% in June 2009 from the peak of 77.0% a year ago. This mainly reflected the decline in employment rate for residents in the prime-working age group of 25 to 54 from 81.4% to 80.1%…

There were 5.9% or 116,300 persons (non-seasonally adjusted) in the resident labour force who were unemployed in June 2009, significantly higher than 4.0% or 76,200 a year ago. The rise was felt across all occupations and industries. The unemployment rate increased over the year from 4.3% to 7.1% for production & related workers; sharper than the increase from 5.8% to 7.6% for clerical, sales & service workers; and 2.5% to 3.9% for professionals, managers, executives & technicians.

The report says:

Even though it had decreased, the employment rate for prime-working age men in Singapore remained higher than in many developed and Asian economies…

The comparison with developed economies is not quite appropriate. For the unemployed in welfare states can seek social security. So they may register themselves as unemployed. That's not the case in Singapore.

Still, the government has done good work, saving as many jobs as possible by helping companies pay their workers through the jobs credit programme. More people might have lost their jobs if the government had not helped companies make payroll.

Most new jobs for less than three months

But that does not alter the fact that the labour market has become more uncertain.

Most of the new jobs created are not only temporary --- but for less than three months. It's all there in the ministry report:

Top 20 guitar riffs of all time

Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child has been named the best guitar riff of all time by the musicians' website Music Radar.com, reports the Telegraph.

Also in the top 10 are some of my favourites such as (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, ranked 10th, Day Tripper by the Beatles, eighth, Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, fourth, and Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, third. Only Led Zeppelin has three songs in the top 20. 

First my favourites, then the full 20 top list.

The Rolling Stones

The Beatles. 

StanChart's Dubai hopes dashed. DBS also hit?

Singapore banks are unlikely to be seriously affected by the Dubai debt crisis, said a government minister, after Reuters reported it could affect DBS Bank.

That would have been a double blow for the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings.

It owns big stakes in both DBS and Standard Chartered, which has been hardest hit of all the foreign banks.

The British bank, partly owned by a Dubai World company, has invested more heavily in the Gulf than other big banks and sounded bullish right till disaster struck.

It forecast Dubai would grow by 3 per cent next year --- and the United Arab Emirates, as a whole, by 5 per cent --- only a day before Dubai asked for more time to repay its debts, according to the Gulf News.

The Khaleej Times, in Dubai, on Friday published a Reuters report which said:

Exposure to Dubai could have a "meaningful impact" on banks across Asia, said Daniel Tabbush, Asia banks analyst at CLSA in Bangkok.

"Within banking specifically, the biggest exposure appears to be with Standard Chartered and, secondly, with HSBC, followed by DBS," Tabbush said, adding that not all banks in Asia have given details on their exposure.

Shares of Standard Chartered fell nearly 5 percent in Hong Kong, and HSBC dropped 5.4 percent. Singapore's DBS Group was untraded due to a market holiday. DBS was not immediately available for comment.

However, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Finance Minister Lim Hwee Hua said she does not expect Singapore banks to have a large exposure, if any at all, to the Dubai debt crisis, reported Channel NewsAsia.

An Emirates Banks Association publication titled Financial Position of Banks in the United Arab Emirates, Issue 2007-2008, shows that Standard Chartered was second only to HSBC among foreign banks in terms of assets (AED71.24 billion or about $19.4 billion), deposits (AED29.9 billion) and loans (AED28.54 billion) at the end of 2008.

DBS is not among the 28 foreign commercial banks in the UAE named in the publication.

DBS has a 50 per cent stake in the Islamic Bank of Asia, whose shareholders include more than 30 investors from prominent families and industrial groups from Gulf Cooperation Council countries and which has offices in Bahrain.