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Looking beyond Jho Low

Anil Netto
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In his ‘world exclusive’ interview with the Star, Jho Low spent a lot of time talking about his contacts in the Middle-East and how he got to know them during his school and college days.

It sounded like an attempt at damage control.

Anyway, I am not interested in his parties with the celebrities. What do you make of the Wynton Group’s website here?

What I wanted to learn more about was the rationale behind the Terengganu Investment Authority and his links with local politicians. (After all, we already know he is familiar with Taib Mahmud’s son in UBG.)

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Bloated PM’s Department?

Anil Netto
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Is this incredible or what? The White House employs 1,888 staff, but Malaysia’s Prime Minister’s Department has 43,554 employees.

There is also a similar disparity in their respective budgets. The White House’s budget is US$394 million for 2011.

Have a look at the White House website here.

Compare that with the PM’s Dept budget of RM4 billion or is that RM12 billion?

The vast difference is partly down to the whole array of departments, agencies, and what-have-you under the Prime Minister’s Department.

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Gender paradox

Anil Netto
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Girls and women are excelling in secondary and tertiary education; yet formal women’s participation in public life and major decision-making remains lower. Why is that?

This is a piece I wrote for IPS:

It is a paradox, all right. Women make up more than half of those who take part in protests and other activities organised by her political party on issues affecting low-income workers, says Rani Rasiah of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

But when it comes to holding official positions at the party’s local branches, more than half of the officials happen to be men, she observes.

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Try Firefox’s Tab Candy: it’s great

Anil Netto
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I’ve just been trying out Firefox’s Tab Candy, and I must say it could change the way you work on your browser.

I think it’s great. But a warning: it’s an alpha version (not even a beta); so it’s only for those of you who really want to see what’s in store and how it could radically change the way you use your browser tabs.

What Tab Candy does is to give you the flexibility to create groups of tabs on an empty workspace of your browser, so that you only need to open one group at a time in your browser, instead of opening an ever-increasing number of tabs.  Each group of tabs can be given a name. You can also drag a tab to move it from one group to another. And then you can save the groups of tabs.

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Taib Mahmud in a room in House of Lords

Anil Netto
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Technically speaking, the Sarawak Chief Minister did speak at the House of Lords – but it appears to have been in a room down a corridor.

Not quite the image many had in their minds. Blog reader Sean took the initiative to write to the House of Lords about the visit.

According to him, the House of Lords replied:

Thank you for your email.

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More on the 20 Pykett Avenue land deal

Anil Netto
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18

Some details about the deal involving the 20 Pykett Avenue building, whose demolition over the weekend caught the MPPP by surprise.

In December 2009, the Mah Sing board announced to Bursa Malaysia that its subsidiary Klassik Tropika had entered into a sale and purchase agreement to acquire the 3.4-acre freehold property from Khaw Bian Cheng Sdn Bhd for RM38 million. There were two private caveats on the land.

Khaw Bian Cheng Sdn Bhd was supposed to transfer the land free from all encumbrances and with vacant possession. (I guess you could say it is now ‘vacant possession’.)

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UK Parliament’s website silent about Taib’s visit

Anil Netto
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8

Taib Mahmud reportedly gave an address at the House of Lords in London on Friday, 23 July.

From the Bernama report here, it is not clear who exactly he was addressing, though the report mentioned:

Also present were Deputy Foreign Minister Datuk Richard Riot Anak Jaem, High Commissioner of Malaysia to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland Datuk Zakaria Sulong, Special Advisor in the Chief Minister’s Office Tan Sri Adenan Satem, Conservative Women’s Organisation president Lady Fiona Hodgson, and the Muslim Council of Britain secretary-general Farooq Murad.

I wondered what the House of Lords itself had to say about the visit.

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A tourist’s impressions of Penang

Anil Netto
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Beyond the glossy brochures of Penang boasting of sandy beaches and promising an unforgettable stay, what do tourists actually make of the place?

Blog reader Sean describes his recent experience on the island. Notice that the need for proper and unobstructed pedestrian walkways figures prominently in his impressions of the place:

It wasn’t awful! There are bits and pieces that are quite good, but it didn’t give us the impression of a proper tourist destination – more somewhere that had moved on from being popular with tourists and had its sights focussed elsewhere now. Perhaps we were just not Penang Tourism’s target market. We were impressed by Rapid Penang – with two small kids, the reliable, clean, cool, inexpensive buses with their cheerful, helpful drivers were marvellous. The ‘frequency’ schedule was great for us on holiday, but I guess it might not be ideal if you’re commuting to work.

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MPPP pre-empted as building is demolished

Anil Netto
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The MPPP has been pre-empted in its plans to assess a site at Pykett Avenue for a proposed luxury condominium project.


All that’s left of 20 Pykett Avenue.


View Larger Map

The structure, which sits on the site of the original Westlands house, was demolished over the weekend before planning approval for the condominium project had been obtained and while neighbours’ views were being sought, according to a source. This could amount to a planning violation under the Town and Country Planning Act.

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UK all-parliamentary group chief writes to Taib

Anil Netto
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The chairman of the British parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group for Tribal peoples, MP Martin Horwood, has written to Taib Mahmud expressing concern about the plight of the Penan as the Sarawak chief minister arrived in the UK.

Protest against Taib Mahmud
A barrage of placards greeted Taib at Oxford University’s Said Business School this morning – Photo credit: Survival

Martin Horwood, MP - Photo source: Wikipedia

“The Penan have frequently been subject to violence and intimidation at the hands of loggers operating on their land… Without recognition of their land rights, the Penan are struggling to provide for themselves, and are left vulnerable to violence and exploitation,” Horwood wrote, according to Survival, the movement for tribal peoples.

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