Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

Here is the article of today from SMH (Tatnell) in which a few company crooks were named. Those awarded names did not surprise me. For example, most people know Cole's $10 claim, isn't going to be enough to feed a family of four these days. Anyway, here is the article:

Australia's biggest brands have been named and shamed in the 2010 Shonky Awards, which recognise the "shonkiest, meanest and silliest rip-offs and scams".

The Shonkys - handed out by consumer group Choice - "awarded" eight companies and products this year, warning consumers to be "as vigilant as ever".

Winners this year include supermarket giant Coles, the Commonwealth Bank, Nurofen, LG, wristband "sporting aid" Power Balance, outdoor recreational rope producer Medalist, website babynamemeans.com and a selection of olive oil brands.

Possibly the most controversial product in this year's awards is Medalist's rope, which was found to be "stuffed with nothing tougher than tissue paper".

Coles won its Shonky for its under $10 meal promotion, which was fronted by celebrity chef Curtis Stone and promoted during MasterChef.

Choice said: "The deal claims you can feed four people for less than $10. The catch is you have to already happen to have some of the ingredients in your pantry, which aren't included in the price."

The Commonwealth Bank picked up an award for its Standard Awards card, which was criticised "for its poor and sneaky rewards".

Choice claims the bank's customers, who spend $12,000 a year under the scheme, will earn only $20 in flights rewards.

Nurofen's Shonky came courtesy of some clever marketing after offering "painkillers labelled for specific pain types such as back, period, migraine".

Choice claims Nurofen painkillers actually contain identical ingredients from product to product.

"The shonkiest aspect of this type of marketing is that the fast-acting painkillers labelled for specific pain types are more expensive," Choice said.

Power Balance bands - which claim to increase an athlete's performance through increasing the natural energy flow - is simply just a rubber band bracelet with a plastic hologram, Choice said.

Choice said the bracelet, which is "endorsed by sporting pros" and sells "for a mere $60 alongside claims it somehow makes you stronger, more poised and just better. The band was tested at Choice under controlled lab conditions, which showed it did little else than empty purchasers' wallets".

In an award that is bound to cause much debate, Choice criticised the quality of olive oil in Australia.

Choice claims it "tested 28 brands of extra virgin olive oil and found half were nothing of the sort due to poor storage".

LG was also named for wrongly stating how much energy one of its fridges uses.

The companies have been approached for comment.

Commonwealth Bank spokesman Steve Batten said the scheme criticised by Choice was only one of several offered by the bank.

"The Commonwealth Bank has a number of credit card and credit card award schemes and we encourage our customers to look for their product that best suits their needs," he said.

Oh ya~~ Time for another holiday. While there is a chance that we may have to re-schedule the trip till later days, but making tentative reservations with all the popular restaurants in Tokyo are essential. Why Japan again? Because we would like to visit more Onsen (hotspring) hotels on the higher-end this time. Among all the restaurants, Quintessence is still the hardest one to book, follow by Florilege (whose chef was a sou chef of Quintessence).

Restaurants:

Florilege (popular French restaurant on Tabelog)

Nirvanam (Top 1 Indian restaurant on Tabelog)

Pierre Gagnair (French restaurant)

鮎正 (Michelin 1-star, Top 1 fish cuisine on Tabelog)

Quintessence (Michelin 3-star, French)

A Nu Retrouvez-vous (popular French restaurant)

Sushi Saito (Michelin 3-star, Sushi)

L’Atlas (popular French restaurant)

尾花 (popular 鰻重 restaurant)

Casa Vinitalia (popular Italian restaurant)

Burgaz Ada (Top 1 Turkish restaurant on Tabelog)

Onsen Hotels:

仙寿庵Senjyuan  群馬縣 水上温泉

諧暢楼Kaichoro 群馬縣  伊香保温泉

越の里Koshinosato  新潟縣  月岡温泉

時の宿Tokinoyado  山形縣  米沢

翡翠の里 Kawasemi  福島縣 飯坂温泉 

The list is still being updated....

I am not really into soccer but with all the hypes from the World Cup 2010, I did watch a couple of games including Australians’ opening game with the almighty Germany. Four Nil result is just as disappointed as watching Socceroos first walking in the Stadium in Navy Blue jersey. What happened to the traditional Gold and Green?

The background noise is extemely annoying as I had to turn the volume down to watch the game. At first I thought it was air horn but to run it continously over 90 mins, they must had a truck load of it. The noise, in fact, is from the South African vuvuzela (or lepatata) from which the sound level can get up to deafening 131 dB(A). With all the complaints from the players, broadcasting companies, and viewers, I can’t understand why FIFA or SA Organising Committee didn’t ban or introduce an effective way of controlling the use of vuvuzela? This fucking noise is a sharp contrast to the beautiful sound from that unknown trumpeter in World Cup 1998.

(Picture Source: Wikipedia)

Oh lets get back to the game. I don’t think Cahill should have got that red card, but to be fair, I thought he’d have got one from kneeing one of German players’ back earlier in the game. After he got kicked out, the game was like one side match. Watching those tall German players constantly outpacing Socceroos on the field and pounding at the goal, it was an excruciating experience. Well I guess Aussies are still no good at passing the ball forward. Let’s see them next time in Rugby World Cup 2011. What's that? Germany isn't even in it.... Oh, darn. When are we going to kick their butts?

The ambitious Australian Federal Budget of late was criticized heavily on the corporate taxation level in particular, the mining sector. If it’s succeeded, Australia is looking at A$12 billion additional tax to fund its future infrastructure, medicare reform, and of course more dole payments to the needed.

(Picture Source: Treasury Australia)

Government argues that they only received A$9 billion from the mining companies who generated A$80 billion profits over the last decade, based on 30% corporate tax, plus a bit of licence fee here and more tax on additional production there (3 May SMH Business News). On the other hand, mining companies claim that they have been paying in average of 43%, and now they are looking at as high as 53% under the proposed 40% tax regime (5 May SMH Business News).

Since the inception of the Rudd Government, it went on spending money like crazy. The Government used all the surplus money left from the former Howard Government and ended up in big debt. Excessive expenditure was needed because the short recession from the world financial crisis. Aiming for a quick turnaround, the Government is craving for a bigger share of the record profits announced by the mining companies every year due to strong overseas demand and commodity prices. If it can tap straight into the profitability of mining companies, then they can offer more promises to win the upcoming election.

As a result, Mr. Rudd’s approval rating has nosedived 14% points to 45% (10 May, SMH Business News), and the investors has caned the resource stocks by wiping out A$14 billion off their market cap (4 May, SMH Business News). The message from the vast public was crystal clear, that they didn’t like it at all. Nevertheless, the Government has vowed to press on the proposed budget plan.

Right, it's enough with background story. I really want to cast my doubt on the feasibility of the budget. The budget is assuming that our economy is looking rosy beyond 2012-14, with mining companies contributing majority of income for Australia. What happened if Australia’s major trade partners in commodity, China, Korea, Japan, etc. are expected to slow down? Yes, Australia will be in trouble if that did happen.

There are already signs indicating that China is overheating. To be able to achieve over 10% GDP growth (11.9% in Q1: majority growth from real estate and auto industries; international trade is down 1.2%) every year is now becoming more challenging. The global demand is slowing down due to the financial troubles in Europe which will hurt China’s production, while US is recovering slowly. So can China's domestic market take up the surplus if the products destined for export are back-flowed? Unless the China Government can come up with a strong policy stimulating spendings and discouraging savings, I don't think so based on the current level of consumer spending, Compounding the problem is the bubble of China's real estate market may have busted with the new home buying policy (eg., any new home buyers in major city must prove that they had paid tax for over a year in the City that they intend to buy). I expect a soft landing or even a hard landing if the policy is not handled well. 

Overall, less money to spend leads to less production, in turn, leads to less demand in raw materals. Who will suffer on the top end? Yes, Australia is the bulk supplier unfortunately. So what about the bigger slice of cake that Rudd Government is eyeing on? You tell me. I just don’t wish the competitiveness of Australia’s mining companies ended up like a badly-made souffle that just came out of the oven. Hummm, I should start thinking about shorting Aussie$ later.

Apologize for not updating my blog regularly, coz I have been working my ass off lately.

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Have received this email from a friend but really doubt that Canadian Local Government is really using it as it may cause serious accident if someone steps on the break really hard. Read below for yourselves:

"Brilliant Idea from Canada" -  Speed controls being used  in Easter Canada. How's this for excellent speed control? (source: unknown)

I don't know about you, but this would slow me down! People slow down and try to "straddle" the hole.

This is actually a speed control device in use. It is much cheaper than speed cameras.  (Yeh right. Tell me that the State/Local Government would be happy to lose a big chunck of revenue from speeding fine?!)

Pretty clever - especially when moved around each day. Isn't art wonderful?

(Imagining the face of the bike rider who went through in the picture, and he/she wouldn't weave his/her way all over the road avoiding the fake ditches? Art maybe great, but the idea has not considered the potential risks for the road-users.) 

Am I delusional? Has Big Mac slowly and progressively shrunk in sizes? Haven’t eaten one for years and decided to buy one the other day to reminisce the taste of its double layers of beef patties with Mac’s mayo in a sesame seed buns when I was a teen. Holding it in my hands, I think “holy mackerel”. My body must have out-grown like Gulliver. It's now a "mini berger" in my hands!

(Photo Source: MacDonalds USA)

Hang on. Berger Kings’ (or Hungry Jacks whatever you wish to call it) Whopper is still the same size today as many years ago. By comparison, now I am pretty sure that Mac has been playing tricks on all its customers, by deliberately shrinking beef patty, cheese, and buns to today’s sizes. And the price on a Big Mac must have risen 20% or 30% over the years. Yes you are right, we have been fucking ripped off twice.

This is also true on other products everywhere. Coke is rolling out smaller cans and bottles in Australia. Potato chips is another good one. I am pretty sure the size started 240-250g a pack many years ago. It has shrunk in sizes to 220g, 200g, and now 175g, but the price is still around $2 per pack on special. There are probably many other products out there that have shrunk in width, length, height, and volume, if you don’t look hard, such as number of sheets in facial and toilet tissues.

Of course I don’t mind they make profits because of rising costs and everything. But by manipulating the content of the product, especially the weight/volume rather than the more obvious pricing, I just cannot stop feeling that I have been cheated. Anyway, there will not be too much of “Mini-Big Mac” left, if they keep on shrinking its iconic bergers.

The Australian supermarket giant, Woolworths has announced a major rollback program, claiming the prices on vast selected items after discount are cheaper than the year before. This marketing campaign is an attempt to lure shoppers to spend more money after it had the worse than expected sales last quarter, which may put an end to its proud yearly record profit performance (since 1980s) in the upcoming 2010 annual financial report.

(Source: Woolworths' site)

The other giant Coles obviously had to slash prices across the board trying to consolidate its market share. So are we supposed to be rejoicing over cheaper weekly grocery bill now? Or are we smart enough to know that they will probably jack up the prices again after we helped Woolies to maintain its record profit in the next 4 months?

My first thought with the rollback program, is feeling sorry for its suppliers, especially the trade farmer partners. Do you honestly think that they would cough up their profit margin by themselves? Unfortunately, they will probably screw all suppliers with lesser bargaining power again with all sorts of ways including rebates, marketing cost contribution, etc. In other words, the price reduction may come straight from lower purchasing prices. While we maybe cheering for lesser grocery bill, it could be the last nail on the coffin for the farmers who are already operating on thin margins.

The TV program “Current Affairs” of Channel 9 aired a story on Woolies rollback about 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately I only caught the last bit of the program, of which says among all the developed nations, Australia had the highest retail price gain on groceries in terms of percentage. If my memory on the story was correct, then I am very sceptical on how high their profit margins were, that these mobs are running their supermarkets.

So when they were asked about why the shelf prices were up so much in the past? Of course they blamed everything on inflation, surging commodity prices, higher operating costs including wages, etc. Yet they still managed to make extraordinary profits every year. Also with management's magic touch, that they are able to rollback the shelf prices a bit less, and we have to thank them? There is no doubt in my mind that these mobs will “roll forward” the prices without hesitation, once they reached their sales/profit targets.

What a disaster, and by 3....

WTF.... speechless...

Not again...... Where the fuck am I going to find an even bigger crane truck?

(Source of photos: unknown, they are from a friend's email. Please let me know if anyone knows where they came from. Thanks.)

The US investment bankers obviously have not learnt from the financial crisis last year, as they are back in the same greedy form. US economy is not totally out of woods yet, for there are still millions of people out of job. However, bonuses and dividends are being distributed to all the stakeholders after record profits have been made from the recent recovery of the share market in US.

How could this be? Isn’t the bullish share market foretells the future of the US economy? I am not an economist, but from what I can see, the market was driven by speculative money and that money, thanks to the US Federal Reserve (Fed), mainly sourced from the loose monetary policy designed to resuscitate US economy, and of course, the relief funds to help the troubled banking industry.

(Source of chart: StockCharts.com)

The massive inflow of speculative money has propelled the DOW index back to 10,000 points and beyond. Was this huge rebound of the market built on the anticipation of economic recovery? There are some encouraging results from a few indications that gauging the US economy, such as PMI*. However, the property market and unemployment rate are still in dire state. We may have seen the bottom but the sign of recovery is still weak and slow. Hence, the Fed is holding the interest rate unchanged until there are more convincing data available.

Despite several warnings from the US President Obama, bankers sitting with enormous proceeds from paper profits still chose to ignore him by pocketing among themselves handsomely. Perhaps it is a lengthy process to make his warning a real punishment, that is passing the Bill through House of Representatives and/or Senate. Not too sure how the US Congress works, but surely there should be an expeditious way to have the Bill passed and relevant law in place to restrict these greedy bankers.

Adopting a higher marginal tax rate on personal income only on the executives levels within banking industry is one way, but it could backfire the productivity in the industry, and does not really stop them distributing even more to anticipate higher tax payable. I would suggest to the Obama Administration that any bonuses should not include cash component, but only shares issued through employee share scheme (ESS) within the bank. The issued shares should be put in escrow, with restrictions on sales of shares on market for a certain period of time, such as 5 years, non-transferable, may forfeit the rights to the shares if he/she is found contravening to the relevant financial law (eg., insider trading), etc.

Of course there are other ways to restrict the greedy bankers, such as compulsory donation to good causes if the bonuses are realised over certain sums. Decreasing marginal tax rates on the proceeds from the sales of shares acquired from ESS, if the shares are disposed after 7 to 10 years. Whatever means Obama may use, he has to do it quick. Those fearless bankers would think he is only a toothless tiger otherwise. Come on Obama, please make your warning a reality.

*PMI - Purchasing Managers' Index (An indicator of the economic health of the manufacturing sector. The PMI index is based on five major indicators: new orders, inventory levels, production, supplier deliveries and the employment environment.) (Source: Investopedia.com)

The news below has really made me wonder on what have we done to the environment so the nature has derailed from its course. Today we hear that frogs eat snakes and rats, tomorrow we may have cattle or pig devouring human, as our top of food-chain status may well be taken away if we don’t alter the way we are living now.

"CHINA might be preparing to welcome in the year of the tiger but in Rockhampton it must be year of the frog.

It seems to be pretty easy being green these days with the mighty amphibians proving they can take on snakes and now rats (Source of Photos: APN Online).

Aidhan Johnstone, 17, couldn’t believe his eyes when he watched this green tree frog eating a rat outside his Bondoola home, between Yeppoon and Rockhampton.

It was a couple of months ago when Aidhan’s dad was watching TV and he heard a rat squeaking outside.

Aidhan went out to investigate and found the tree frog with most of the rat already inside its mouth.

“They get both hands and use their big webbed fingers to push it into their mouth like a little kid,” said Aidhan’s mum, June.

“I guess we don’t need a cat with these frogs around.”

The domestic white rat was one of Aidhan’s pets, which he assumed had escaped from its cage before it was caught by the frog.

It wasn’t the first time one of Aidhan’s pets had escaped...." (Source: K. Campbell, 5 Jan 2010)