Images From Our Colonial Past :The Woolley Collection Part I

Hantu Laut

George Cathcart Woolley(1876-1947), a former administrator 0f the North Borneo Chartered Company bequeathed an invaluable collection of photographs and other memorabilia dating to 1909.His collection provides an important record of people and events in Sabah's early history.The collection is known as The Woolley Bequest.

Below are some of the images from his collection.

Click to enlarge









A group of deer hunters in Tambalang,Tuaran 1910.










Chinese vendors at the Papar Train 1910.










Road levelling using bullock 1915.










Police patrol on raft at Meligan 1909

This is the 1st instalment.More to come.

Well Done! Pak Lah.

Hantu Laut

Yes, ask them to go.A mosquito party with a big appetite and a sickening attitude, resorting to political blackmail.If they don't leave sack them!.Bunch of ingrates.

I wouldn't waste too much words on those scheming political scums.

M'Kayveas and PPP stop threatening, if you want to leave, go ! I say, Good riddance !.

Well done, Pak Lah here.

Recession Scenarios For Malaysia

Hantu Laut

The global economic downturn has claimed yet another victim and this time in the entertainment sport business.Honda announced it's pulling out of the F1 race citing high costs as the reason.A big blow to F1 racing but a wise decision nonetheless.

The whole world, except Malaysia, is still struggling with one of the worst economic downturn not seen in decades.Bail-outs and financial re-structuring in the US have not shown any sign of lifting the economic gloom.

Singapore, one of the more successful economies in the world projected serious decline of its economic growth in 2009.A projected growth rate of as low as 1.5% with high possibility of going into negative territory. The global downturn in demand will pull down its export earnings and hence decline in its GDP (Gross Domestic Product)

Malaysia, on the other hand has been sending out euphonious messages to its citizens not to worry about the impending economics gloom.The leaders say they have everything under control without spelling out the measures taken or to be taken in the event of a precipitous decline in the economy.The first-half of 2009 would be crucial for Malaysia if the export market continue to shrink and prices of its primary products and manufactured goods declined drastically.

I anticipate export receipts to decline at least by 20% in the 1st-quarter of 2009 as demands for electronic products,palm oil,wood-based products and crude oil declined due to poor demand in the importing countries.Falling prices would further contribute to lowering of the GDP.

Palm oil, one of the major export earner has seen price plummeted from a high of RM4500 to RM1500 currently.If price stays static or drop further in the next three months there would be massive unemployment as plantations retrench workers to keep their losses low and manageable.

Year	GDP - real growth rate (%)
2000	5
2001	8.6
2002	0.3
2003	4.2
2004	5.2
2005	7.1
2006	5.2
2007	5.9
2008	5.7

With massive lay-offs there would be social problems such as rise in crime rate when those unemployed lost their source of income especially foreign workers who decided not to go back to their home countries and stayed on illegally. Likewise, Singapore would be retrenching many of its workers.

Almost 300,000 Malaysians are employed in various industries on the island nation and most of those retrenched would have to return to Malaysia adding to an already grim outlook.

Unless the government can boost consumer's spending there would be substantial decline in the CPI (Consumer Price Index) as the population tighten its belt to keep expenses to a minimum.Sale of consumer's items from automobile to daily necessities would decline to a worrying level.

Presently, there is notable forced sale and marginal decline in the prices of medium and lower scale properties in cities like Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baru.If the economic crisis deepen the next few months and continues into the middle of 2009 the prices of properties for all sectors would take a tumble.Upscale properties would fall between 20 t0 40% mainly in big urban areas.

The Japanese government has just announced that they underestimated the depth of the recession, it was worse than what they thought it would be.

It is,therefore, not in the interest of this nation and the Malaysian people for the government to continue living in a state of denial.We have a serious problem and we should deal with it openly.

We are just entering the recession and it's going to get worse before it gets better and below are the likely scenarios of the recession:

*Decline in GDP growth for the whole of 2009 ...... down to 2% or negative.
*Decline in CPI.A 10% decline is not unthinkable.
*Massive unemployment mostly in middle and lower income group.
*Crash of property prices in urban areas with KL taking the biggest slice of the cake.
*Increase in NPL (Non-Performing Loan) with banks and other financial institutions.
*Increase in the number of bankruptcies.
*Increase in crime rate.
*Increase in the government's budget deficit due to reduction in government revenues.

Those are possible scenarios that could happen and the degree of its seriousness is dependent on the government fundamental rescue package and programme to boost public confidence and spending.Emphasis should be given to vital industries that generate the highest economic outputs.Spending money to prop up stocks market and the currency may not work to our benefits.More often than not fighting against market forces does not bring benefical results but more losses.

The members of OPEC are learning that bitter lesson right now.In spite of massive production cuts taken to stabilise price of crude, it continues to fall.

It's time the government swallow the bitter pills and be honest to its citizens.

A Tragically Lazy Government

Hantu Laut

The tragedy at Bukit Antarabangsa is a reminder of the lack of will by the government to strictly enforce restrictions on unsafe hill slopes development.Money is still God in this country where safety to human lives takes a back seat.It is also a well-known fact that collusion and corruptions between developers and those in authority are as common as the rats found in the gutters of the city.

When tragedy struck those in government are quick to make promises of bullshit proportion.A year later when the tragedy evanescent it is back to square one, all promises are sent to the graves.

Worst, is the laziness on the part of the government to investigate and hold inquiry on such tragic incidents and bring to book those responsible.

On 15 March 1986 the six-storey Hotel New World in Singapore collapsed suddenly.The tragedy killed 33 and 17 were rescued over a seven-day rescue operation.The Singapore government investigated and held an inquiry.It was found poor design and shoddy workmanship were the cause of the mishap.In particular, the architects made an error in calculating the building's total load weight leaving out the "dead load" -- the building itself and only including the "live load" of the building contents and potential additions.The government all took further steps to inspect all buildings designed by the same architect.

On December 11 1993 one of the block of apartments at the Highland Towers collapsed like a pack of card killing 48 people.The government announced a ban on hillside development.Promises made, never fulfilled.Today the same tragedy occurred. What happened was not an act of God.It is by human design and greed.

An inquiry should be held to determine the cause of the tragedy and if there were elements of negligence the party concerned must be punished.Local authorities should not be given immunity against negligence suits.