Tempers flared and police had to be called in
Thursday as anxious Singaporeans rushed to McDonald's outlets to buy
Hello Kitty plush toys being sold by the fast food chain as a promotion.
SINGAPORE: Tempers flared and police had to be called
in Thursday as anxious Singaporeans rushed to McDonald's outlets to buy
Hello Kitty plush toys being sold by the fast food chain as a promotion.
Hundreds
had begun queueing from Wednesday night to get their hands on a kitten
in a skeleton outfit, depicting a character from the German fairy tale
"The Singing Bone".
It was the last of a series of six
limited-edition Hello Kitty characters dressed in different outfits from
popular fairy tales which were being sold by McDonald's this month.
In
some outlets, chaos broke out amid rampant queue jumping as supplies of
the toys ran out soon after the stores opened for business on Thursday.
One video uploaded on YouTube showed police officers mediating between two customers in front of a McDonald's counter.
Another
showed an irate man asking an agitated crowd "Is he Singaporean? Is he
educated?", apparently in reference to someone who had gotten a queue
ticket ahead of others.
Some customers took to Facebook to
register their anger after they went home empty-handed, while others
immediately put the toys -- sold for S$4.60 ($3.62) with set meals -- up
for sale online at far higher prices.
There were shocking
auctions online, with bids as high as S$120,000. Channel NewsAsia was
unable to verify independently if it was a genuine sale.
A viewer told Channel NewsAsia the plush toy is available at about S$7 from Chinese auction site Taobao.
Some Singaporeans are obsessed with completing the entire collection.
"This
is absolutely ruining the Singapore reputation. Poor management and
irresponsible," wrote Catherine Ong on McDonald's Singapore's Facebook
page.
Others voiced their annoyance at compatriots who had let their Hello Kitty mania run out of control.
Singapore
last went into a Hello Kitty frenzy in 2000, when McDonald's sold a
series of the toys in wedding outfits to usher in the new millennium.
Hello
Kitty, which started in 1974 in Japan as a moon-faced cartoon cat on a
coin purse, has developed into a global cultural phenomenon.
Sanrio,
the Tokyo-based company behind the Hello Kitty industry, says it now
has around 50,000 different products on sale in 109 nations and
territories.
Hello Kitty mania is also well-established in Hong
Kong, where both men and women line up for hours outside McDonald's
outlets during promotional schemes.
In 2008, Japan appointed the character as its goodwill tourism ambassador to China and Hong Kong.
A long-overdue technological revolution is at last under way
Jun 29th 2013
“IT IS possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the
motion picture,” observed Thomas Edison in 1913, predicting that books
would soon be obsolete in the classroom. In fact the motion picture has
had little effect on education. The same, until recently, was true of
computers. Ever since the 1970s Silicon Valley’s visionaries have been
claiming that their industry would change the schoolroom as radically as
the office—and they have sold a lot of technology to schools on the
back of that. Children use computers to do research, type essays and
cheat. But the core of the system has changed little since the Middle
Ages: a “sage on a stage” teacher spouting “lessons” to rows of
students. Tom Brown and Huckleberry Finn would recognise it in an
instant—and shudder.
Now at last a revolution is under way (see article).
At its heart is the idea of moving from “one-size-fits-all” education
to a more personalised approach, with technology allowing each child to
be taught at a different speed, in some cases by adaptive computer
programs, in others by “superstar” lecturers of one sort or another,
while the job of classroom teachers moves from orator to coach: giving
individual attention to children identified by the gizmos as needing
targeted help. In theory the classroom will be “flipped”, so that more
basic information is supplied at home via screens, while class time is
spent embedding, refining and testing that knowledge (in the same way
that homework does now, but more effectively). The promise is of better
teaching for millions of children at lower cost—but only if politicians
and teachers embrace it.
Why is this time different? Largely because a number of big changes
are coming at the same time: high-speed mobile networks, cheap tablet
devices, the ability to process huge amounts of data cheaply,
sophisticated online gaming and adaptive-learning software. For
instance, new interactive digital textbooks with built-in continuous
performance assessment can change in real time, depending on what and
how much the pupil using it is learning (sometimes with the pupil being
unaware that he or she is being tested). New data-mining software is
able to predict when a pupil is likely to fail at reading or mathematics
without special attention, allowing the teacher to intervene before it
is too late.
Yes we Khan
Higher education is in the vanguard. Barely a year from its launch,
Coursera, one of the pioneers in offering “massive open online courses”,
now boasts more than 3.9m students worldwide, taking courses supplied
by 83 partner institutions. Colleges have always been keen to experiment
with technology: Britain’s television-based Open University is now 44
years old. But this time schools are following. Four years after Salman
Khan gave up his job at a hedge fund to focus on making maths videos,
the Khan Academy has 6m registered users, who solve (or try to solve) 3m
problems a day, and it has broadened its curriculum far beyond maths.
It is spreading beyond America, too. Carlos Slim, one of the world’s
richest men, is said to be paying for a version of Khan Academy’s
curriculum to be developed for schoolchildren in his native Mexico.
Edtech has collected other impressive advocates. Bill Gates calls
this “a special moment” for education. Private-sector money is piling
in. Rupert Murdoch, hardly a rose-tinted-specs technophile, is allowing
Amplify, his digital education business, to run up losses of around
$180m this year in hope of dominating an edtech market that News
Corporation reckons will soon be worth $44 billion in America alone.
GEMS, a Dubai-based education provider, wants to expand its use of
technology in India and Ghana to reach children in remote areas.
Others are not so sure. Many parents already blame the “dumbest
generation” on too much gaming, always-on computing and illiterate
texting. Teachers may use edtech websites, but their unions are
suspicious of anything suggesting that schools could get along with
fewer teachers, and they dislike the idea of private companies such as
Mr Murdoch’s News Corp making money out of education. There are also
worries about privacy: edtech companies will end up with a vast store of
personal data on pupils.
It seems to work
Most of these fears are overdone. For-profit companies have long been
in the business of selling printed textbooks, and there is no reason
why data-privacy laws cannot extend to students. The biggest question
remains: will children learn more? That in turn relies on the teachers,
because even the best technology will get nowhere without their support.
The evidence on the efficacy of edtech comes largely from America.
Most of it suggests that when teachers have been properly trained, it
works. Low-income students at Rocketship, a chain of charter schools in
San Jose, California, which also use the technologies, outperform those
living in the wealthiest districts in the state. Having performed well
in various pilot programmes, Khan Academy’s adaptive software platform
is now being rolled out across Los Altos, one of America’s wealthiest
and best-performing school districts.
Edtech will boost inequality in the short term, because it will be
taken up most enthusiastically by richer schools, especially private
ones, while underfunded state schools may struggle to find the money to
buy technology that would help poorer students catch up. Governments
will have to invest to allow them to do so. Some already are. In South
Korea high-speed internet access is the norm in schools. Barack Obama
recently promised that America will follow. Laws may have to be changed
to allow pupils to study with those at a similar stage of learning
rather than be grouped according to their age. But the biggest challenge
for many politicians will be confronting the enormously powerful
teachers’ unions.
Parents and taxpayers should stiffen the politicians’ spines.
Education has proved stubbornly resistant to the improvements in
productivity that technology has brought to other jobs. This wave of
edtech promises to change that. Technology has supposedly been on the
verge of transforming education for over a century. This time it looks
as though it will.
Former National University of Singapore law
professor Tey Tsun Hang has been sentenced to a jail term of five months
and ordered to pay a penalty of S$514.80.
SINGAPORE: Former National University of Singapore law
professor Tey Tsun Hang has been sentenced to a jail term of five
months and ordered to pay a penalty of S$514.80.
The 42-year-old
was convicted last Tuesday of six counts of corruptly obtaining gifts
and sex from former student Darinne Ko in 2010.
The S$514.80
penalty includes the balance of a dinner bill and the cost of two
tailored shirts. The judge took into account that Tey had returned
S$1,000 to Ms Ko for the dinner and noted that the iPod and Montblanc
pen were forfeited by the authorities.
When giving his grounds for
decision, Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye said Tey had contributed
to the university's law faculty and to the wider legal community and
society.
The judge however said that there were several aggravating factors in the case.
He
noted that Tey had acted with pre-meditation when initiating the
illicit relationship with Ms Ko, who was only 21 years old at the time.
He
said: "What I found particularly unbecoming of the accused, who was a
senior educator (i.e. Professor of Law), was that he clearly and
systematically took advantage of his student, PW1 (Darinne Ko)."
The
judge said Tey not only used his position of power and charm to have
sex with Ms Ko but also told her to "get rid of the baby" when he found
out she was pregnant with his child.
The judge said this
showed his "callousness", and Tey continued to exploit Ms Ko when she
went to Duke University for an exchange programme in 2010.
Pointing
out that Tey had abused his power and authority as an educator, the
judge added that Tey betrayed the trust and confidence reposed in him by
the university when he disclosed confidential information to Ms Ko.
Tey
also brought the integrity of the university's examination assessment
system into question and invariably tarnished the university's
reputation, said the judge.
The judge also said that a key
aggravating factor was Tey's "litany of lies" -- he said Tey had "lied
repeatedly and behaved insidiously" from the time of investigations
until the end of trial.
The judge said Tey had "spun a yarn", alleging the statements to authorities (CPIB) were not made by him.
He also noted that Tey wasted the court's time when he had claimed to be unwell, which medical experts found to be untrue.
The
judge added that the sentence should befit Tey's crimes, and stressed
that "public confidence in such institutions of higher learning must not
be undermined by corruption".
He said: "Corruption must be
stamped out swiftly and effectively. There must also be an element of
sufficient deterrence in the sentence so that the message is clear that
corruption is not tolerated in the tertiary institutions."
Tey frowned throughout the 90-minute hearing as he listened to the judge from the dock.
Tey
has appealed against his conviction and sentence and is out on a
S$150,000 bail. His bailors include his sister-in-law and a friend.
TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a
private flat with other “mature ladies”. She does two or three jobs a
day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: “If
I hadn’t, I wouldn’t still be open.” She says that she can now make
more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can
turning tricks.
George McCoy, who runs a website reviewing over 5,000 massage
parlours and individuals, says that many are struggling. Sex workers
tell him they have been forced to hold down prices. Like other
businesses, massage parlours and private flats are suffering from rising
rents and energy costs. Even Mr McCoy’s website is under the cosh:
visitor numbers are down by a third.
In part, this reflects the sluggish
economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4%
lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the
south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer,
says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; the mortgage
is more important; petrol is more important.” She is offering discounts
out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30)
than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters
are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are
to have sex.
The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution
are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities.
“It’s stupidly competitive right now,” she laments. More people are
entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of
Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved
their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and
increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But
Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx
of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them
offering more for less.
Parts of the sex trade are comparatively hale. At the top end of the
market, Marie, another escort in Scotland, says custom has not dried up.
Girls increasingly report requests for discounts, she says. But those
who lower their prices sometimes swiftly raise them again, deterred by
the kind of customer who is attracted to bargains. The market for
dominatrices is holding up well, too, according to Mr McCoy. Some of the
cheapest massage parlours, such as Club 25 in Sheffield (the price is
in the name), attractive to the skint, are busy. Some newcomers are
offering cut-price services such as webcams and phone sex.
On the streets, where prices are lowest and life is harshest, things
are more desperate. Georgina Perry, the service manager for Open Doors,
an NHS centre in east London that offers health services to sex workers,
says that in the past few years some former prostitutes who had found
low-paid work, for example as cleaners, have returned to the sex trade
as other jobs have become harder to find. The women are back on the
streets, charging £20 at most.
Many of these changes reflect broader trends in Britain’s unstable,
part-time economy. But the danger in sex work is greater than in other
industries. Newcomers advertising on websites include photos of their
faces, their e-mail addresses and offers of risky services in their
profiles, says Sophie, the Edinburgh escort, aghast. Moving around in
search of clients, prostitutes must deal with unfamiliar and potentially
dangerous men. Since July 310 have contacted Ugly Mugs, a scheme that
encourages sex workers to report violence, although only around a
quarter went to the police. Sex workers are taking greater risks for
smaller returns.
ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed
95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis
was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar,
asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a
doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original
research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of
students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.
In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in
academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a
kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close
collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary
enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some
students will first have to spend two years working on a master's degree
or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way.
Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations
and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be
dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a
result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or
world-weary forty-somethings.
One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some
describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days,
low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a
graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated
than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It
isn't graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student,
who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What's
discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”
Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine
problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the
practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and
medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs.
Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the
number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings.
Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level
skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest
critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
Rich pickings
For most of history even a first degree at a university was the
privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold
doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war,
so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees.
American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing
just under a third of the world's university students and half of its
science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global
population). Since then America's annual output of PhDs has doubled, to
64,000.
Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of
doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with
22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico,
Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young
people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that
growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America.
Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by
2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world's students.
But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly
motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more
research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A
graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of
teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in
2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.
Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for
university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia
Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more
than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period
there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do
much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs.
Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively
modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but
hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing
countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.
A short course in supply and demand
In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff
known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of
academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of
postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American
faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20%
of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or
less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker.
The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an
academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a
prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost
universities', and therefore countries', research capacity. Yet that is
not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste
when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD
physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the
science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City
University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000
physicists had to find jobs in other areas.
In America the rise of PhD teachers' unions reflects the breakdown of
an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay
now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public
universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions
as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased
recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale
and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that
PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted
union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private
university to recognise a PhD teachers' union, but stopped negotiating
with it three years later.
In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job
prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr
Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs
in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006
that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate
poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign
labour also keeps wages down.
A PhD may offer no financial benefit over a master's degree. It can even reduce earnings
Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not
lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a
PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into
private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true;
but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In
America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after
their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students
pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other
subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the
humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And
these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research
at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer
than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of
money cause them to run out of steam.
Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all
that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers
offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors
tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia. One
OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more
than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech
Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were
postdocs. About one-third of Austria's PhD graduates take jobs
unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up
in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.
A very slim premium
PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor's degree. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor's degree earn
14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to.
The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master's
degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as
high, at 23%. In some subjects the premium for a PhD vanishes entirely.
PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more
than those with master's degrees. The premium for a PhD is actually
smaller than for a master's degree in engineering and technology,
architecture and education. Only in medicine, other sciences, and
business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile. Over
all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master's degree.
Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the
course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.
Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some
physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to
become “quants”, analysts and traders. Today several short courses offer
the advanced maths useful for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course
on differential equations is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.
Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and
that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where
the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates,
about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go
on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering
students admitted to this. Scientists can easily get stipends, and
therefore drift into doing a PhD. But there are penalties, as well as
benefits, to staying at university. Workers with “surplus
schooling”—more education than a job requires—are likely to be less
satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they are going to
leave their jobs.
The interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with those of PhD students
Academics tend to regard asking whether a
PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much
art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from
universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That
may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an
individual.
The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD
students on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students
stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate
students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors' publication
records. Academics pick bright undergraduate students and groom them as
potential graduate students. It isn't in their interests to turn the
smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One female student spoke of
being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but after seven years
of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding a rich
husband.
Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of
Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being
produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic
birth control is rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about
PhD oversupply, said that if the top universities cut back others will
step in to offer them instead.
Noble pursuits
Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your
correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged
through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try
to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more
structured learning that comes with an American PhD.
The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs
find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab
reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month
literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where
technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply
to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD
students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that
may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD
claims to develop just such skills in graduates.
Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university
departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an
indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a
measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they
earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who
allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises
abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.
Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and
will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have
amassed awards and prizes. As this year's new crop of graduate students
bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the
system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others,
that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed,
and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use
their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable
academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.
The law professor implicated in the
sex-for-grades case has been found guilty of corruption after a trial
that spanned five months, from January to May. He will be sentenced on
Wednesday.
SINGAPORE: The law professor implicated in the
sex-for-grades case has been found guilty of corruption after a trial
that spanned five months, from January to May.
He will be sentenced on Wednesday.
Tey
Tsun Hang, 42, was convicted of all six counts of corruptly obtaining
gratification in the form of gifts and sex from his former student
Darinne Ko Wen Hui, in return for giving her better grades between May
and July 2010.
Following the verdict, the National University of
Singapore (NUS) said it has terminated Tey's employment with immediate
effect. It said in a statement that Tey had contravened the conditions
of his appointment.
The Dean of NUS Faculty of Law, Simon
Chesterman, said that NUS staff and students are expected to behave
ethically and responsibly.
The case centred on Tey's relationship with his former student. The defence had argued it was a mutually-loving relationship.
But
in a 200-page judgement, Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye listed
reasons why it was one-sided and described it as "an illicit
relationship laced with corrupt intent".
He said Tey never once
mentioned in his statements (to authorities) that he was in love with Ms
Ko, nor had he ever referred to her by her name.
Instead, the
judge said Tey would use "female student" and even "star prosecution
witness" when he referred to her in his cautioned statements.
The judge said Tey only told the court they were in a romantic relationship "as an afterthought".
He noted that in the second tranche of the trial, Tey changed his tune and claimed they were in love.
The judge pointed out that in his email correspondences to Ms Ko, Tey was always "terse" and "sometimes even curt".
Pointing
to Tey's Chinese poem and an email on the background of Frederic Chopin
to Ms Ko, the judge said: "When he (Tey) did write to Ms Ko, it was an
anti-climatic copy-and-paste exercise."
During the
three-hour long judgement, Tey was described as not having any "basic
decency" as he made Ms Ko pay his expenses for a trip to the United
States. At that time, Ms Ko was an exchange student at Duke University
and Tey visited her, but only offered to pay his own airfare.
The judge said this happened when the law professor was earning S$225,000 as at February 2010, while Ms Ko was a mere student.
On Ms Ko's pregnancy, the judge said Tey had told her to abort their child when he found out about it.
The
court heard that at that time, Ms Ko was in the US and Tey told her to
have an abortion there and that he had no money for the operation. She
had to pay US$2,000 herself.
And while Ms Ko may have
showered him gifts out of love and affection, the judge agreed with the
prosecution that the 23-year-old was also trying to get into Tey's good
books.
The judge also impeached the key prosecution
witness' credibility on the reasons for getting the gifts -- the
Monblanc pen, tailored shirts, iPod, as well as the payment of a dinner
bill.
He said there were serious discrepancies in these areas between her CPIB statements and testimony.
The
judge said she negated the corrupt intent and told the court she gave
the gifts without intent to seek special favours. This differed from her
first statement to the CPIB.
The judge said he is of the
view that Ms Ko's first and second statements to the authorities were
reliable and her third was not.
"Sometime after her second
statement on 28 April 2012, she realised that her first statement had
incriminated herself and exposed her to possible charges under the
Prevention of Corruption Act.
"She could be charged as a
giver who corruptly gave gratifications to the accused. She then decided
to retract the incriminating parts of her statement," said Judge Tan.
But
the judge highlighted that it is irrelevant to determine whether Ms Ko
had breached the Act, and that the court should instead focus on Tey's
corrupt intent.
Previously, Tey had argued that there was
no corrupt intent as Ms Ko was an "A" student who did not need him to
give her good grades.
But the court found that Tey had great influence over Ms Ko and the status of the two were "clearly disproportionate".
The judge said favouring Ms Ko need not be extreme. It could just mean bumping her grades up slightly from a "B+" to "A-".
In
court, two professors were asked of their view of Ms Ko's directed
research paper. One said he would give her a "B+" while the other said
he would give either an "A-" or an "A". Tey had awarded Ms Ko an "A".
The
judge stressed that whether Tey had shown favour to Ms Ko or not was
not vital. What was important was that he could influence her grades,
and showed her he could, in order to obtain the gifts.
As for
anonymous marking practised at NUS to deter corruption and favouritism,
the judge said: "The integrity of the anonymous marking system no longer
applied to Ms Ko as the accused would have recognised her handwriting,
as she had sent him several handwritten love cards.
"When a professor and a student are in a relationship, like in this case, the virtues of anonymous marking no longer existed."
Another point of argument was Tey's claim that he reimbursed Ms Ko for the gifts and dinner bill with a S$2,500 cheque.
But
the judge found this to be untrue -- first, because Ms Ko denied
unequivocally ever receiving the reimbursement. Second, that if Tey had
repaid her, she would have told the court and would have been exonerated
of bribing her lecturer.
On Tey's part, the judge said
this was the key to proving his innocence, but he did not inform the
CPIB of the reimbursement for the gifts.
The judge made it
plain that the defence of reimbursement was an "afterthought" as it was
"impossible to estimate the cost of dinner at Garibaldi on 21 July,
2012, before it happened".
Judge Tan said: "The accused
could simply have produced his bank statements to show his withdrawal of
the money (the $2,500 reimbursement), but he chose not to do so.
"As
he would have produced his bank statements if they supported his case,
it stands to reason that his bank statements would, if produced, be
unfavourable to him."
On Tey's mental condition, the judge
rejected psychiatrist Dr Tommy Tan's diagnosis that Tey was suffering
from acute stress disorder. The judge said it was "unreliable" and "not
objective".
In a report dated 2 May, 2013, forensic
psychiatrist Dr Bharat Saluja said Tey "does not suffer from any
psychotic disorder or any organic brain disorder".
Judge
Tan said: "By a process of elimination, since the accused was not
suffering from severe brain damage, organic disorders, or chronic and
severe psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, it must stand to
reason that the accused was malingering."
The judge said
Tey was also "dishonest" not only in court, but also to Ms Ko, CPIB
officers and medical experts. He said a "depraved" Tey "clearly took
undue advantage" of Ms Ko.
The judge said secrecy and
serendipitousness are common characteristics of someone with criminal
intent and that "evidence against the accused was overwhelming".
The court also rejected Tey's allegations that his statements to the CPIB were made under duress.
The
judge also took into account that Tey had admitted that he breached the
university's code of conduct, but continued to hide this from the
school.
He also said the university is a public body as
it's an instrument to implement government policy. This meant that Tey
was a public servant and the presumption of corruption applied to him.
Judge
Tan said: "In this case, the presumption of corruption under Section 8
of the Prevention of Corruption Act operated against the accused. In
other words, he was assumed to have received the gratifications in the
six charges as an inducement for showing favour to Ms Ko in his
assessment of her academic performance.
"Even without this
presumption, there was sufficient evidence to show beyond a reasonable
doubt his corrupt intention and guilty knowledge. For the above reasons,
I came to the irresistible conclusion that the accused had the corrupt
intention and guilty knowledge in all of the six charges against him."
In
mitigation, Tey's lawyer Peter Low asked for a stiff fine. He said if
the court had to give a custodial sentence, to make it a short one.
During the hearing, Tey was seen listening intently to the judge as he sat in the dock with his head bowed low.
Once
the session was over, Tey was greeted by his supporters, most of whom
are his colleagues. They were visibly upset with his conviction and
teared when they hugged him.
Tey will be sentenced on Wednesday. He could be jailed up to five years and fined up to S$100,000 on each charge.
THIS month a major film distributor
from Indonesia visited the Odeon cinemas in High Street Kensington to
watch the “The Dictator”, a bawdy comedy involving Arab tyrants,
beheadings and muscular female bodyguards. “I’m looking forward to
this,” he said. But I was puzzled. He usually watched movies in
Indonesia, preferably in one of his own theaters, where tickets cost
50,000 rupiahs—around £3.50, or $5.50, compared with Kensington’s £11.25
(160,000 rupiahs). Considering he was in London for only three days, it
seemed an odd priority. “Well, you see,” he said, “the film has been
banned in Indonesia.” Oh? I said. “Yes, they’re getting a bit nosy these
days.” Later, during a particularly bawdy scene, he pointed out that
“even if they allowed the film to pass, this entire scene would have
been cut.” He wanted to see the film in its unadulterated form.
In
early May, a Canadian liberal Muslim writer, Irshad Manji, who is a
lesbian, had several book events in Jakarta disrupted by toughs from a
local Islamic militia. A colleague of hers was hospitalised after being
walloped repeatedly with a metal stick. Two hotels, worried over
precisely this kind of security risk, had refused her request to stay.
She sniffed: “Four years ago, I came to Indonesia and experienced a
nation of tolerance, openness and pluralism. Things have changed.”
Perhaps
they have changed decisively. In 2008 a controversial anti-pornography
bill was passed by parliament that regulates images, gestures, or talk
deemed pornographic. The presidential task-force charged with
implementing the bill began its work in February this year and has since
been aggressive in highlighting freedoms it deems curb-worthy.
The
law’s most recent victim has been an American pop singer, Lady Gaga,
who cancelled what would have been her first concert in Indonesia,
refunding 52,000 tickets. This was the culmination of a month-long
national saga in which wispy-bearded vigilantes in groups like the
Islamic Defenders Front threatened “chaos” if this “messenger of the
devil” so much as showed her face. The authorities appear to have
acquiesced. For instance, Indonesian authorities asked Ms Gaga to tone
down the show by not, for instance, frolicking on stage with a harem
troupe of male dancers. Rather than defend the right to artistic
expression against an irritable rabble, the government has joined them
as another thorn in her side. As Ms Gaga herself pointed out in a tweet:
“the Jakarta situation is 2-fold: Indonesian authorities demand I
censor the show & religious extremist separately, are threatening
violence.”
This fracas does not entirely ruin
Indonesia’s reputation as a place where “religion and democracy need not
be in conflict,” as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, said
recently on a visit to Jakarta. Many Indonesians were appalled by the
stink over the Gaga affair, though no one much expects it to linger.
Most are admirably ecumenical in their religious instincts. But where
the views of the majority appear to have been overruled by a vocal
minority so easily, it makes one wonder who is in charge. With the
anti-pornography bill’s task-force gearing up in the background, the
recent slew of cultural skirmishes is unlikely to stop soon.
WASHINGTON, DC – Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. Breaking an oath to tell the truth is perjury, and lying in official documents is both perjury and fraud. These are serious criminal offenses, but apparently not if you are at the heart of America’s financial system. On the contrary, key individuals there appear to be well compensated for their crimes.
As Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets has argued, the recent so-called “robo-signing” settlement – in which five large banks “settled” their legal liability for carrying out fraudulent foreclosures on mortgages – is a complete sell-out to the financial industry.
First, there was no serious criminal prosecution – meaning that no one will be charged with a felony, and no one will go to jail. In terms of affecting executives’ incentives, this is the only thing that matters.
Even the terminology used to frame the discussion is wrong. Kelleher, an attorney with extensive experience in private practice and the public sector, tells it like it is: “‘robo-signing’ is massive, systematic, fraudulent, criminal conduct.” Alternatively, as he points out, we could just call it “lying, cheating, and stealing.”
Second, the civil penalties in this settlement – a form of fine – are minuscule relative to the size of the companies involved. As Shahien Nasiripour, one of the best reporters on this issue, dryly put it: “None of the five lenders have said they expect to incur a material charge due to the settlement.” In other words, from a corporate perspective, the penalty is a trifling affair.
Third, such fines are, in any case, paid by the companies’ shareholders, not by their executives or board members (all of whom carry insurance). In the rare cases in which fines have been levied on individuals, either their insurance policies picked up most of the bill, or the penalties were trivial relative to the cash compensation that they received while committing their crimes – or both.
The Obama administration and its allies have worked hard to sell its roughly $20 billion settlement with the banks as one that will have a meaningful impact on the housing market. But nothing could be further from the truth. As Kelleher points out, the United States has “more than 10 million homes under water” (the outstanding mortgage exceeds the house’s value). “Twenty billion dollars doesn’t make a dent in that: one million homes at $20,000 loan forgiveness is it.”
In fact, the Obama administration’s settlement with the mortgage lenders is consistent with its track record on all of its policies related to the financial sector, which has been abysmal. But it is also puzzling. Why would the administration continue to bend over backwards to be lenient towards top bankers under these circumstances?
I honestly do not believe that the administration’s stance reflects any form of corruption – payments made to individuals or even to political campaigns. And, in this case, it does not even appear to reflect the lobbying power of big financial players. That power certainly explains why the Dodd-Frank financial reforms enacted in 2010 were not stronger, and why there is now so much opposition to effective implementation of that legislation (for example, there is currently a huge fight around the “Volcker rule,” which would limit proprietary trading by megabanks). But mortgage lenders’ criminal activities are another matter.
Indeed, at stake in the mortgage settlement are fundamental and systemic breaches of the rule of law – perjury and fraud on an economy-wide scale. The Justice Department has, without question, all of the power that it needs to prosecute these alleged crimes fully. And yet America’s top law-enforcement officials have consistently – and now completely – backed off.
The main motivation behind the administration’s indulgence of serious criminality evidently is fear of the consequences of taking tough action on individual bankers. And maybe officials are right to be afraid, given the massive size of the banks in question relative to the economy. In fact, those banks are bigger now than they were before the crisis, and, as James Kwak and I documented at length in our book 13 Bankers, they are much larger than they were 20 years ago.
Top bankers want to make a lot of money. They also want to stay out of prison. Political leaders can huff and puff as much as they want, but, without a credible threat of poverty and time behind bars, bankers have no reason to comply with the law. For them, it’s all about the trade – and you can be the sucker in public policy as easily as you can be the sucker in an individual loan agreement.
The message to bank executives today is simple: build your bank to be as big as possible – and then keep growing. If you manage to become big enough, you and your employees are not just too big to fail, but also too big to jail.
The Obama administration has just made everyone else the sucker.
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-author, with James Kwak, of13 Bankers.
