BN looks after the interests of all ethnic groups

MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek said, Titiwangsa Umno division chief Johari Abdul Ghani's speech that Umno did not need Indian or Chinese votes appeared on YouTube do not represent the mainstream view among Umno's top leadership.

“If we want a definite answer, ask the prime minister. The prime minister clearly promotes 1Malaysia with policies for every ethnic group. This is very clear.”

MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek said, MCA would not support these non-mainstream grassroots leaders and even recommend to the Umno leadership that they not be fielded as candidates in the general election.

He said that such Umno leaders do not act in the spirit of BN which looks after the interests of all ethnic groups.

“This (video clip) tells us that there are some Umno grassroots leaders who are not politically savvy. They are not very smart. We will report back to the prime minister.

“They should not come out (in public). We will pursue this. They should not represent BN and should retire and go home,” said Chua.

Run afoul of secrecy

Google revealed that it had unintentionally collected WiFi data from open routers using its Google Street View cars.

The data was only discovered when the German Data Protection Authority asked to audit the WiFi data collected by the Google Street View team.

Google said that up until the time of the audit, it had been under the impression that it was only collecting MAC addresses and SSID information. However, the audit showed that Google had been collected fragments of payload data from open WiFi networks.

Data collected by Google included emails and web addresses users were viewing. Google said that it would be deleting all of this extra data and said a third party would be brought in to ensure this was done in the correct manner.

However, it seems Peter Schaar, Germany's federal commissioner for data protection, and freedom of information, is not satisfied with Google's story.

"So everything was a mistake, a software bug! The data was collected and stored without the authorization of the project's managers or even the company's managers. If we go along with this story, this means the software was used without having been properly tested beforehand," he said, according to TGDaily.

Indeed, Germany is not the only country who has found issue with Google's behavior.

The Irish Data Protection Authority Friday contacted Google and asked that all data accidentally harvested in Ireland be deleted.

Google today confirmed that this Irish data was deleted over the weekend in the presence of an independent third party.

No bonus for civil servants to avoid sovereign debt crisis

There is nothing wrong with civil servants earn higher average salaries than private-sector and receiving bonus. But can you imagine how big RM3.1 billion is and its effect on the National Debt?

Ironically, Malaysia GDP is expected to grow more than 3% annually but government debt continues to grow at 12% annually.

The government’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit’s calculations show that by the year 2019, the country’s projected debt will be 103% of GDP and the fiscal deficit will reach RM449 billion or 38% of GDP.

At that point in time, the country will go into sovereign debt crisis in which government revenue will not be enough to service its debt and to operate the hospitals, schools and other government services.

Undeniably, government paying a month's bonus to the 1.2 million civil servants can be seen as unwise. Thus, under no conceivable circumstances should the government ever concede in practice.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said the government could not pay a month's bonus to the 1.2 million civil servants in Budget 2011 because it incurred an expenditure of RM3.1 billion is thus justified.

He said, the special financial assistance of RM500 for each civil servant was appropriate.

Najib said many quarters had lobbied to him to announce a month's bonus to the civil servants. But I would like to share with you ... that a month's bonus incurs an expenditure of RM3.1 million for the government. Personally, I would want to give a bonus but as a responsible finance minister, I cannot expend more than the national revenue.

"It is for this reason that I gave RM500 as a special financial assistance to civil servants," he said.

Najib announced a special financial assistance of RM500 for all civil servants from Grade 54 and below as well as contract officers and retirees. The payment will be made in December this year. The aid could help civil servants cope with schooling expenses for their children at the end of the year.

He said that though no bonus was given, the government had proposed other incentives for civil servants, such as maternity leave of up to 90 days. These also benefited women teachers, who made up almost 70 percent of the 400,000 teachers in the country.