Political success for society’s invisible souls is rare. So when US investor Westbrook Partners announced last week that it had withdrawn from evicting families at the New Era estate in East London, it was cause for celebration. Instead of building expensive properties, the company sold its development to Dolphin Square Charitable Foundation, an affordable housing organisation. People who faced skyrocketing rents now have security and hope before Christmas.
British writer and comedian Russell Brand was key to this victory. His support of the campaigners on the ground and on social media led The Independent to describe New Era as “Proof that [his] revolution may actually be working”.
via After New Era, it’s harder than ever to mock Russell Brand as a hypocrite | Antony Loewenstein | Comment is free | The Guardian.
Why we need a factcheck.org Philippines or How I will improve the FOI bill!!
I have spent about 30 minutes trying to find a video of Miriam Defensor Santiago’s interview where she promised to have herself shot if something happened. Then there is another video interviewing her after and she saying I lied afterwards laughing maniacally.
Then there are the gaffes of senators and lawmakers about one issue and another.
There are the swipes of cabinet officials against other people.
There are the tantrums thrown by Presidents and other public officials.
There are more importantly the public policy speeches of government officials/politicians/ other actors of the political sphere.
The FactCheck.org Philippines is a step towards the Philippines that is uses facts to make decisions. It is a step towards true democracy, not one dominated by the so called bobotante.
If we cannot even take note/archive/make use of things in the public domain what gives us any chance of using the voluminous data that an FOI bill will produce.
The FOI bill must also have a component for keeping into record and transcribing and exposing via the internet all the speeches, interviews, videos produced in local television. This is one of the way that we can make the FOI bill more useful.
The Top 10 Movies of 2014 «
Wesley Morris has Norte, the End of History as his film of 2014.
1. Norte, the End of History
Lav Diaz’s contemplation of life after someone else’s death taxis a runway for the first 35 of its 250 majestic minutes. Once it takes off, you can’t believe you’re flying. You don’t want to land. The story, set in the Philippines, of a man wrongly imprisoned for murder, the wife he’s left behind, and the moral rot of the real killer, is like a work of philosophical and spiritual origami — Dostoyevsky with human levitation and mood lighting. The movie roves wastelands; it climbs to heaven. With each passing scene, Diaz finds new ways of compounding the visual and emotional scope of the film, reaching a degree of artistry that provokes an involuntary response. When it ended the first time I saw it, I stood up, with tears in my eyes, and clapped. The second time, I just sat in my seat, awed by what Diaz had achieved, and perplexed as to how. On neither occasion did I feel like I had simply gone to a movie. I had answered the call of God.
via The Top 10 Movies of 2014 «.
Liberal Party eyes Roxas-Poe tandem | Inquirer News
In spite of his low survey numbers, Roxas has “worked really hard to serve the nation and has always excelled in all his endeavors long before he became a favorite target of demolition attacks by political foes,” Sarmiento said.
“He has been a congressman, a senator and a member of the Cabinet in different capacities and has excelled in all these positions. He is one of President’s Aquino’s most reliable troubleshooters in nearly all aspects of governance because he is an outstanding problem-solver,” he said.
“Secretary Roxas will be very effective in managing the nation and in pursuing the reforms and programs that were started by President Aquino while Senator Poe can be the rallying figure for our people to unite and work together in building our nation,” he added.
via Liberal Party eyes Roxas-Poe tandem | Inquirer News.
Will Erap endorse Roxas in 2016? 'It depends'
Estrada had nothing but warm words and praise for Roxas, who once served as his trade secretary.
Estrada said Roxas, who was at the event, pushed for e-commerce during his stint as trade chief, paving the way for the business process outsourcing (BPO) boom in the country.
“He created thousands of jobs,” Estrada told a crowd of informal settler families.
But even before anyone could imagine Estrada raising Roxas’ hand in the lead-up to the 2016 elections, the political powerhouse added: “Hindi ako nangangampanya. Nagsasabi lang ako ng totoo (I’m not campaigning here. I’m just telling the truth).”
via Will Erap endorse Roxas in 2016? ‘It depends’.
The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality – Quartz
The new middlemen
There are only two requirements for an on-demand service economy to work, and neither is an iPhone. First, the market being addressed needs to be big enough to scale—food, laundry, taxi rides. Without that, it’s just a concierge service for the rich rather than a disruptive paradigm shift, as a venture capitalist might say. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a large enough labor class willing to work at wages that customers consider affordable and that the middlemen consider worthwhile for their profit margins.
Uber was founded in 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the worst financial crisis in a generation. As the ride-sharing app has risen, so too have income disparity and wealth inequality in the United States as a whole and in San Francisco in particular. Recent research by the Brookings Institution found that of any US city, San Francisco had the largest increase in inequality between 2007 and 2012. The disparity in San Francisco as of 2012, as measured (pdf) by a city agency, was in fact more pronounced than inequality in Mumbai (pdf).
Of course, there are huge differences between the two cities. Mumbai is a significantly poorer, dirtier, more miserable place to live and work. Half of its citizens lack access to sanitation or formal housing.
Another distinction, just as telling, lies in the opportunities the local economy affords to the army of on-demand delivery people it supports. In Mumbai, the man who delivers a bottle of rum to my doorstep can learn the ins and outs of the booze business from spending his days in a liquor store. If he scrapes together enough capital, he may one day be able to open his own shop and hire his own delivery boys.
His counterpart in San Francisco has no such access. The person who cleans your home in SoMa has little interaction with the mysterious forces behind the app that sends him or her to your door. The Uber driver who wants an audience with management can’t go to Uber headquarters; he or she must visit a separate “driver center.”
via The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality – Quartz.
Russia has just lost the economic war with the west | Business | The Guardian
A full-blown currency crisis. That’s one way to describe the situation in Russia, where even the attempted “shock and awe” of a 6.5 percentage point-hike in interest rates failed to halt the rouble’s slide on the foreign exchanges. The other is to say that Russia has been engaged in an economic war with the west – and has just lost.
Put simply, this was Moscow’s Norman Lamont moment. Back in September 1992, the then chancellor said he would defend the pound and keep Britain in the exchange rate mechanism by raising official borrowing costs to 15%, even though the economy was in deep trouble at the time.
Russia is in even worse shape than Britain was in 1992. With a clapped-out manufacturing sector, it is over-reliant on its massive stocks of oil and gas at a time when the price of oil is falling through the floor. A barrel of Brent crude was trading at below $60 a barrel on Tuesday, compared to a recent peak of $115 in the summer.
via Russia has just lost the economic war with the west | Business | The Guardian.
Mar Roxas and the motorcycle slide
Sabi nga nila no good deed goes un punished (for the devil is more vindictive fellow)
My past experiences have often made me a skeptic. But one thing is clear in my mind: for those six days in Eastern Samar, many people were simply trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities: the mayor who left her hospital bed in Manila to be with her people; the planning officer, in over his head when he was made DRRM officer; the governor who deferred his chemo treatments to stay in the command center; the local and international NGOs and relief volunteers who rushed to help without hesitation; the media men and women who were on the ground reporting responsibly from the start; and many others who did their share.
Like them, Mar Roxas was merely doing his job. He was serving the people.
I know. I was there. – Rappler.com
Rep. Jose Christopher “Kit” Belmote represents the 6th district of Quezon City in the Philippine House of Representatives.
via Mar Roxas and the motorcycle slide.
SC upholds Robredo's orders on good local governance | ABS-CBN News
The memorandum circulars provide, among others, for the full disclosure of the LGUs’ budgets.
Former Camarines Sur Governor Luis Raymond Villafuerte Jr. had questioned the legality of Memorandum Circular 2010-83, Memorandum Circular (MC) 2010-138 and Memorandum Circular 2011-08 for “lack of merit.”
MC 2010-83 pertains to the full disclosure of local budgets and finances and bids and public offering.
MC 2010-138, on the other hand, pertains to the use of the 20 percent component of the annual Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) shares.
MC 2011-08, meanwhile, pertains to the strict adherence by local government units on Section 90 of Republic Act 10147 or the General Appropriations Act of 2011.
Villafuerte claimed Robredo, who died in 2012 in a plane crash, went beyond his supervisory powers. He said the circulars violate local and fiscal autonomy.
The SC dismissed his claims, saying “it is inconceivable, however, how the publication of budgets, expenditures, contracts and loans and procurement plans of local government units required in the assailed issuances could have infringed on the local fiscal autonomy of local government units.”
“The posting requirements are mere transparency measures which do not at all hurt the manner by which local government units decide the utilization and allocation of their funds,” it added.
via SC upholds Robredo’s orders on good local governance | ABS-CBN News.
In Manila, malls aren't passe – they are the city itself | Cities | The Guardian
That, perhaps, comes as more of a surprise than anything to westerners, particularly to an American such as myself, coming as we do from places where big, fully enclosed shopping centres, many of which have already undergone demolition, have become symbols of the increasingly passé, automobile-bound and fear-driven cold war era of urban planning.
In the postwar years, Manila repurposed jeeps, those most utilitarian American vehicles, into an iconic, useful, and flamboyant form of transit. Today, in the same improvisational manner, it has repurposed malls, those most tired of all American structures, not by building them as a substitutes for the city, but by building them as the city itself.
via In Manila, malls aren’t passe – they are the city itself | Cities | The Guardian.