Money is kept in Bank’s investment account and not returned to CPF after the shares are sold

The reason of complaint was that the banks kept the money in the account for 3 months and pay a hopelessly low interest – 0.25% p.a. – on the amount kept there.

Granted that when you sold your shares, it is implicit that you want to put that money back into the CPF, but who can tell you aren’t just selling those shares and using that same money to buy something else later? And come on!! If your investment had already made much more than the CPF board’s in interest, just what the hell are you complaining about?

But what the heck?! First of all, when you take your money out of your CPF, that was because you decided that the CPF was paying you ‘lousy’ interest – 2.5% p.a. – and you could get better returns by re-investing it / managing it yourself. Are you not already aware that by making the decision to withdraw money out of the CPF, you are forgoing the interest on that amount. This is part of the risk and costs for wanting to manage your own money! Just why the hell are you now complaining about losing that interest when you originally said it sucks?

And the best part is that they can instruct the bank to put the money back into the CPF all along. It simply makes me wonder if these clowns had lost money trying to invest their money and had felt even more indignant about the low interest received.

And here’s the math:

So what’s the big fuss all about? Granted it would have been more money if the invested sum was returned into the CPF immediately after the sale of the shares, but it is really just a big fuss over what I should be making compared to what I have made without considering what I would have made originally. And it doesn’t matter if you made or lost money with your investments.

Simply put, to even complain about this, some Singaporeans are showing themselves to be what the Chinese would say 贪得无厌 [one’s greed has no limits], or just a bunch of sissy whiners.

Leeching on someone else’s wireless shouldn’t be criminal

The argument of these cheese-pies is that it is the onus of the owner of the wireless router to secure his network, and if he failed to secure it, then it is his own fault. On top of that, it is implicit that he is inviting others to share it when he ‘chooses’ not to secure it. It is simply ‘reasonable’ to assume that if secure = no consent, then no secure = consent. (Reminds me of an old joke. If got moustache = father, therefore no moustache = mother.)

On top of that, some tried to argue that they are unaware they are leeching on someone else’s wireless network because the system picked up the strongest signal on its own. That is somewhat like water from the sprinklers of your neighbor’s lawn spraying over onto yours and then you get to enjoy it because nothing was put up to stop that water from spraying over.

How absurd! Would anyone accept that it would not be theft, to take another person’s wallet, and use the contents within, when he has left it unattended, or worst, when he is not even aware of it? Would it be acceptable to suggest the owner has made the intention clear to others that they are invited to share it because anyone else who didn’t want to share it would have kept everything and left it inaccessible? For these people, they won’t even bother to ask and make sure! Just take and use lah, ok one!!

And what happens if some of that money in that wallet had belonged to someone else and that person didn’t have the right to share it? It is his own responsibility to the owner, right?

Above which, do the cheese-pies who know that they are able to pick up another person’s signals not know they can select their own wireless network as the default connection on Windows XP? So what is that crap about someone else’s water getting onto your lawn and you shouldn’t be held responsible for using it, when in this case, you know you can make sure you will be using your own water?

The kind of lame arguments these cheese-pies use to justify their shameless theft is not only pathetic. It is simply ludicrous. But what can we really expect from some selfish and self-justifying cheapos, right?

HDB cannot provide figures for each housing project but insist it is running a deficit + subsidisying buyers of new HDB flats

“Our annual financial reports and figures are officially audited and they are available publicly for scrutiny.”

I have talked about this before, but here’s a summary.

First of all, I cannot even agree with how the HDB justify the cost of The land. How that value came about without any public bidding is hard for anyone to accept the figure. Doesn’t bl**dy matter if the ‘valuation’ had been very scientific or that it had come from whatever reputable gover-min department.

Next, it is even harder to even believe money is paid out of the HDB to the SLA (which is technically from one of the gover-min’s pocket to another). So, how the finally cost of a unit of flat – which cannot be revealed – is deduced to justify that they is a ‘real and substantial subsidy’ being paid out is beyond me.

In other words, the HDB can go on and claimed that these ‘subsidies is what made up a $380 million deficit, but people like me will continue to believe what I do know – i.e. that the flats are built at a really low costs [about $50,000 – $60,000 per unit] and a four room flat is then sold at least $130,000 – dependent on location – earning the HDB a nice profit of at least $70,000 per unit. Their so-called ‘subsidy’ is in reality just a discount.

In my considered opinion, the HDB could have better convinced me of its huge losses by pointing to the large number of unsold flats. But I guess they can’t because that would have burst that well maintained ‘subsidised public housing’ illusion, wouldn’t it? Above which, to know that there is a large unsold supplied of property might bring certain ‘unspeakable calamities’ to the artificially ‘booming’ property market and that would have really hurt the earnings of some companies and also the stock market.

Polytechnics are tertiary institutions and thus their students have no concessions on public transports

According to the some PR fellow who replied to the suggestion to give Poly students concession, she said it would add on to the burden of full fare paying passengers because they ‘cross-subsidise’ those who are given concessionary fares.

Funny how no one found it absurd that the parents of poly students are given these students the money to pay full fares to ‘cross-subsidisying’ someone else children in JC. Would that not mean that if these parents are also commuters on public transports, they would be shouldering a double share of ‘cross subsidies‘? And just why no one asked for the JC student concessions be removed to somewhat ease the burden of full fare paying passengers is completely beyond me.

In my opinion, the public transport operators are the least concern with our burdens but more of their bottom line because they raise fares every year in spite of the humongous profits they are making. Just when have they ever pro-actively reduce the burden of commuters? That’s Singapore’s ‘World Worst Class’ Public Transport for you.

‘Keeping Left’ on escalators wouldn’t work. Do away with it

Yep. It definitely wouldn’t work, claims some assholes who wrote to the papers. And the reasons given to do away with it include:

* my considered opinion about these absurdly lame comments in brackets

In actual fact, it doesn’t matter which side you like to keep to. Those who doesn’t want to walk or rush just need the common sense to stand in-line behind the first person who wants the same. And unless you are absolutely sure there aren’t people behind you who would want to rush, just keep to one side, alright? * sigh *

Pump prices and Electric tariffs have not gone down in accordance with oil prices because crude oil prices was not the sole determinant.

Spokeswoman Eva Ho for ExxonMobil Asia-Pacific – the largest retail pump operator here – said crude oil was not the sole determinant for petrol prices. She said factors include internationally-traded wholesale petrol prices, costs of storage, and currency exchange rates.

But then how is it that prices always go up when the crude prices go up if that is the case? It would then be reasonable to assume that the other factors would have very little weight, if not almost constant. Crude prices was at all time high of US$78.40 a barrel and US$1 is trading at S$1.5896 on that day. That means the cost would per barrel would be S$124.62. Yesterday, the crude prices closed at US$50.18, and US$1 is trading at S$1.5375. In other words, crude would cost Singapore S$77.15 a barrel. In other words, even if I factored in the exchange rate, crude prices would have been a good 38.1% cheaper

Meantime, the SingPower tariffs quarterly according to the past three months’ oil prices, was only recently cut for January-to-March by 1.62 cents to 20.02 cents / kwh. That’s a pathetic 7.49%, which means that storage of crude + cost to generate power from crude (wages, cost to operate machinery etc.) + transmission of power has gone up 30.61% for SingPower. And SingPower expect us to buy this bullshit?!

Also, a posting on Mr Brown’s said prices were up to S$1.757 per litre in July 2006 and even considering a 5% discount it would still be S$1.669 per litre. If that was Shell Formula 92UL, the prices as of 21.06.2006 including discount is S$1.408, which means it has only come down at most 15.6%. And if that was Shell V-Power 98UL, the prices as of 21.06.2006 including discount is S$1.691, which means it has even gone up 1.32%! And even if I had assumed the petrol companies to be completely scrupulous and all prices have come down uniformly at 15.6% for the entire range of product, that is still a far cry from the crude prices decrease of 38.1%! Do the petrol companies think I am an idiot to assume that cost of storage etc. for the petrol companies have actually gone up an absurd 22.5% ?!

And somehow, my common sense tells me that no one took delivery of the crude oil at US$78.40. In other words, that price was merely speculative, and the person taking delivery of the real stock of crude delivered will definitely pay less. In other words, some other poor sod – like this fellow in Mitsui Oil (Asia) – has already paid for the speculative losses and the real profits have gone somewhere else. Otherwise, just how these oil companies continue to profit when the crude prices keep going up?