I have written something about these comments before:
Lao Lee said voters must be “daft” if they found fault with the government’s gahmen’s housing policies, and cautioned Singaporeans not to cast a protest vote against the ruling party over this.
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He also said if National Development Mini$ter Mah Bow Tan Mabok Tongue is unable to defend this policy, ‘he deserves to lose’ at the next general election, he quipped, to laughter from the participants, including a chuckling Mr Mah.
The Tali-PAP is a master in ‘dividing the people’. Previously it was about stayers and quitters, then heart-landers and cosmopolitans. Now the divide is between existing home owners and those aspiring to be home owners.
As a person who has already bought a HDB flat, and has about another 12 years to pay it off, I ain’t complaining too much about the price I paid for mine. After all, I can’t even get a new flat of the same size now even if I could afford the current prices. (Affordable housing is a misnomer when you need to work the entirety of the better part of your life – between 15 ~ 30 years – to pay it off.)
Lao Lee thinks we would be daft if we do not like housing prices to go up. The fact is, even though I may not like the idea of my own flat losing value, there is no use when I can’t realize the gains I have made on my property because I have to pay for even more for another one. That’s not mentioning the possibility of the future generation not being able to own their own homes. In other words, we would be truly daft if we do not want to see some changes to the current insane housing policy.
My personal opinion is this, if Lao Lee seriously want to see how well Mabok Tongue can defend the current housing policies, he can send Mabok to Hougang SMC and contest against Low Thia Khiang. On top of which, raise the ante and send Grace Fu to contest in Potong Pasir too, or have her contest where Kenneth Jeyaratnam will be contesting in the next election.
The result of these two contests will certainly be a good opinion poll on how the policy stands among Singaporeans. If the Tali-PAP is confident that its mini$ter$ can defend their policies well, it will stand the chance to recover the two opposition wards too.
Personally, I think the result would be a foregone conclusion… and I suggest one person reflect upon his remarks and perhaps on one April Fool’s day or a particular Parliament session put on a Daffy Duck costume.
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From the TODAY Freesheet (April 10, 2010)
Despite having to compete against the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) Tali-PAP electoral machine, the Opposition has been unable to work closely with one another. This undermines the Opposition collectively.
Some time ago, someone taught me that the strength of something may also be its weakness. For e.g. Those which is hard will be brittle, and those that has high tensile strength will be soft.
So while the argument that unity is strength may sound reasonable, a unified front by all of Singapore’s opposition parties may be the equivalent of putting them all in the same boat. All it needs is one careless motherfxxker mofo, and the entire boat sinks with them.
Consider this, would it be reasonable for the Workers’ Party or the Singapore People’s Party to defend the position of another opposition party member if he makes a insensitive remarks to certain races or religious groups?
The editor of this article is either too idealistic, or simply politically naive.
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Are hotel hourly rates necessary?
Letter from Soh Ah Yuen TODAY Freesheet (Apr 28, 2010)
I refer to “Will budget hotels review operations?” (April 22) concerning court proceedings against the owner of Shing Hotel at Kitchener Road for renting out hotel rooms by the hour to prostitutes.
Singapore is not Malaysia, which has long highways.
There, motorists sometimes break their journey to make use of hotels enroute, to perhaps have a shower and catch a few hours of sleep before driving on. This is done primarily with safety in mind.
Alarm bells should therefore ring for the relevant authorities when hotels here rent out their rooms by the hour. It does not require much detective work to uncover the illegal side of their operations.
The operators of such hotels should be made to account for why they would want to rent out their rooms in this way.
If this is enforced strictly, it will save the authorities precious time playing a cat-and-mouse game with the operators.
Soh Ah Yuen may believe it is a great idea to eradicate the problem by prohibiting hotels from renting their rooms by the hour, but let’s take a look at how effective the crackdowns have been.
In fact, the fight against smut has gone on for awhile. Let’s go further back and look at how it started with the sleazy pubs and bars and massage parlors at Joo Chiat. While Chan Soo Sen can proudly claim that he has been successful in eliminating the smut from Joo Chiat, it has merely moved on to one section of Geylang. When the problem of Joo Chiat SMC is now the problem of Aljunied GRC, is the problem really solved?
Next, the crackdown on street walkers has probably gone on for almost a year. There is no doubt that the Singapore Police Force has been efficient when one look at the number of arrests made in each operation. But the question is, in spite of the efficiency of the police, was the crackdown at all effective when we now have reports that street walkers spilling over into Jalan Besar (outside the Petain Road & Deskar Road area), People’s Park & China Town, Lavender and even as far as Kovan? These crackdowns are as good as excising a tumor only to find the cancer spreading to other parts of the body. In fact, this is like the Vietnam War where we have a large body count to show, but no significant progress is made in the war.
The crackdown has also driven the pimps to now take their business online to websites and forums. I am almost amazed by the resilience shown here, whoever running these prostitute rings seems to have adopted Mao Zedong’s concept of guerilla warfare and strike where they are least expected.
In view of how the ‘contagion’ evolved in response to law enforcement, does Soh Ah Yuen really think prohibiting hotel hourly rates will serve as an effective measure to put an end to this? Consider the scenario where people rent out rooms in private property, which means the problem now move into the heart of residential areas and not just near them. On top of which, what about people ‘doing a Jack Neo’ – buying cars and installing curtains in them so they can take a woman for a quick romp in car parks?
Are these scenarios more appealing to Soh Ah Yuen?
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A biker buang his bike & die at ECP, made me jam for 45mins + $3 ERP! He’s probably going to hell because of that! – Aaron Ong Shaocheng
I used to rant a lot when I am caught in a jam. I will usually direct my vitriol on the other road users for not keeping to their lanes or failing to maintain a constant speed and slowing down for no reasons at the ERP gantries or speed camera.
However, I’ll keep my mouth shut when someone has lost his life in a traffic accident. There is no need to guess the deceased is a motorcyclist most of the time. The reason being that I have many friends who are motorcyclists, and no one deserved such a death.
Personally, I really wondered, whether the cost of education spent on this Aaron Ong Shaocheng (allegedly an A*Star scholar as well) is wasted. Then again, the idea of education that Confucius have more than 2000 years ago is very different from what we are doing now. Back then, the idea was to ‘educate’ people in manners and rituals, so that everyone will behave in a defined and harmonious way within the society. These days, education just cramp into our heads the hard skills of science – chemistry, mathematics, physics and what not. Abilities in these hard skills become the standard one’s intelligence and education while the soft skills of ‘learning how to be a proper human being and not a beast’ take a backseat.
Morality is a big word that no one dares to talk about and you get beaten with the stick labelled ‘self righteousness’ for simply talking about it. Even school teachers refrain from disciplining students because of parents’ complaints. But when children are not showed why they are disciplined but instead those who attempt to discipline are punished, what is there to expect from these children when they grow up? They have barely understand what is not socially acceptable, because their parents gave them the impression they have done no wrong.
Aaron Ong definitely won’t be the first nor the last of self-centered, compassion lacking beasts. But I’ll do one thing for sure when I find out what’s his car license number. That is, if I ever see his car in one of those minor accident, I will wind down the window and shout at him: “Serves you right! Thank God you and your stinking piece of iron scrap will be off road tomorrow. I am quite sure traffic will be smoother and it’ll save me some money on ERP because of that, you c**bai kia!”
