Category: Rants

Random Discourse – Workers’ Party Manifesto on Public Housing

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Finally browsed through Chapter 8 – the Public Housing portion – of the Workers’ Party’s [WP] 33-page manifesto. While I had to admit that the WP meant well by suggesting that the housing prices be pegged to median incomes, as a current lessee owner of a HDB flat with a vested interest in the continual appreciation of its value, I am duly concerned with the impact of such a move on the value of my flat.

That has really nothing to do with Mah Bow Tan’s fear mongering, because my common sense tells me that if their plan goes through it is almost certain that there will be some depreciation in the value of resale flats. After all, wouldn’t there be a reduction in demand for resale flats as first time applicants (except for those who are desperate enough to pay a high premium for a resale) would be enticed to purchase only new flats instead? Or perhaps the WP is betting on the fact that since Permanent Residents [PRs] can only get a resale, they would be the ones keeping the prices stable? But wouldn’t that drive PRs to private properties?

How is the WP going to assure those who have currently overpaid for their flats and still servicing their loans to accept such an arrangement? Even while the impact maybe very little to me since I bought mine more than 10 years ago (though I am still servicing my loans), I am quite sure many of us will like to know how much this move would really cost current property owners. The WP must do more by give voters the specifics so they can understand that this bitter pill they have to swallow is all for the long term well being of future generations of Singaporeans. Otherwise it would be be difficult for some voters to support this plan. Basically, we need to know whether the potential financial losses we will suffer will just be biting this bullet for the short term [一时的痛] or whether it would become a never ending pain on our chest [在我们胸口永远的痛]. To put it in an analogy, some people maybe able to accept getting slashed and bleeding for a short while, but it will require far more convincing to have people accept the need to amputate an arm or a leg even if they are told their lives depend on it. If WP wants to tell me that neither a slashing or an amputation is going to happen, convince me! I am all ears.

~ * ~

Next, let me move on to the convoluted rubbish that Mah Bow Tan has been spewing lately. If he stopped after talking about the prospective losses that current home owners may suffer, that would have been good enough since that would have divided the electorate. People with vested interest would have jumped out to condemn the WP and the damage would have been done. But he went rambling on to the point that it is now becoming ludicrous. At times, there is seriously no need to exaggerate but of course the People’s Action Party’s [PAP] modus operandi is to make it sound so bad that we all get confused.

The vitriol and diatribe against the WP’s housing proposal in specific exceeds everything else that the government has thrown at the opposition. Has the WP’s proposal seriously harmed some ‘core interest’ some where? If it is true, I am not sure nor convinced that these ‘core interest’ are in the best interest of Singapore or Singaporeans.

From what I have gathered, Mah has called the WP’s housing proposal as ‘irresponsible’ and he suggested that for the WP to be able to pay for it, the WP would either have to cut spending in education, health care or defence. He said if the WP isn’t doing any of that, it would then have to raise taxes or dip into the reserves. He even suggest that the WP has an insidious, sinister and ulterior motive here by ‘reminding’ us that the WP had opposed the Elected President [EP] scheme and that so-called Chief Valuer which determined the price of the land is under the EP’s office.

He might as well have suggested that we should not think of the WP logo as a hammer, but that of a big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood *HoOOOoOOOOwl*. In spite of my exceptionally low opinion of Mah, I gave what he said some thought over the past few days, and these are some of the things I have thought about…

First of all, the government has given out 3.2 billion in a so-called ‘Growth and Share’ package, put S$4 billion that it had drawn earlier for the Resilience Package back into the past reserves and yet spent another 3.4 billion ‘longer term social investments for households’ this year. I am quite sure even though this maybe a one time windfall, is the government telling us that in other years, it doesn’t have any money which can be used to finance what the WP is proposing? If Mah is going to complain that by doing so it means the government would have no money for these packages and social investments, I wondered whether he has considered that when the people no longer need to slave their ass off paying for their pathetic little HDB flat, they would not only have more savings in their CPF, but also disposable income (because rentals will fall and thus slow down the increase in cost of living). Once that happens, it would have negated the need for one times hand-outs, or even Eldercare fund and Medifund top-ups. In short, it may probably be a zero sum game…

Secondly, Mah even gone so far to suggest that the WP’s plan is as good as raiding the national reserves. I sincerely wondered how is he going to substantiate any of that, since no one even know the exact details of the arcane mathematical formula (allegedly based on market conditions and valuation principles) used by this Chief Valuer to determine the value of the land in the first place. Mah would have us believe the land is really worth so much simply because he said so! That’s not mentioning that from what Mah had said it gives me the perception that the reserves is like some vampiric machine sucking our life blood into a nutrient pool. We are told that this nutrient pool is kept for the good of us just in case of hungry days. But many a time even during those days we are told to look at it to satiate our hunger – much like Cao Cao has told his troops to quench their thirst by looking up at the plums [望梅止渴]. Sincerely, if he wants to talk about raiding the reserves, talk about the million of dollars he is receiving every year. Last I checked, the ratio of their pay to Singapore’s GDP per person is *gasp* above 40. I take that to mean that if monthly median income is measely $2,500, the minister would be earning at least $100,000.

Even if I were to believe him, wouldn’t that mean to say that there is no way we can ever determine just how much national reserves there is in the first place since land prices can fluctuate. So how does he know whether the reserves are getting raided in the first place when the land’s value isn’t already fixed? In fact, at one point of time I thought we had a ‘perpetually growing’ national reserves since land prices can only go up as population growth and economic demands increase. I laughed that silly thought off as quickly as I thought of it.

Thirdly, I suddenly remembered when ex-President Ong Teng Cheong (the only President not given a state funeral) asked to be given the the details of how much reserves there is, he was rebuffed and told that it will take 52 man-years to do so. Now I understand why no one can do that for the ex-President. In fact, I even believe whoever told the ex-President that it can be done in 52 man-years must be frakking joking. After all, when the value of all the unsold land is yet to be determined, just who the hell can work out just how much reserves is really there to tell the President? Perhaps we should ask President Nathan if it bothers him that actually there is no way to know whether the reserves has grown or shrunk. In other words, just what exactly is the point of having an EP at all?

Either way, I wouldn’t go into talking about how little was paid out to obtain the land in the first place. Neither would I even go into explaining that this so-called subsidy is really nothing more than a discount (and thus the losses the HDB suffered is not real but hypothetical). But I would like to remind Mr Mah a simple fact – there is no use telling those who can’t even afford a HDB flat in the first place that its value would always be increasing in the years to come. Please wake up to the reality that some young people are already asking, “What exactly is the point for me to work so hard, and yet that house seem so distant and out of reach?” The Singapore Dream is dead! One can even tell some of these young people are angry, and all this talk about ‘asset enhancement’ is more akin to asking man adrift in the open sea to drink sea water to quench his thirst.

Really, stop treating us like idiots. Is there a predicament here preventing the government from being more transparent on how the land slated for building HDB flats is priced? If not, I am forced to believe that the government simply hold the people it claimed to serve in contempt. I am also forced to believe that the public housing scheme is nothing more than an scheme to siphon off our hard earned money into the national reserves for the GIC and Temasek Holdings unaccountable investments.

Recommended Reads:
InsanePoly: Vote for Change

Random Discourse – Workers’ Party Manifesto on Public Transport

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I couldn’t find time to write lately, not because I am busy but rather due to my bad time management. Fortunately I didn’t manage my time so badly that I had to skip the “BBC Bloggers evening” (held at Pierside, One Fullerton) organised by Dunbar-Jones & Associates on April 19th. The primary objective of this event was of to introduce the Asia Business Index which BBC had put up. There were 9 others bloggers (such as Mr. Tan Kin Lian, Donaldson Tan from New Asia Republic and friend Darryl Kang) invited to meet with Jeremy Hillman and Francesca Unsworth of BBC in an exchange of insights and perspectives about Singapore and region.

The 9 other bloggers invited are definitely better known in blogosphere or social media where I am a nobody. I rarely get more than 500 hits a day and that only a good day after I get listed on Singapore Daily! Thus, I am actually surprised that I was even invited at all. I am greatly humbled after the free and cordial exchange of views with many of those present. Of course the bulk of the things discussed surround the upcoming General Elections since Parliament was dissolved that same day. A few of the bloggers present have given me many new perspectives of certain matters (such as certain opposition figures) and they made a big impact on some of my views. Some even gave me suggestions on how I can further improve my blog.

The views shared at the event inspired me to write this post even though I have yet to read up the manifesto or the election promises of various political parties. Fact is, I haven’t been actively catching up with the news lately – thousands of news articles in my RSS had remained unread. Even so, I noticed that the Workers’ Party [WP] is on the receiving end of bulk of the flak from the ruling party – in particular over the housing policy. In my opinion, the WP gave as good as it took, if not better. Combined with the shabby performance of cabinet ministers like Lim Swee Say on Mediacorp Channel 8, along with the fielding of new candidates like Tin Pei Ling and ex-Chief of Army Ah Beng Chan Chun Sing, much of the ruling party’s aura of invincibility has been diminished, if not shattered.

I will leave the matter of housing to a latter post since that is a more complicated issue, and also because I need to cool off as I personally considered the People’s Action Party [PAP] to have betrayed Singaporeans as far as the promise to provide affordable housing is concerned. I am sick of the lame excuses Mah Bow Tan is giving to justify a policy that enslaves the people and siphon off our money into a national reserves for the unaccountable investment purposes of the GIC and Temasek Holdings.

From what I have read, the WP has allegedly proposed to nationalise the public transport companies in their manifesto. Libertarians and free market supporters will definitely cry foul over the WP’s suggestion. However, I am not here to defend the merit (or the lack of) in WP’s proposal on public transport, though I certainly object to (if not reject) what Lim Hwee Hua said when she dismissed the idea. Let me paraphrase what the minister had said: “to nationalise public transport, it would be ‘a step backwards’ in the level of services commuters currently enjoy. Nationalisation of public transport in many other countries had led to inefficiency”

First of all, there is no direct competition between these so-called ‘private’ public transport companies. It is a known fact that any bus service that runs along MRT lines are removed and neither SBS Transit or SMRT has any bus services competing with each other directly along the same routes. We even read very often on the news that services are planned in such a way to ‘compliment’ one another. While all of these sounds good on paper, no one had considered that the impact of service disruption to the SMRT and the lack of alternative is in itself a form of inefficiency. For e.g. the recent East-West line breakdown for 2 hours about 2 week ago, and a possible attempted suicide last Friday near midnight at Sembawang MRT station has caused a major disruption to the lives of many people. Whenever something like this happened, commuters scrambled to catch taxis or find a bus service that would put them in the general direction of their destination – often at great loss of time and costs – because the transport planners considered it ‘inefficient’ to have ‘duplicating’ services.

The bus service itself isn’t any better. Anyone who has taken some of the bus services like SBS 2, SBS 32, SBS 51, TIBS 61, TIBS 67, SBS 154, SBS 174 or SBS 196 from end to end would wonder whether an inmate of the Institute of Mental Health [IMH] planned the roundabout route which can take one up to two hours to travel from end to end. If it puzzles anyone why I would be complaining about a 2-hour bus trip, that because that’s the same amount of time I took to travel from Hsinchu City to Taipei City when I was in Taiwan in 1993. My rough estimate is that Hsinchu to Taipei would be the equivalent from Singapore to Muar (or less). Now consider the fact that Singapore itself is probably not very much bigger than Greater Taipei. The only bright spot about these long bus rides is that at the end of the day, one might actually discover roads or streets in Singapore that he wouldn’t discover otherwise. Is Lim Hwee Hua telling us that this is actually *gasp* efficient?! I wouldn’t want to start ranting about taxis, since I have ranted enough about it before. (See: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6])

Thus the truth is this: the local public transport companies have a de-facto monopoly and we certainly don’t have much choice nor say about it. With the MRT being the main mode of transport for the majority, the government wants us to believe that it is very well run and a superb world class transport system. Much has been reported about the international acclaim given to our public transport, but does it really matter when everyone you talked to feels otherwise? On the social media front, one only need to include the hashtag #smrtruinslives in Twitter to get a daily feel on how the very people who used it felt. I personal wondered whether a google search with the keywords “Singapore MRT sucks” might turn up even more horror stories.

Beside that, it is public knowledge that the largest shareholder of SMRT is Temasek Holdings (around 54 ~ 55%) while the Singapore Labour Foundation – a stat board under the Ministry of Manpower – is ComfortDelgro’s single largest shareholder (12.2% stake). That simply means, despite the facade of private-owned transport companies, it is actually some what state-owned. In short, we are thus provided a system that has the worst aspects of both nationalised and privatised public transport company. It is a state-owned monopoly where we can do shit about, combined with state-owned companies pretending to be private companies which primary objective is to create value for shareholders (i.e. be profitable). As such, the public transport companies can almost raise fares annually citing an increase in operating costs (rubber stamped by the so-called “Public Transport Council” [PTC]), without any tangible improvement in serivces they provide at all. It begs the question, would the WP’s offer be any worse or inefficient at all compared to what we are really having now? The WP’s proposal is certainly not something Lim Hwee Hua can dismiss with a few words or the wave of Harry Potter’s magic wand.

The fact that we have complained, ranted and whined over this so often in the past few years showed us that the PAP has failed in providing a solution. All the PAP is capable of, is raise fares – i.e. throw money out of our pockets – at the problem even when it has been ineffective. At most, such measures worked only for a few weeks before everything returns to ‘normalcy’. But before that, the main stream media would have overwhelmed us with glaring reports of the purported ‘effectiveness’ and ‘success’ of these harebrained measures.

I must say I have enough of this bullshit, and I am open to any ideas – even radical ones such as those of the WP – other than the ineffective PAP ones which not only failed to solved the problem, but had in fact worsen the situation by increasing the burden of our wallets.

Random Discourse – ‘Softie’ NSFs

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I guess this may have been funny had it been an April Fool’s joke. Even though it is his own fault for asking his maid to carry his full pack, I felt a little sorry for the attention this full-time National Servicemen [NSF] got. I remembered that when I was doing my National Service [NS], some of us were ‘given a hard time’ by our seniors (i.e. NSFs who are enlisted earlier) simply because the SAF made it a point to improve the conditions an NSF has to go through. (Sadly, the SAF’s attempt to build up the morale and the pride NSF has in NS was not well received. That is in spite of the fact that every Singaporean son only gets NS as his ‘reward’ while foreigners gets our jobs and a good life at our expense.)

Let me talk about the kind of ‘hard time’ some of us got. When I was enlisted in 1992, some of my older poly classmates who had already completed their NS were appalled that I was actually given nights-off and long weekends as a recruit! By the time I passed out of Basic Military Training [BMT] and posted to the unit, our seniors told us we had it easy because they had to go for 5km runs every morning while my batch only had to do so every other day. Doesn’t matter they also enjoyed the same benefits we had! To make up for our allegedly ‘good life’, we were made scapegoats for mistakes by our seniors and ended up pulling extra duty or suffered confinements on weekends.

By the time I am about to complete my full-time stint, the SAF was serving catered dinner in some camps. And while some people still complained about how bad catered food from the Singapore Food Industries [SFI] is, its food was markedly better compared to cook house food made by NSF cooks! Anything the SFI served was better than the hard boiled eggs which we can use as rocks to kill enemy troops, noodles that has the tensile strength of rubber bands, lumps of cooked rice that individual grains are not identifiable, and Milo that taste like muddy water in the longkang (aka drain). That’s not mentioning unappetizing looking vegetables with worms. My platoon mate consoled me saying that this simply means the vegetable is safe to eat because no the worms would have survived if there is an overuse of pesticides. He even reasoned we should treat the worms themselves as extra protein as long as we didn’t notice them.

It was ironical that we were told SFI supplies food for SIA on their planes too, but I was grateful that SFI at least conduct surveys to find out how we felt about it. I was happy no one will single me out for special treatment – such as ‘extra ingredient’ in my food or drinks (e.g. Eno to help cleanse my bowels, saliva to show their brotherly love, or water boiled with their unwashed socks soaked in them) – if I complained a little too much. That is why these days the armed forces have aunties serving food in the cook house on a plate with a smile, and she would gladly to give the NSF more food compared to the dour-faced NSF cook who would verbally abuse soldiers with Hokkien comments which never failed to mention the privates of our mothers. Such verbal abuse are also common place from our Non-Commission Officers [NCOs] and officers when they mete out punishments! While that would be considered as abuse these days, back then it was treated as a form of character training.

Being posted to the Armor formation in ulu (i.e. remote) Lim Chu Kang, we were driving 30 year-old American equipment like M113s (rumored to be leftovers from the Vietnam War) or AMX-13s, which are essentially Israeli rejects from the Six Day War. It doesn’t matter what improvements Singapore Automative Engineering [SAE] has put into those antiques. Not to mention, we can still remember those World War II looking Mercedes 3-tonners which we suspect were given as war compensation by the German government to Israel, and subsequently given to us by the Israeli government out of good will. These equipment made us felt closer to soldiers from the wars before and not that of a glamorous high-tech defense force we see on TV advertisements. After all, we were picking off targets at 300 meters which looked no bigger than our thumbnails using M-16s with iron sights and wore tin pots (WW2 looking steel helmets). We can only dream about state of the art equipment like the Bionix, Leopard 2s, the Primus, SAR-21s complete with a scope and laser… and Kevlar helmets!

So what is the point I am making here with regards to this NSF who asked his maid to carry his full pack? The point I am making is, we are all considered ‘soft’ compared to the batches that comes before us. In fact, when compared to the Israeli trained hell-troopers with their hellish NS stories, we are all ‘wimps’. At times, it makes me wonder whether those guys opened can food with rocks, has teeth that cuts like high-speed steel and kill enemies in one blow with fist that are harder than diamonds. It probably won’t be far-fetched if we compared them to Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 stories.

As far as I am concerned, as long as the training programs are up to date and there is no downgrading of the physical fitness and weapons proficiency level required of our new soldiers, there is really nothing for me to complain about. That is also part of the reasons why I object to any further reduction of national service duration or calls for its abolition.


Picture: courtesy of Terence Foong

Some may talk about how this guy looked like a wuss (or a p*ssy) and this may present an image to our potential aggressors that Singapore’s NSmen are soft city boys who will prove a walkover in combat. But the fact remains that our soldiers are nothing more than ‘holiday soldiers’ (not even weekend ones) who are called up to train up to 40 days every year. We can only hope that our advanced military equipment will give us the edge, and our Operationally Ready NSmen (or reservists) remember enough from their 2-year full-time and sporadic 10 in-camp training that will kick in during combat, so that they can be an effective deterrent to our potential enemies and hold up long enough for UN intervention.

Face it, we are no Israel even when some considered certain political realities between our nations. It is perhaps the hope of everyone of us that in our lifetime we will never experience war, and the SAF will continue serve nothing more than a deterrent to potential enemies who might consider military adventurism as ‘an extension of state policy… by other means’.

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Commentary – Post 80’ers and Tin Pei Ling

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It is baffling why Tin Pei Ling is getting more attention than the other new candidates introduced. I dare say she is probably the most talked about person, and has more attention online than all the cabinet mini$ter$ put together.

Frankly, I didn’t really cared about the candidates that the Tali-PAP have introduced. Why do I want to care about more of the same shit? Had her name not flooded my news feed on Facebook, I wouldn’t give a damn about her either. Anyway, my first comment when I saw her picture was this – Singapore is not Japan, the Tali-PAP is not the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), and PM Baby Lee certainly isn’t Koizumi Junichiro. After all, while Koizumi had sent his party’s pretty candidates as ‘election assassins’ against his opponents and win, Ms Tin probably would have not stood a chance if she ran alone in an Single Member Constituency [SMC]. In fact, it makes one wonder if she would stand a chance even against aunty Lina Chiam. Let’s not forget that this is not 1976 so stop comparing with the respected ex-Speaker Mr Tan Soo Khoon already.

I wonder what goes on in the mind of the those who made the decision to field her. After all, it reflects poorly on those who made the decision to chose Ms Tin as a candidate. No matter good she is, there will be a perception that in part she received the call because of her husband’s connections. If those who chose her thought that she could pass scrutiny, they may have overestimated her ability. Worse of it all – which many netizens felt – they may not have cared if she could pass scrutiny. To quote one of them, “Tin Pei Ling looks suspiciously like the PAP’s way of giving Singaporeans the middle finger.” I am not surprised if it is not too far from the truth, and probably we haven’t seen nothing yet because they might even make her a mini$ter.

On the other hand, there are those who pointed out that the over-reaction is unnecessary. Consider countries like Brazil or Venezuela, where it is not surprising for beauty queens to contest in elections. Or even in Italy or Japan, where a porn star / AV actress managed to win. While these voters may still question whether Ms Tin has the political acumen to be a candidate, they do not really care whether she’s a ‘sweet young thing’ or not. I felt the reaction to her is because that Singaporeans are not only particularly annoyed with the certainty that she will enter Parliament as part of a Tali-PAP GRC team, but over the fact that some good opposition candidates (such as Sylvia Lim) may possibly never made it into Parliament thanks to the thrice damned and accursed GRC system thought out by a dog-mother snake.

I’ll leave it to the other cyber-carrion eaters to pick Ms Tin apart for whatever other reasons they can think of – for e.g. too young, no substance, showing off, or acting cute. Personally I object to some of the things done to drag even the other aspects of her personal life through the mud – such as the attempt which suggests that she broke a previous relationship with another man and be with her husband for political reasons. If the Straits Stooge Times were to accuse anyone of ‘gutter-journalism’, let me remind everyone what it have done to Josie Lau and her team when they attempted to take over AWARE in 2009. Even before the whole affair was over, we knew more about the personal and private life of some of these people – the kids they have, where they worked, their spouse, the church their worshiped in etc. As such, I find it rather hypocritical of Siew Kum Hong to speak in defense of Ms Tin, when he sided with the side that brought the matter to the press in the AWARE affair. Seriously, where the hell was he when the local media drag the privacy of private citizens through the mud? Oh… he was helping Dana Lam and frankly I am not sure how much we know about her.


Mar 6, Hong Kong – Citizens march in protest

But I digress… A friend showed me an old article in 2007 on the Tali-PAP site and I do not really like what I read. On what basis can she justify that the poor have not gotten poorer? I doubt her perspective has changed in the past few years, and I wondered how is she going to position herself in the position of the people and serve them with this kind of perspective? That’s not forgetting a recent video where she said that healthcare costs is ‘low and manageable’. Seriously, was she aware of the hoops of fire we need to jump through to attain Khaw Boon Wan’s ‘$8 bypass-operation healthcare nirvana’?

I believe it was Mini$ter Ng Eng Hen ‘Eng Eng’ who said that the party isn’t looking for ‘Yes Man’ when they select their candidates. So far Ms Tin has failed to show us that she is anything but. In fact, while some Tali-PAP backbenchers would at times speak eloquently and even passionately (such as Lily Neo) against certain issues, when have they voted against or even abstained when their votes are counted? Frankly, all this talk about serving the people are empty promises to me, when Tali-PAP MPs would vote for policies that are forced down our throats.


Post 80’ers lying on road in protest

I also recalled that one of the Tali-PAP ‘old birds’ – can’t remember who, since I can’t find that article – who said that the online flaming of Ms Tin isn’t helpful and it will deter young people from coming into politics and to serve the people. At the age of 27, Tin Pei Ling would classify as one of the “post-80’ers” [八十后]. As far as I am concerned, I personally don’t think she is too young to dabble in politics since it is a trend in this part of Asia – in Hong Kong in particular, and even in China for the young to step forth and fight for greater equality and better future for themselves.

Globalisation and unfettered capitalism rapidly marginalises not only the ageing, but even the young. The entire economic climate has been made worse by ‘Quantitative Easing’, in which the U.S. simply just print money without any backing and export its inflation to the rest of the world. The young are looking at a bleak future in which they would find it almost impossible to obtain a roof over their own heads, and also to bear the ever increasing burden in the form of high costs of living while wages remained stagnant or even depressed just to stay employed. But compared to those in Hong Kong who needs to lay down on the road in their political struggle (in the recently protests on March 6), Ms Tin’s political path is a paved, unobstructed 4 lane expressway. At least she didn’t have to go on the streets and brave water cannons or the truncheons of riot police compared to some of her contemporaries in other parts of the world. Stick and stones may break my bones, Ms Tin. If someone needs to speak up for you over all these nasty comments, then go back to your comfort zone and stop trying to amuse us.

All said, it is my considered opinion that it is not Ms Tin who need to see a trauma specialist. But rather Singaporeans in her ward who needed one because she would get a free ride on Senior Senile Mini$ter Goh’s shoulders into Parliament and earn at least $15,000 a month, while many fresh graduates would have to struggle with getting a starting pay of $2,500. That reminds me of someone who actually scoffed a year back when a fresh graduate talked about how he has been struggling for almost half a year or more looking for job because he can’t obtain even that starting pay on Plurk. Personally, I have no idea why this person would think that requesting for a starting pay of $2,500 would be too much, when a new HDB flat would cost $350K, and it would take up $1000 a month just to service the loans!

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Senang Diri: Singapore’s defence burden – Something no maid can carry

Random Discourse – Elitism rears its ugly head

2 comments

… Samantha, caller on 91.3 FM’s The Married Men show): “I live in Holland Village, and I just can’t understand why people from the heartlands want to come here. We people are cultured, and you heartlanders are definitely not cultured,” she said.

She defines heartlanders as being “people from Ang Mo Kio, Yishun, Toa Payoh and the nearby Bukit Batok” who “have no manners”, “talk loudly” and wear “cheap clothes from Bugis Street”.

“People who come here are cultured. So if you want to come here, you know, when you’re in Rome, behave like a Roman. When you’re in Holland, behave like us – cultured people. “

Samantha also questioned heartlanders’ ability to afford the things that people in Holland Village enjoyed, such as a bowl of laksa, which she claims is more expensive in Holland Village than in Bedok.

But before I proceed, I would like to thank Senior Senile Mini$ter Goh for coining this word and creating a class divide among Singaporeans. Terms like these, along with “quitters” and “stayers” creates nothing more but division among the people. While Goh has the respect of many Singaporeans with his allegedly more consultative style of leadership, this ‘divide and conquer’ strategy (which I considered his modus operandi) has never endeared him to me.

I have no idea wat gave Samantha Salamander the idea that heartlanders are all boorish. It is fortunate (for her) that heartlanders generally refer to just HDB dwellers. Otherwise, her ‘people from…’ comment would then include even those living in landed property as long as they are outside Holland Village, and in fact even include some of our mini$ter$ who lived just a stone’s throw away near Sixth Avenue in Bukit Timah. I can’t help chuckle at that when someone pointed that out.

The Straits Stooge Times wrote that “one of her qualms with heartlanders was that they liked to ‘shove and push’ everybody. She added that some Caucasians along Orchard Road had also complained of the same thing.” It certainly appeared to me that to her, the only people who are cultured and mannered are white. It doesn’t matter we have all encountered ill-mannered people from all races and cultures. I am amazed that after so many years after we broke free from British rule, some people haven’t gotten it into their heads that white people are not any more superior, well mannered or cultured! Well done, Salamander!

There was so much outrage to Salamander’s comment that someone even organised a ‘walk about’ at Holland Village, specifically in sandals and singlets on a particular day just to make a point. Salamander had managed to unify Singaporeans when many of those so-called nation building programs have failed. The government gahmen should perhaps give her an award for contributing to Total Defense! Well done, Salamander!

As if all of these isn’t already bad enough, Salamander then apologised and she said she was just ‘slightly insensitive’ when she made those comments. Now, that was an exemplary lesson on how to apologise and yet ensure everyone remained pissed off. Well done, Salamander! Though I wished she would have done a video apology, so that I can put a face to it just like how ‘Boomz!’ goes with Ris Low.

Now, there is talk on several social media platforms on whether this is 91.3FM’s idea of being funny. Some people mentioned that it is rather rare that a listener would be able to call up and get through to the same radio program two days in a row. If this was indeed a prank, it is too early because it is more than a week before April Fool’s. While in general the idea to package something as entertainment to attract listeners is a good one, stomping on the sensitivities of many people is definitely not funny at all. Had this been a real prank, I would expect those who are responsible to not only publicly apologise on TV, but also resign. Do they sincerely expect us to let them get away with this as being ‘slightly insensitive’ after many of us are now riled up?

Rants aside, this episode has spawned a whole lot of discussions among netizens and some interesting comments. I’ll quote one of the interesting exchange below, and indicate them by acronyms to indicate that they came from two different individuals.

Cultured is as cultured does. To claim one is cultured and another is not, is already being pompous. I’d rather be with a so called uncultured person who doesn’t make disparaging remarks to make another seem inferior, than to talk to one who is ‘cultured’ and yet clearly or subtly puts down anyone he or she feels like. – TF

I am not surprised that there is a group of such elitists.. In fact I’ve seen these happening at ‘elite’ schools in Singapore. Such is the failure of segregating our education systems to ‘gifted’ and ‘normal’ streaming. – ET

Actually being in a better stream, doesn’t really make a person look down on those from the “normal” stream, I remember how we used to mix around despite being from different streams. I believe the difference lies within the way our leaders behave. Being the highest paid (thus viewed as extremely successful) and having that ‘better than thou’ attitude with a huge dollop of self-proclaimed ‘we are the elites’ image, many in society are turning into soulless selfish money-comes-first individuals. Thus when people who behave somewhat differently comes into the picture, they are viewed as a lower form of class or culture. Unless you’re wealthy, then the hypocrites will just pander you and say you’re eccentric and true to self and down to earth. Then of course there are the rascists who ironically look down on their own heritage and race, by placing foreigners as those with the de facto class of aspired culture. – TF

… Many would never openly admit but Singaporean society has all along been moving towards worshipping the successful, looking down on the lower group.
… Singaporean educational system have forced emphasis on subjects that will get you to uni/ poly in view of getting great jobs in future and less on personal development. We need to break this. – ET

Sentiments such as those of Salamander are heard time and again (such as those of Wee Shu Min. I cheekily mentioned somewhere in between the above exchange that if I wanted to stretch the truth a little too far, I would have called this some kind of structural discrimination instituted by the Tali-PAP gahmen. It is the social engineering of the Tali-PAP that created this ‘class divide’.

Elitism is not the only problem this country faces. We are now facing the side effects of the Tali-PAP’s ‘Two child policy’ and the de-emphasis of the importance of Chinese education which includes the dissolution of Nantah and the marginalisation of the Chinese educated of that era. These policies of the Tali-PAP definitely play a part in our current predicament whereby we face economic stagnation without an influx of foreign labour or immigrants, and also the seemingly irreversible degradation of Chinese standard among the local born ethnic Chinese in Singapore respectively.

I am not saying we pin the full blame of the side effects of those policies on the gahmen. Unfortunately they are rarely discussed even by opposition candidates. The media of this country has so successfully engineer the false reality of an infallible Tali-PAP gahmen, that even if the opposition candidates were to bring it up they would be summarily dismissed.

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