Month: March 2011

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.

Current Affairs – Opposition Disunity

3 comments

The famous story of Top Horse, Middle Horse, and Weak Horse

Sun Bin (孫臏) was a master strategist who served General Tian of the Kingdom Qi (齊國) in the Warring States Period (戰國時代 476-221 B.C.). General Tian raced horses with the princes of Qi as a hobby, often wagering large sums of money. One day, General Tian came up to Sun for advice on an upcoming horse race, which seemed to be at a draw. As the usual practice went, the contest consisted of three races. The traditional strategy for victory was to pit one’s best, middle, and worst horse against the similar horses of his rival. Sun Bin advised General Tian to race his worst horse against his rival’s best horse, to pit his best horse against his rival’s middle horse, and finally to use his middle horse to compete against his rival’s worst horse. General Tian followed Sun’s advice; after one loss and two wins, General Tian was declared the final winner of the contest. As a good strategist, Sun Bin saw the larger picture and understood that the goal was to win the contest, not each race.

I thought I saw the light at the end of the tunnel when I read that the National Solidarity Party [NSP] is ‘prepared to make way for the Workers’ Party [WP]’ in the Moulmein-Kallang GRC. That was before I read the conditions that Goh Meng Seng (NSP’s Secretary-General) set for the WP, and that is – the NSP will not contest ‘only if the WP sends its top guns there’. By ‘top guns’, he was specifically referring to WP’s Secretary-General and Chairman, Low Thia Kiang and Sylvia Lim respectively.

Goh Meng Seng says that he ‘wants to help the opposition realise its dream of winning a GRC at the coming general election’ and that he wants ‘to see a GRC fall at this election, so that PAP MPs and ministers know there is no safe fortress in GRCs’. As netizen and regular opposition critic ‘Bryan Ti’ suggested – It is probable that Goh Meng Seng is implicitly suggesting to the WP to concentrate its fire power in the Aljunied GRC where their winning chances are higher. If that was the case, the image of Goh Meng Seng with an itch on the left of his face but scratching it with the right hand going behind the neck comes to mind.

Most people would have read the story of the Top Horse, Middle Horse and Weak Horse (see story on right). It is an old example of strategy that many of us would have heard of. Why is Goh Meng Seng fielding his ‘best horses’ – the two former government scholarship holders – in Moulmein-Kallang in the first place? They are going to run up not just against the Tali-PAP, but also against the WP – which would possibly be the most popular opposition party right now. As ‘Bryan Ti’ pointed out, wouldn’t it be better to use them to shore up his own team in Tampines GRC? In fact, that would allow him to concentrate his firepower on the much hated Mah Bow Tan Mabok Tongue on the matter of public housing. Hazel Poa has definitely written on the topic of public housing privately, and also when she was a RP member. Not to mention that I seem to recall seeing a video of Tony Tan (Hazel’s husband) speaking on the matter of bring the cost of public housing down at the RP Rally and Picnic in Hong Lim Park as well. Of course, Goh Meng Seng can’t just say he give up and let WP walk away with this without a considerable loss of face, and thus he throw this outrageous challenge in the face of his former mentor.

It is my opinion that this is an offer that the WP should simply ignore. To abandon either Hougang SMC or Aljunied GRC offers no advantage to the WP at all. (Alternatively, it can just be treacherous and agree to it and then field something else on nomination day.) While this seems like an offer that is beneficial to the opposition as a whole, and setting the stage for the other parties to ‘settle their differences’, it is nothing more than a third rate political ploy that benefits no one other than the NSP itself, and does nothing to cultivate democracy in Singapore.

Most have pointed out that a 3-corner fight benefits the incumbent and does nothing to benefit the voter. But neither does this ‘masak-masak’ (Malay: loosely translated as child’s play) way of deciding who would contest benefit the voters at all. I strongly object to such undemocratic political horse trading and ‘black box’ negotiations. On what basis do the opposition parties decide who should contest which constituency? I had objected to the By Election Effect Strategy (BEES) in which the opposition has for too long abandoned voters in the west side of Singapore, and allowing us ‘no choice’ by giving the Tali-PAP a walkover. The decision to avoid 3-corner fights and deciding on which party would contest is the next worse thing – since a party which I favored might not show up in the end. It annoys me to no end that the opposition parties at times shamelessly talk about how Singapore lacked democracy when they resort to picking the alternative candidates for us without even asking for our opinion in the matter!

Frankly, an opposition party cannot justify that it has worked the ground long enough and the other party asan interloper simply because it has more photos to show on its website or a Facebook page. Take for example Pioneer SMC where I stayed, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), NSP and RP have all shown their interest to contest. The RP has done the most walk abouts in the area, but that does not mean I would vote any RP candidate that contest here. In fact, I don’t even know who the RP will be putting up to contest here. Kenneth Jeyaratnam – its Secretary-General – is perhaps the only face I know. That’s not mentioning, should a SDP candidate ends up as the opposition’s choice to contest in Pioneer, I will be so pissed off that I might deliberately cast a rejected vote even though I may have intended to vote the opposition in the first place. It is a wasteful exercise to make me go to the polls when most of the other people would rather not vote the SDP. However, if there is some form of poll showing that the majority of the voters in Pioneer SMC prefers a particular party’s candidate, I might actually rally behind this candidate as long as I have no reservations about the candidate and his party.

A friend pointed out that the fact that some opposition parties feared a 3-corner fight is that they never in the first place even believe they can win. I agree with this friend, and I do not say this lightly. After all, it is evident that only 25% or less of voters vote indiscriminately in favor of the opposition throughout the years and the middle voters are generally not easily swayed. One simply need to look at the past election results to see it for themselves. So what about 3-corner fights that really spooked some of these opposition parties is the fear of vote dilution. They seem to believe that presenting the voters that it’s either us or those ‘Tali-PAP frakkers’, the voters would happily vote for them as long as they are pissed off with the Tali-PAP. At the very least, even if they lose, they don’t end up losing their deposits. It wouldn’t be stretching it to say that these opposition candidates go to the polls with the same mood as a punter who bought a Toto ticket, hoping that by chance they get lucky with a win. At the same time, they hope to get their bet back even when they don’t win at all!

Thus, it would actually be better for the voters and our election culture to allow 3-corner fights to occur. In Taiwan, multi-corner fights are so common that if there are more than one candidate from the same ‘color’ (be it Blue or Green – the colors of Kuomintang [KMT] and Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] respectively), their voters will simply rally behind and endorse just one candidate of that ‘color’ and ‘discard’ the rest. In Chinese it is called 棄保效應 in which I loosely translate as the ‘Discard and Protect’ Effect. In short, if the opposition parties cannot come to terms (even through non-democratic, ‘black box’ negotiations) and avoid 3-corner fights, let it happen so the candidates who hope to get lucky lose their deposits. Let some of those people who have always been also-rans (and clearly will never get elected) quit because they can no longer afford to run. Otherwise, we will never hear the end of such dogfights between the opposition parties before every election. What purpose does it serve other than to cause voters to lose heart over the lack of the ever illusive (and non-existent) ‘opposition unity’?

Let’s face it, there are no friends forever in politics. Imagine the day when one opposition party comes into power, does anyone think it would actually treasure the past good relationship and so-call ‘camaraderie’ with the other parties?

Tech Review – BlackBerry OS6

Leave a comment

BlackBerry OS6 is finally available to non-touch devices like the 9700 Bold 2 in Singapore some time last week. I have been dying to get it loaded onto my Bold 2 since the Torch was released, for the simple reason that it comes with the new WebKit browser. Once Ridzuan mentioned on Plurk he was installing OS6 on his BlackBerry, I immediately proceed to Starhub’s download page via BlackBerry’s site to obtain a copy.

Other than the fact that it took a little bit of time downloading it, upgrading over the previous version was a breeze for me, though I am not really sure whether it was really a quick install or I was simply too busy doing other things to keep track of the time that day. Once it has completed booting up, the BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server] Activation kicked in on its own to reactivate after a while. After that, I began to explore the features.

BlackBerry OS6 has added two main new features, such as ‘Trays’ and the ‘Universal Search’ – which allows me to quickly search items on the device to find what I want. This is way better that the previous versions of the OS, in which searching for items can sometimes be a real pain.

However, I start experiencing some odd issues the next day. For the whole of the next morning, I was forced to repeatedly restart the handset because it always appear to be busy loading some thing – a little timer icon keeps appearing (much like Windows’ annoying hourglass). The set’s performance became so sluggish to the point of being unusable and I had contemplated wiping it using Javaloader to reload the previous OS version. I checked the remaining space and I ruled out a memory leak issue because that number remained fairly stable. However, the set miraculously recovered in the afternoon and it has since been behaving. I have no idea what caused that period of sluggishness, since I had made no changes on the set to make it go away.

The browser is nice, and now there are separate icons for the BlackBerry Browser and the Internet Browser (at least for this version for StarHub, since Ridzuan informed me that there was only one browser icon on his). If I recalled correctly, the user has to go into the options to set it so the handset ‘knows’ which browser to go through in the older version. It took me a while to understand the difference between the two, and that is the BlackBerry Browser loads data through BES (or BIS, depending on what the user subscribes to). In the case of the BES, it allows companies to block out undesirable sites and grant access to the company’s intranet on the handset. My understanding is that all data going through the BlackBerry Browser is via the BES (or BIS), and thus ‘free’ for a user with an unlimited BlackBerry access plan.

On the other hand, the Internet Browser loads sites via the ISP instead, and if a user is not careful he will incur a whole load of data charges. This simply means anyone can buy a BlackBerry and use it without the push mail services, though I wonder what is the point of doing so. However, please do not just take my word for it on this matter and make sure to check with the telco. I will not take any responsibilities if anyone incur a large phone bill as a result of the data charges! (I also noticed that the WAP Browser icon is missing and I don’t miss it, since it is my opinion that WAP is obsolete.)

I put the webkit browser through the Acid3 test and it scored a nice 100/100. That was way better than the one on the previous OS which scored just 92 (and even better than that Windows Phone 7 one on the Samsung Omnia7 which never gets past 12/100). It also has tabbed browsing which means I can open several pages and toggle between them. Unfortunately, there is one thing about the browser I didn’t like – and that is I keep getting the message that some sites are too large to load and the tab has to be closed which became very annoying.

Even so, I liked the OS way better than all the versions before. For those who are supporting BlackBerry smartphones in the corporate, it will take a little getting used to. As far as I am concerned, the items under the ‘Options’ icon has changed rather drastically. My recommendation is to get OS6 on at least a set used by those providing support simply to learn how to navigate around it and guide users over the phone.

The following are some screen shots I took from the handset using a 3rd party software… and talking about that, will Research In Motion [RIM] put in that nifty feature which allows me to just press a few buttons and capture the screen like the iPhone iCrap? I thought that would be neat!

[portfolio_slideshow]

Random Discourse – It’s time to ‘Goh’!

Leave a comment

Senior Senile Mini$ter Goh Chok Tong chided Singaporeans for making a meal out of Singapore’s ‘sporadic’ floods. He suggested that Singaporeans should follow Japan’s example in dealing with nationwide catastrophes. I quote:

How many of you followed the latest tragic events in Japan with the tsunami… and then put into context our floods in Singapore against that kind of disaster. I am not saying we shouldn’t do anything about the flood. But the amount of noise you made with just sporadic flood compared to the Japanese. I saw them on TV. Very stoic looking. You don’t see them crying. This has happened, just get on, that’s the kind of spirit you want to have and you call it nation building.

I don’t recall anyone of us was crying when Orchard Road, parts of Thomson or even Jalan Besar flooded. We were as stoic as we can get, because we don’t even complain when an old man who refused to retire talked about ‘wanting spurs to be stuck into our hide’ and called us ‘daft’. Did the Senile Mini$ter encounter one too many whiners in his rich man’s ward? Or perhaps he read some mindlessly rabid pro-opposition local forums one time too many?

To be exact, some of us wrote to the papers to talk about the old days where Bukit Timah Road was almost always flooded whenever it rains and even talk about how we can improve the situation at Orchard Road. Are we not allowed to talk about what may have caused some of the floods and what conditions may have changed on the ground that needed a review? On one hand the Senile Mini$ter says that opinion from Singaporeans mattered, has opinion only got to come in the channels approved by the Tali-PAP, and only in a manner favorable – preferably extolling its virtues and achievements? Is this the way to encourage the development of a civic society, where the people take part in deciding what is best for their home, their country?


News Article Here.

Seriously, if the Senile Mini$ter expects us to behave like the Japanese, then our mini$ter$ should do as Japanese ministers do – resign when they fail, and not find excuses for themselves. For e.g. Seiji Maehara recently resigned for accepting a donation (not a bribe) from a foreign national. That’s not mentioning that several years ago, Toshikatsu Matsuoka committed suicide for unexplained expenses (see screenshot on left) – the first one to do so since the end of World War II.

However, did we see the same coming from our mini$ter$? The matter of the so-called ‘sporadic’ floods aside, who took responsibility for Mas Selamat’s escape? Did anyone took responsibility for the budget overruns of the Youth Olympic Games? What about a $388 million sum given to Singtel that was simply discounted as an ‘honest and unfortunate’ mistake?

When the Tali-PAP gahmen don’t even have the courage to take the rap for minor fiascos such as the Orchard floods, I shudder to imagine what will happen in the future if the nuclear reactor which feasibility this gahmen is studying right now suffers a meltdown!

Personally speaking, I will be proud of our mini$ter$ if they would die with honor rather than to live with their failure. Caesars will be able to provide a variety of nicely crafted blades for them to slit their little yellow bellies – samurai style. In fact, I would be most happy to see them use the Padang for such a public display of personal atonement. I will certainly turn up to cheer the courageous mini$ter on. That’s not forgetting the Singapore government gahmen should revise mini$terial pay downwards to match that of the Japanese too.

Let us consider what would happen had the Japanese gahmen been like ours. It would be telling the people that ‘no amount of engineering’ will deal with the natural calamities that beset their nation when skyscrapers in Tokyo not only swayed, but collapsed. It would probably conduct an investigation for the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and a report will obfuscate the problem and some manager at the plant they wouldn’t otherwise have heard of will take the rap for the failure. On top of which, its Prime Minster will only address the nation days after the disaster, just like what happened after Mas Selamat has escaped.

Mr Goh, it’s probably high time for the residents of Marine Parade to decide for you it’s time to go. Maybe you can join your daughter…

Random Discourse – Budget 2011

Leave a comment


Click for Full Size

Been wanting to write this post during the budget debate, but I just couldn’t find time. Anyway, I went with some friends to a ‘Coffeeshop Talk’ on the Budget organised by the Young NTUC on 26 February. This is the third time I attend such a talk, and my basic idea is to get a general idea on the basis of the government’s gahmen’s decision, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. For one of my friends, he mentioned that at the very least, we need to at least get a better understanding of what we are opposing.

The Minister of State invited to the event was Mr Lee Yi Shyan and before the Q&A session began, he explained that we should look at the Budget from 3 perspectives, namely – ‘Inside Out’ (not outside in), ‘Back to the Future’, and the International Environment.

I’ll try and explain what he meant as best as I understood it. (If there are any mistakes, that maybe because I have misunderstood what he meant.) By ‘Inside Out’, he meant that we should look at it from the planner’s (i.e. the Minister of Finance) perspective and not the man-on-the-street one. By ‘Back to the Future’, he meant that we should be mindful of the percussions of a decision made today and how it would damage the future. And lastly, by ‘International Environment’, he meant we need to be aware of what goes on around the world so we learn the lesson, and know how that will affect us.

After this, the members of the floor was asked to raise their questions. I felt that unlike the previous two session I attended, the questions this time round was more hard hitting. I didn’t take notice of all the questions, because I generally have a short attention span and I’ll let my mind drift off when the person who asks the question doesn’t get to the point after 20secs.

However, I did catch the first question, which comes in several parts (and also contain some of the things I probably would have asked). First of all, the minister was asked why the 0.5% CPF increment goes into the Special Account [SA] and not the Ordinary Account [OA] which would allow Singaporeans to use it on servicing their housing loans. He was also asked about the foreign workers levy which doesn’t do much to limit S-Pass and Employment Pass category, and thus is doing nothing to secure the jobs of PMETs (Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians).

From what I understand from the minister’s answer, the 0.5% was meant to increase the workers’ savings for his old age, since the SA earns higher interest. The main objective is to build the workers’ independence so they would not rely on the gahmen. (In my personal opinion, I would consider it a monetary tightening measure, since it would take money out of the circulation. 0.5% isn’t a lot of money for each worker, since it is just $15 for someone earning $3000 a month. But on a conservative estimate of a 1.7 million workforce in Singapore and $10 a person, that would roughly be S$ 204 million a year. While I maybe wrong, that would do something to curb inflation. But I would applaud the gahmen on the way they packaged it to be something primarily for the benefit of the people.)

As for the matter of the levy with regard to S-Pass and Employer Pass holders, the minister said the Ministry of Manpower will take that into consideration in the future. Personally I doubt it would ever happen since the minister reminded everyone present that the objective of raising the levy is not to force companies to substitute foreign workers with locals, nor to give our workers an easier time. The gahmen is concerned that any form of ’employment protectionism’ would create is a workforce that would become complacent and subsequently too expensive to be employed, or lacking the skills relevant to the ever changing economy. Thus, it hopes that companies would raise productivity and the workers would improve on skill (which is in line with the S$3.4 billion spent on the second part of the budget.)

One of the hosts from the NTUC raised the point that from what he has gathered while speaking to some people, they are concerned that if the gahmen raises the levy, bosses may be forced to maintain their costs by firing the Singaporean. The minister then reminded us that there is a dependency ration which will prevent Singaporeans from being retrenched. (My personal opinion is that all of this sounds reasonable, yet I have so far failed to find articles telling us in what specific industries are we lacking in manpower that foreigners need to be employed as far as PMETs are concerned. The matter is, as long as we continue to hear of friends who remained unemployed while jobs they are qualified for are taken up by foreigners, it will be difficult to erase the perception that there are too many foreigners and not enough is done to curb them.)

The other question raised was that the ‘goodies’ given out is not enough to fight inflation and price increments. The minister mentioned that inflation is not as bad and cited examples of some items in supermarkets in which prices has not gone up but has become cheaper. I would say I strongly disagree with that, since prices at the supermarket would mean we are expected to buy these items and cook and eat at home to keep costs low. It definitely does not align with the fact that prices can go up 50cents to a dollar in hawker centers which would translate into 10% ~ 25% price increments! Case in point, my favorite pork rib prawn noodle stall at Amoy Street Hawker Centre has raised the base price from $3 to $4 a bowl.

Of course, there were another matter also touched on, something about raising the fertility rate which I lost interest on completely because of the way the questioner raised his question. Come on, just keep it simple, silly alright? I clearly don’t like people to rant on and on about something I already know before the question is asked.

Either way I did catch part of the answer in which it seems like the gahmen is in the opinion that the cost of living is not what that is the main obstacle to couples having children (or even getting married). But rather, they are more interested in their material pursuits over their love of children. It was mentioned (I can’t remember who said it) that though some Scandinavian countries have a high TFR (Total Fertility Rate), the taxation level of those countries are high to allow free education etc for a child. The gahmen believes we would object to that kind of tax burden to solve the TFR issue, not to mention that Singapore’s unique position makes it difficult for such policies. Something which I don’t necessary disagree with, since I don’t want to be caught in situation where taxes needs to be increased further because the gahmen needs more money.

At this point I believed Josephine Teo mentioned that perhaps we should take our eyes off our material pursuits and look at the other things, such as appreciation of arts etc because the museums have remained empty in spite of the low entry costs. In my opinion, that would like ‘quenching one’s thirst by looking at plums’ (望梅止渴) because clearly we need to ensure our material needs are satisfied before we can move to the other levels of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. It would be absurd for anyone who is struggling to keep their own personal budget balanced to contemplate what she suggested.

My overall impression of this entire talk is that the gahmen seems to be more concerned with the future consequences of their actions today. That is perhaps what sets them apart from the opposition which is focused on the here and now.

Aside from the talk, I object to the gahmen’s argument that reducing GST would be more beneficial to the rich than to the poor even when I can agree that the GST collected as a rich man’s single purchase of some items would at times be more than what a poor person would pay in an entire year. If I had gotten my facts right, the gahmen tells us that 16% of total GST comes from the rich. But what about the other 84%? How much of that 84% is made up of other commercial activities, or more ominously… from the poor? Was there a breakdown of that 84% which I missed out?

It is ludicrous that the gahmen argues against removal of GST on necessities. One of the example cited is that while clothing is a necessity, a rich man buying a branded piece of garment would thus be spared from GST. I find it ridiculous that our million dollar mini$ter$ would not be able to come up with a list of items classified as luxuries. Meantime, I read on the papers that someone suggested that if the gahmen finds that it is difficult to reduce GST because it would be difficult to isolate luxury items from necessities, then it should consider a rebate of GST for those people whose earning are below a certain level. I personally think that is a great idea and it’s high time the gahmen stop giving excuses and do something about the infernal GST.